Dial-Up Despair

I've got a laptop. It's awesome - a desktop replacement that's designed for excellent graphics (i.e. gaming) capability. It's giant, but the big screen and raw power (at least when it was new) are totally worth the back pain.

I don't actually travel with it much, but I had to bring it up to my sister's house this week and she doesn't have any internet service at all herself. On paper, that's okay, I've got a popular nationwide dial-up ISP loaded and this is partly why I stay a member despite my tasty wireless network at home.

First of all, I pull out my computer and turn it on, and it says there is no hard drive. Ouch! I started feeling around the outside and realized my drive was hanging out a bit from it's slot on the side. It's screw is missing, and it has completely disappeared! No idea when or how it happened, but it's staying in fine so far. I have a bunch of spares at home, so I'm just going to try not to move it all week.

Then, I had a heck of a time trying to log in and find a local access number. It turned out it was the *70 that is used to turn off call waiting screwing up the process. Unfortunately, it took about a half an hour on the phone with tech support and at least 3 restarts to figure it out!! All that after hours of trying to fix it myself.

But yay! I'm online at last! I go to the first page I needed, and the looooooooong wait begins for it to load. I really forgot how bad dial-up is!!

As you may recall, I am partially up here to start planning her wedding, and I'm a very web-based planner. It's tough to check out text, let alone a page full of pictures of gowns! I did get them hooked up with internet access again, but I feel bad that my sister is going to have to look at stuff I send her over this kind of connection. I swear, if I was rich I would get her broadband. Oh, well.

I haven't gotten to read a single blog post (good thing it's been the weekend) and I haven't really checked my email beyond a cursory glance at the "From" lines. I feel so disconnected.