Faith-based Computing

Well, I thought I had done it.

I began this post with a heady sense of optimism, full of myself because of some significant victories in computing over the last few days. It didn't happen without a lot of work and a lot of smarts and a lot of yelling at my husband (which seems to help me, although it doesn't usually help the computer problems very much). But after a full 24 hours in the land of milk and honey (and fast connections and working applications and seamless network connection), I guess I got too cocky. Or maybe somebody who is more in charge than I realize got annoyed that I was giving all the credit to the deity of my new religion, New Media. Maybe that "it's not a genre, it's a theological construct" comment in the last post pissed off, er, somebody.

Of course, I began this post during my lunch hour at work. I came home ready to finish the clean "from disk" install of my Major-Applications-That-Would-Not-Work, but almost immediately encountered a compatability issue. No matter, I thought, since I wasn't going to run that program anyway and was just installing it to serve as the baseline for the Very Expensive Upgrade I had purchased, which was hanging out in cyberspace waiting for me to download it.

And then, Big New Computer misplaced our household LAN. And then it misplaced the Internet. And finally, it misplaced the Network screen in Windows Explorer altogether.

Holy. Moly.

Well, it took a little swearing and a little Googling and a little more yelling at my husband, but I found a trick online, posted in response to someone who was experiencing basically the same thing as me (without all the religious overtones). I stood at my "old" computer (where I am standing now) and read off the instructions I had located on Wikipedia to my husband who was kind enough to sit in front of Big New Computer and follow them. And the trick worked. The network screen came up with all three computers identified and happy. The Internet connection came up, and not in the dreaded "limited connectivity" mode.

So now I stand here at 10:14 pm, when I had planned to be in-world blowing Linden Bucks on even more new hair and some great clothes in 1900 Paris. Instead, I'm writing blog entries and playing solitaire on my "old" computer, waiting for 685 MB of program upgrade to download. I'm tired, I'd rather be asleep, but I want to get this at least downloaded before the trolls strike again. Maybe it's because I made fun of some of the poor hapless software customer support people I found myself dealing with over the last week or so; among my many conclusions about software customer support people was the notion that as a general rule they are just not very clever to begin with. I was feeling smug, because I didn't yell at anyone and instead forgave them.(Poor Bapshar, Indra and Kevin, I wish you many blessings and hope you are forever protected from the mantra, "would you like fries with that?")

But maybe I stepped on someone's toes there too. Seems I remember something about forgiveness being someone else's territory as well.

Well, alrighty then. I'll abandon all religious metaphors immediately. I've learned a lot in the last few days, not all of it about computers. And I'm still devoted to New Media, but in a less ecclesiastical sort of way. Maybe in a more ontological sort of way? Or is that actually the same territory?

Yay. My download is at 73% and it's only 10:30. I might make it into bed sometime tonight.