Make It Work

You know, a blank sheet of paper can be a terrifying sight. I’m looking at one now, so I should know.

Some blogs just write themselves. Others, I have to work out in my head awhile because all I have going is a few catch phrases to work with. Other times, I have a lot of ideas, but none of them fit to print. And, other days I have nothing to write about but just feel like writing. Who knew that it could be this tough? I really don’t think I have anything to say, so I’m just going to start rambling about nothing.

Let’s talk about yesterday. I checked into my hotel after work, all set for an evening of watching the finale of Survivor that was originally broadcast on Sunday night on Innertube. I don’t know that I can explain Innertube for the one or two people that might not know about it. All I know is that I can watch the full episodes of Survivor that I’ve missed, and see them with very, very few commercials. Instead of 20 minutes worth of commercials in an hour time slot, I see maybe two minutes worth. That isn’t bad.

Anyway, I had planned last night to order a pizza and sit back and catch up on the finale that I missed. So far, so good. Pizza was the best pizza around, a Donato’s pepperoni pizza on a thin crust and to wash it down, a glass of cool refreshing diet Pepsi. It can’t get much better than this.

Then it happened. I lost the internet connection. AARGH. My room happens to have a router right in there, so I did what I know how to do best. First I made sure the lights on the router were lit, then I called the front desk. That’s the extent of my expertise. I was hoping that the front desk would say that the internet mysteriously went down for a bit, but that they were working on it and would get back to me. No such luck. She ended up calling tech support and patching me through to them. Bad idea. I talked to David in tech support, who probably by the end of the conversation, wished he’d called in sick last night.

Some people know what they are doing on a computer. I’m not one of them. Poor David found that out in a hurry.

David: What kind of a lap top do you have?
Me: The kind you use for work.
David: Well, that’s good, but what KIND is it?
Me: Black?

That gives you a little hint as to how this conversation was going.

After making me do things I didn’t want to do (for the record, I should never be allowed to click any option that says “advanced”), in his infinite wisdom my wireless card either shut itself off for some reason or it broke completely.

After all that, he eventually told me that he could not help me any more, that I’d have to contact my own IT department. Unfortunately, that was not something I could do at 7:30 pm on a Monday night. Ron offered to talk me through what he could, but by this time I was too frazzled to listen. I needed an easier option.

The front desk ended up calling me to see if tech support was able to get me up and running. After some quick thinking, I said to her, hey look, I have a ton of work to do here and I need to get back on line. What are my options? She didn’t need to know I was having a Survivor-attack!

One option was an external wireless card. I’ve had to use those before and sometimes I get them to work, and sometimes I don’t. With the way things were going, I was betting this wasn’t going to be a successful alternative.

My other option was to change rooms, to one that is hard wired for the internet. Since one was available, I chose this option. Only bad part was that I had to repack by suitcase, grab the left over pizza as well as the rest of my soda from the refrigerator and get a move on. The front desk was nice enough to bring my new key along with a rolling luggage cart to me so I packed my laptop, my suitcase and my pizza and I was off, moving up to the next higher floor.

After hanging my clothes up once again, I was back in search of Survivor. I was able to finish the show with relative ease. That’s a lot of self-created angst just to watch a stupid show. Especially when my personal favorite survivor is not the one that walked away with the $1 million prize.

After all that drama, the rest of my evening was spent harmlessly watching Miami Ink. Look out . . . THIS show may be the cause of a blog with pictures one of these days . . .

Update: I got to the hotel tonight and now the wireless is working perfectly. Go figure!