April's little disasters

AOG, Madrid

Interesting month this. It would appear that the electronic Gods have it in for me. For those of you outside the UK, the Gods in questions hate me and are making me pay for something. What? No clue. It is a case of electronic karma gone haywire. This must be payback for some crime I must have comitted in a past life against some machine. I probably destroyed a wind-up clock in the XVII century or I burnt an expensive chinese sing-song or something. What has happened lately is definitely karma-related.

The month began with blackouts. At first I thought it was only at work, where, since the Popular Party decided to ban the Prisa group from all its public acts, we also thought we were the victims of electric terrorism. The power went out quite frequently a couple of weeks ago day after day. But when I got home, I realised that it was Madrid that was suffering these power shortages. When I got home, the TV, DVD, and the digital encoder were not working properly. I had to reprogram everything. The power had gone out at home too.

And then I thought that was that. Wrong-o-la!

Two weekends ago, I went to a wedding in Bilbao with Juan. Upon my return to Madrid, I discovered that my laptop, which was working perfectly before I left, was now out of order. As of today, it still is. The warranty covers some things, and does not cover some others. It does not cover software, and it looks like it is a software problem. Those of us who are uninitiated upon the mysteries of computers, could care less. The email machine is not working, that is all I know!

But it does not stop there. I was in Barcelona last weekend. I got back on Sunday evening. The home phone was not working. It is dead. As of today, it still is. My phone company, Jazztel, has not yet repaired the fault, whatever it might be.

Does it end there? Like heck! Yesterday, as I was drawing the curtains, the curtain pole fell off! I had to laugh. Just in case, I'm taking a train to Barcelona this weekend.

Tech Madness

Ok, I'm not the most "with it" person in the world technologically speaking (or most any other field) but there has got to be an "idiot's-way -to- making- your- website- look -pretty -with -pings and- pongs- and- feeds -and- merde- like- that". Yes, Merde.

I have been trying for the past hour to get a feed from the NYT as well as The Guardian. Could i do it? Could I hell! No. Why? Because, unfortunately for me, I am computer illiterate. Yes, I, a child of the 80s, never took an active interest in computers beyond the "nice game" "cool graphics" (and we are talking pre-playstation here) and "wow" stage of things. Programming makes me sick. I don't understand it, I don't care for it, heck with it!

But, of course, one is of the "litteraty & culturatty" brigade. One must be "Oh..so with it" these days. One must somehow produce an amazing website if one is expected to be taken seriously by one's peers (read harpies). We can't have the tecchies writing columns can we? No. But we do need them to make cyber crap look cool. Presentable. Ditty. Oui, J'ai dit ditty!

So? So help me God, Buddha, Allah (not his real name...did you know there are about 99 names for Allah and that Allah actually means "The only God") I will try my best to make this look presentable in spite of programmers reticence to make this whole process straightforward and easy and ergonomic.

"Please copy and paste and shove it up your website with our compliments hahaha"

I hate computers.

Hope the stupid video from You Tube works.

PS: Link of the day: Where bad films go to die. Enjoy!