Technical Difficulties

For a harrowing week, I thought that I'd not only mysteriously broken our digital camera, but also our desktop computer. This would make so much sense since I tend to ruin all of the nice things I ever buy or am given.

Thankfully, the desktop wasn't irreparably broken. I confirmed this after a long but painless call to Dell. At one point, during the various turnings-on and turnings-off of the computer and checking of lights which finally lit, the customer service representative said, "thank God." Thank God, indeed.

A word about this desktop: it's the Toronto-era Vince Carter of the electronic age. It's often injured (a bad hard drive, a bad motherboard, cranky drivers) and often decides that it just won't work. It might be very prissy, too. I suspect that the computer actually just hates me - it hates that I use it to do all of this grunt work (like spreadsheets and word processing and web-based emails) rather than to do the fancy programming it yearns to do.

Following the analogy, my laptop computer must be channeling Iverson. It has endured so much: being spilled on, being dropped (repeatedly), being stepped on, missing keys, a defective USB port, a screen that wigs to pink with just a harsh look, and a defective keyboard. Yet, the laptop lives on, defying all expectations. It might be my most reliable piece of electronics, but - like the Sixers - you'd better believe I'd trade it in a heartbeat for a younger, fancier, and unproven model.

Particularly if that model bears a cute little Apple logo.

Here's my new secret job fantasy: I'd like to work at Apple. (Cue fantasy music, possibly something from the Rushmore soundtrack.) The commute would be very easy - I might even be able to ride my bike. I wouldn't really have to do anything at this job. Perhaps I'll just bake cookies and tasty pastries for the campus cafeteria. But my cookies would be so tasty that Steve Jobs himself will fill the trunk of my car with all sorts of well-designed Apple merchandise. Sigh.

Until then, I'll resign myself to sampling all the flavors of digital cable and sunning myself at the pool while reading the new Jasper Fforde. This is the perfect recipe for living in a summer-vacation-coming-to-an-end denial.

But, it is true - we're settled in, mostly, and we're trying to figure out this weird place.

In a particularly bizarre twist of fate, we just discovered that we live less than a mile from the military/NASA installation where my father worked for several months while I was in high school. This is the same NASA base where I'm going to try to pass myself off as 12 and go to Space Camp, an idea I'm certain my father himself must have considered, given that it's Space Camp. I'll let you know how that scheme goes.