Let joy be unconfined..well, mine anyway…

I can write again!

No, I had not lost the use of hand or eye: I had lost the use of my USB mouse.

I was left with the ouija board on the laptop.

Does it transmit calls from the Other Side?

No…but it might as well because every time I touch it strange things arise from nowhere: I am thinking of calling it Glendower as it  defies Hotspur’s cynicism and produces the goods…

To be fair to it, my coordination is not of the best: but I am frustrated by thinking that I am scrolling down when in fact I am bringing up advertisements….or altering the screen proportions from something only seen on optician’s test sheets to an intense view of one word. Extremely frustrating and profoundly inhibiting.

How did my predicament come about?

My ancient USB mouse had been confiscated by Higher Authority.

Higher Authority’s approach to computers could best be envisaged by imagining him shouting ‘Montjoie St. Denis!’ while hoisting the oriflamme to indicate that no quarter will be given as he prepares to give combat.

The results frequently resemble those of the French at Agincourt…

Squawks of frustration and alarm are heard from the office. Dogs slink under tables.

An infuriated figure appears, announcing that the screen has  turned purple…or that the page he was looking at has disappeared…or that EVERYTHING has disappeared….

He returns to the fray, only to emerge again with the news that his mouse won’t work.

As it is

A: made in China

and

B: its functioning depends on a batch of rechargeable batteries purchased in France in the Dark Ages which in turn rely for boosting on a temperamental machine which refuses to light up to indicate whether or not it is working

this doesn’t surprise me.

The saga of changing and charging batteries takes its course until we run out of charged batteries and the fatal announcement is made:

You’ll have to give me your USB mouse.

Which leaves the household in peace again – odd occurrences of purple screens apart – but leaves me with the ouija board.

Usually this situation lasts only until the batteries are all charged again…but this time it has lasted for all too long. Higher Authority likes my old USB mouse far better than his fiendishly clever Chinese one – easier to hold for paralysed fingers.

Why not buy another?

Because this is Costa Rica where maintaining stock is an art yet to be acquired by shopkeepers.

Discovering a void on the shelf where the item used to be you ask the young assistant if there are any more in the stock room.

Obligingly he will disappear and return to tell you, beaming the while, that they are out of stock, adding helpfully that they must have sold them all..

It says a great deal for the effect on me of the pleasant way of life in Costa Rica in general that this response does not elicit – as it would have done in France – the urge to disembowel the lad without the assistance of cutlery: but then in France he probably wouldn’t have gone to look in the stockroom either…….He might even have shrugged.

So I have had to wait until the inscrutable workings of Providence filled the shelf with the items I required.

The young lad was in attendance again, beaming.

But why did I want a USB mouse he wished to know. They were old fashioned. He understood that old people (me) didn’t keep up to date, but I should really go for a wireless mouse – much better!

I thanked him for his advice, but  declined.

Best to let sleeping mice lie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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You can’t leave them alone a minute….

kjcardsandthings.com

I have been – mostly – confined to bed for the last few days which has left The Men, husband and Danilo, to their own devices and, according to them, rushed off their feet and exhausted.

Yes, well…..

So I was surprised to find them huddled in front of the computer this afternoon.
It was clear that they had a problem from their body language…slumped and depressed.

It was also clear that whatever had left them that way was not to be revealed to me by the prompt way in which they turned and ushered me out to the balcony with offers of tea.

I drank my tea and they returned to the computer.

Danilo eventually went home and I thought no more about it until I mentioned pulling up some files from the computer.

Ah!

This sound always means that my response to whatever I am about to be told cannot be reliably anticipated.

What had they done? Hacked into the local animal feed store’s computer? Brought down the government? Bid for yet another watch on eBay which would cost more in customs fees than it had to buy?

No.

They had, I was informed, been looking for fencing wire on Mercadolibre….the local eBay….and because when the computer went down with a virus recently it came back to life with a pirated programme in Spanish from a man working in the prosecutor’s office Danilo thought he could understand how to use the computer, so he was let loose.

He had been doing well until they came across a blog about fine art prints that I had bookmarked….accusing gaze…and they had typed in fine art on the search thingy.
Why would they do that, one wonders…..and in which language…and with what spelling…

What had resulted…it appeared…was a list of sites offering what might indeed have been pretty fine art to some tastes and Danilo had been so startled that he had unwarily pressed a button.

Always a mistake when handling a computer.
Press nothing.
Either the whole screen disappears or worse, whatever it is fills the whole screen and you can’t get rid of it.

Which is what had happened to the Men.
Thus the slumped depression.
They had pressed more buttons – one of which must have been ‘save’ because The Thing came back when they turned the computer off and on.

It had turned into a screensaver..

I took a look when I went to use the computer later…..
It certainly wasn’t fencing wire.

Um. Danilo hopes you don’t think he was looking for that sort of stuff….?

No, I didn’t think either of them were, but in the way that computers always treat IT numpties it had ambushed them and left them up creek sans paddle.
I could almost see it smiling to itself…in Spanish.