Hi honey's... I'm hoooome !

I'm finally back on-line and I've got to face it... I'm addicted to the Internet.
Bad.

My computer went down last Thursday night and after many sleepless nights tossing and turning... and days of headaches and hassles, I'm finally back on-line.
I spoke to techie support guys in India and the Philippines so many times and for so many hours, that I'm developing a serious accent.
Really.

I had one local techie out on Saturday... and after 2 hours of fiddling and farting around, he said "well, I've replaced your modem, which obviously has died and gone to heaven... done scans and got you this far, but now, you have to take it from here.

So all you need to do is contact your service provider and find out your original password that you received within minutes of setting this baby up back in 2005.

Then enter this address on this screen I'll leave up and running for you.
Just enter "jurlosneufhg" and then go to menu and enter "goudljgu" in the highlighted box, click on the red box at the very bottom of the screen... tell them what you ate for breakfast back on July 2nd 1957 and voila... Bob's yer uncle".
You should be back on-line.
That'll be $130, thanks.

Which might have worked - I dunno. The problem was, about 3 hours after he left, my monitor decided to sh** poop itself, and it went totally black.
I could hear music, so obviously I was still on-line in some rudimentary, teasing, half-arsed fashion, but I couldn't see a darn thing.

So I called another guy at random out of the phonebook.
Well, actually, I called about 10 guys at random out of the phonebook, but none of them were answering the phone at 9am on a fine Monday morning.

So, I did what any self-respecting, computer-less woman with time on her hands would do.
I went shopping.

For a new monitor.
Oh, and some killer speakers to go with it.

But I still didn't have any Internet and there was no telling when I could get back on-line, but when I did manage to get back on-line, I would at least be able to do it in style.

And I mean Style, with a capital S.

This baby is so big and so flash and so amazingly *in yer face* that even the The Pioneer Woman would be envious of me. I mean that. Ree would take one look at my brand new screen... and turn green with envy.
This is big leagues stuff, baby. I wanna play in the big leagues, and this is the equipment to do it with, let me tell ya.
This monitor is like trading in pitiful little Peewee Herman for Sean Connery... in a tuxedo, no less.

So while we were ( me and the Old Guy) battling to get big-arsed monitor and his little speaker buddies out of their box... and doing our best not to kill each other whilst doing it,
someone actually called me back from one of those 10 desperate, wasted phone messages I had left to any and everyone in the phonebook... begging for help. One guy out of ten called me back.

And this guy promised to be out within an hour and to do everything I asked him to do...
Like install Sean Connery and his little speaker buddies as well as get me up and running again.

I had never spoken to this man before in my life... but I loved him already.

He showed up within 50 minutes... and he walked in the door dressed in black and charcoal grey striped dress trousers, a beautiful glittery black jacket and a mauve shirt... looking like a young version of Elvis crossed with a Mafia boss on his way to do a financial deal with the Prime Minister's minions.
But as long as he could get me back on-line ... despite his highly somewhat inappropriate clothes, he was still The Man for me.

Now I don't know about the rest of you, but I do clean my house.
I have to - to do what I do with the kids and all.
But I had never ever thought to get down behind the desk and dust the damn cords and cables and little black boxes that are back there - or the little shelf that they sit on. I mean... who thinks to do that stuff?
Out of sight... out of mind, ya know what I mean ?

So within 5 minutes, my guy wasn't quite as pristine and glorious as he was when he walked in the door.
There were dust-bunny dreadlocks hanging from his knees and elbows, he had smears of dust in his beautiful jet-black pompadour and cobwebs hanging from his earlobes - and his striped trousers were now a uniform sneeze-inducing gray.

But he worked wonders for me.
He spent literally 5 and a half hours fiddling and farting around in the guts of my computer, talking to.. and having me talk to heavily accented techie support guys halfway around the world and doing my utmost to translate techie gobbledy-gook for him...

But eventually, he got me back on-line.
He got me back on-line, talked me through everything he had done, did some funny stuff with ram sticks to increase my memory.
(which made me feel like I was channeling Gladys, because I kept saying "honey, I'm sure that means something").
He got Sean Connery here installed in pride of place on my desktop and got these killer speakers installed and doof-doofing away as well.
I love this boy!

He brought me back to you...
And for that, I would have paid him twice what he asked for.
And he only asked for $180!!
Does that make you feel cheap?

I missed my computer and I'll admit it...
But more than that, I missed you guys!

*sigh*

Honey's... I'm Hooome !