Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

May 4, 2007

Thinking Out Loud: Life’s little ironies

We recently set up a new server so that I could host my nine domain names. (World domaination. Har har.) After I returned from Charleston, we did triage, and decided that as one of them had just been billed, the next in line would be Markeroni, as its next billing due date was May 5th.

We then started working hell for leather on transferring the site from server A to server B. Server A let me down spectacularly last August, managing to bring down four of my web sites simultaneously: one of them for weeks. It made such a mess of things that one of them never did work properly again. So, it was about time. And, since Don had been craving real geek work, he was suddenly a happy, whistle-as-you-work camper as he configured thisses and logged thatses and generally blathered on about things that sailed waaaaay over my head and level of comprehension.

At much the same time, I sourced a Thinkpad laptop on Ebay for $60. It had a cracked screen, but I didn't care about that–it can run my business software, which is Windows, and which I haven't had access to for a while. Getting involved with years of neglected filing as I have been, I wanted to get back on track with small details like accounting. It’s a bit hard to do that when your emulator works so slowly that it takes half an hour just to boot up QuickBooks.

Now, let's step back in time just a little to when I was being picked up in San Jose airport last week. I had a little trouble finding Don, and eventually changed my personal cellphone message to “I’m at United 3″ to facilitate collection. It worked!

Bear with me. These things are intimately related.

Life’s little ironies #1

So we worked and slaved and stayed up late, trying to concentrate as the house next door was hammered on and split in half and finally towed away screaming, inches from my office window. I got grouchy and overwhelmed and things didn’t work and other things worked differently and by the night before my deadline I was thoroughly fed up with the whole thing.

Then we just got done and were about to say sianara to Server A when an email popped into my inbox. “Your account has been paid.”

It turns out that accounts were due on May 4th, not May 5th. All that rushing, all that chaos…for nothing.

And then I went to the bathroom and found out that it was shark week, too.

Life’s little ironies #2

The laptop came, as advertised, except for one small detail. In place of a CD-ROM had been installed a secondary battery. A quick check on Ebay revealed that the battery was worth more than the CD-ROM, so at least I had bargaining power. The seller made appropriate “oops” sounds and arranged for her cousin to meet me at Fry’s in San Jose the next day and do a swap.

I checked my route on Google and set out. And out. And out. By about the time I got to the outskirts of San Jose, I realized that either there was no exit named Brokaw, or I’d just channeled my inner runaway child and kept going. I reversed the polarity of the neutron flow and with a strong sense of deja vu panicked my way rapidly north up 101. Then I came off at the appropriate exit–where Google’s directions did align with reality–and promptly got picked up and spat out, inexplicably, into San Jose airport. At this point I had a hissy fit as I putted round endless-seeming terminals at the legal posted speed limit of approximately 3 mph.

When the airport spat me out again, I got on the freeway, came off at the next exit, and pulled over to check my GPS unit. I could not get it to give me a useful map. I called the CD-ROM liaison guy for the second time that morning and got no response. Then a message beeped through: someone wanting to buy a copy of my book for a library. (This is relevant.)

Heart sinking, thinking I’d be lost in San Jose forever, I found a nice security guard who gave me real directions to Brokaw. Roughly five minutes later I arrived at Fry’s, met the guy, traded electronic hardware, and went home. Finally.

Where did I stop to ask for directions?

Ebay.

Life’s Little Ironies #3

Remember that phone call I had? I finally remembered about it about 4 pm. In my defence, I was tired from staying up way past my bedtime the previous night. The guy had said he was trying to reach Spaghetti Press. It suddenly occurred to me that this was a bit odd. Didn’t he know he had?

I left him a message–New Hampshire had long since closed for the weekend–and then checked my greeting.

Uh-oh. According to that, I was still at United 3, at San Jose Airport.

Now, don’t you all wish you had days like this?