First off, let me say that I am not glad to be back at the internet club. I have no idea why I was so confident before I got into all the hubris of last week's one and only post, but something told me that getting internet installed in Bulgaria woud be easy. Seeing as how it's almost never easy to get it installed in America, I should have known that bragging about getting internet at any given time would be asking for Fate to step in and slap me around.
So, Wednesday, after staying in my apartment for four hours while expecting the guys who were bringing the wire from the building next door to my place to finish their job, I sat and watched another guy capably fill in all the necessary IP address, Subnet Gateway, and DNS server blanks to create a Virtual Private Network connection for my computer. Capable though he was, he couldn't get over an error that kept appearing whenever he tried to connect to the VPN. The LAN connection was working fine, but a VPN connection couldn't be established because my computer thought that there was another computer on the same network with the IP address the guy had capably assigned me. It was six o'clock then. I was late for basketball and they were all in a hurry to leave and go home. The guy told me he'd be back the next day to finish.
So, I went out and played some terrible basketball while being preoccupied with the internet and a small romantic Hope I had been nursing.
The next day I taught, then sat at home for four hours waiting for the guy to show. He never did.
Friday, I went into the cable internet people's office before school and asked what the hell the deal was. They said that somebody would come out that afternoon. Hopefully. So I taught and went home. Waiting for me there was a guy (a different one this time) who said he could fix my computer. He did something or other for an hour, never checking the IP address, then said that the problem was with my computer and its ethernet card.
Although he, I, and the entire computer-using world know that his answer was b.s. for "I don't know where the problem on our end is so I'll blame your end," my computer seemed to substantiate his claim when it died with a blue screen that told me about an "unmountable boot error" an hour after the guy left. Fortunately, that problem was solved the next morning with a good ol' fashioned CHKDSK from DOS. Later Friday night though, the aforementioned small Hope took a good knockdown for reasons I really don't want to get into here.
Saturday morning saw me fix the computer problem, revive the romantic Hope with a little bit of nice-guy-edness, and relax at home. This happiness segued into a beautiful afternoon pf poker playing and more relaxing. Then, as evening set in and turned into night, Fate stepped out of nowhere and whapped the poor, small Hope with a lead pipe and stomped on it a couple of times to make sure it stayed on the ground a while.
Sunday, I woke up early and wandered around the apartment in my underwear, cleaning things, until I had coffee with friends in the center and went off to play basketball after that. Then there was more laying around in my underwear while watching some playoff basketball and working on a project proposal.
So you see? There's a reason I didn't come to the internet club for every day of the week last week. Today was productive. We had a great meeting about the project I'm working on (more on that in the days/weeks to come), I made it to the internet club, and I'll be going to the internet people's office after this. If they're open.
You see, Bulgaria and Romania are signing their accession treaties for the European Union today. In two short years they could both be a part of the Big Show. The schools are taking the day off and it seems like a weekend outside. The cable people might have decided to close their doors too.
Oh, in other news, Michael was kind enough to point out that Silistra made the news with its big story last week. Remember when I said the Danube was high? Well, it got so high last weekend that wild boars on an island in the river were forced to swim into town. While the story credits the boars with breaking windows and smashing cars, I would be more inclined to credit the guys who took it upon themselves to carry their guns around town and fire at any boar they (think they) saw. I never saw any of the boars myself. I don't think they made it to my part of town.
Similar thing happened a few years back, I'm told, when the Danube froze and Romanian wolves stormed into Silistra. Apparently several people were actually shot during that frenzy. Ahh, Silistra. I love this town.
Posted by Rob at April 25, 2005 02:43 PM