Venting

Well this is definitely a challenge. In Beijing (well everywhere in China) we were blocked from face book and blogspot.  Emails were erratic and some of them were aborted. I got strange bounce back codes that seemed to indicate they were cancelled intentionally. Our China guide told us they had comparable programs in China for  Chinese only, but the government had intentionally blocked some of those programs we had come to expect everywhere and monitored everything. Although Terry had reservations about visiting what is now a quasi Communist country I couldn’t believe in 2013 that such restrictions existed.

On the Riverboat Victoria Salina we experienced the same frustrations.  Additionally the power on the boat was erratic, so it was at your own risk if you wanted to try charging your electronics equipment in your own room. We did and at some point my ancient laptop which was free to begin with and rebuilt several times by talented sons and husband went black.

It did not help that I had been lugging around my ancient laptop  in a backpack without any additional protection, thereby stressing the odd looking hinge on the back.  Somewhere between the last stop in Beijing and boarding the Princess I broke the hinge.

So now we are on board the beautiful Diamond Princess and I have no computer. There is a reason they call it a personal computer; it can be customized for a person, me.  My computer had all the programs, ids, documents and pictures that I was familiar with.

They have a wonderful Internet facility here, but as far as I can tell, no ability to upload pictures, so what I have finally been FORCED to do is use Terry’s Acer. He loves it.  I can’t even see the screen.  He encrypts the hard drive with some impossible password so I have to get assistance just to bring it up. He uses a mouse, while I prefer the touch pad.  His word processing programs (he has several) all seem to work far differently from what I’m used to, if they work at all. Not being content with one browser, he has 4; 3 of which don’t work as intended (as far as I‘m concerned).  Because I have such a hard head I had to find all of  that out myself in a slow painful process of exploration.

Add to that the fact I am about 10 days behind in actually writing this blog and it now takes much longer for me to do it. ARGHHH!

Oh well, what are vacations for except to learn new things, even when you don’t want to.

Goodbye Dear Laptop 

The hinge on the left is what broke.  It LOOKS okay, but when you open it, the wires are exposed and the connection broken.

On the bright side, I will get a new laptop, and hopefully it will be a Mac!  Mary has been trying to convince me for years that it is simpler and more dependable. Not to mention a few pounds lighter than my old one. Just won’t be getting it on this side of the world. My paranoid delusions now extend to hardware and software produced in communist countries. Another reason to take trips - i realize how blessed I am to live in the USA.  I am frequently guilty of taking my freedoms for granted.