The Logic Board has Died

More tales of computer woe! Not only does La Gringa’s poor letter “P” not work, which is a huge deal for a book about the Perils of Paulina in Panama, but DRK’s computer has just passed away. It was a quiet death, dragged out. The video card, built into the Logic Board on her Macbook Pro is no more. It was always troublesome, but I figured we could fix it. We went out to the Apple Store in Rome (sorry La Gringa, the first and only Apple Store on the old Continent is in Rome!) The Genius Bar was kind and told us no problem we could fix. The estimate? The same price as a new PC and only guaranteed for 3 months. Ah…no thank you, Apple!. So we bought a new PC, and that’s PC and not Mac. Of course, being in Italy that means I will forever be stuck with Windows in Italian. Italian, French, German, whatever. We gringos are used to this. We deal with it all the time. Trying to figure out how to get the accent marks, QWERTY vs. QWERTZ. I’ve dealt with Austrian keyboards, Swiss French keyboards, French keyboards (yes different from Swiss French) and now Italian. At the very least, Italian keyboards are baseline QWERTY. Phew! 

We are momentarily inconvenienced, however. We have been a 2 computer family, but were going to upgrade and become a 3 computer family this summer. We are now a 1 computer family for a few days. Doesn’t work. Thankfully, we pick up our new treasure on Thursday.

I only hope the “P” works. :>)

 

Whip

City of Light turns off the Olympic Flame

I was so disappointed, with the cries of “Paris 2012!” still ringing in my ears, that it was here in Paris the Olympic flame was extinguished on its journey around the world. And not once, but three times!

I had to ask myself, who are these guys? Parisian protesters? I’m so fond of the right to demonstrate, I only half-heartedly whine during transit strikes. I can see picketing the Chinese Embassy about Tibetan rights. But grabbing the torch from an athlete in a wheelchair? It all seemed so misplaced, like boycotting the Paris book fair because Israel is the guest of honor.  After all, books are where we express ourselves, and boycotting them becomes censorship.

I still hope that outrage at rampant globalization – or whatever this is really about – doesn’t get in the way of appreciating self-expression, in literature or athletic excellence. And that another great Parisian force, faith in the imagination, will prevail.

“Paris 2072!”

-Seattlite

Whip is whipped up

Okay, this really annoys me. And maybe I expect too much, but when I write an email to someone, I like getting replies in a reasonable amount of time. I know sometimes it doesn’t happen. We all get busy. But when I receive an email, I respond as soon as I see it. 99% of the time. I figure that’s polite. Even if it’s just to acknowledge, ‘Received. Will write details later.’ So, when others don’t do the same, I get all bothered. I wonder, are they ignoring me? Are they busy? Away on vacation? Have no desire to talk to me? I know. I know. I know. It sounds like I’m paranoid, huh? Well, it’s just my pet peeve. Email to me is a time lagged conversation. And I love them. I love being in communication with people. Being an Outlander, it’s value to me is probably heightened. Home is closer since the advent of email. And since Skype came around, home is way closer and VISIBLE. But, back to emails. What’s great about them is that I can send you an email and you can respond when you have time. In that way, it’s less intrusive than a phone call. It doesn’t have to be immediate, but timeliness is appreciated. See, I prefer the time lag in the conversation to be measured in about a day. No more if at all possible. And not in weeks and weeks. I mean, don’t we all have time to say ‘hey’ to someone who’s calling out to us electronically?    Hey! Whip