Back On Line

Wayhey, we have a new computer! Bertie's BIL works in a computer place and had an ex store model offered to him at a discount so he kindly kept it for us.

It is hp compact and on the downside has a French AZERTY keyboard, all the programmes are in French, and it is a laptop when I was intending to get a desktop, but paying a quarter less is nice! Plus I will never have problems putting in my accents!

Bertie's other BIL has just connected it to the web so here I am in my bedroom feeding JoJo and blogging! I just need to work out how to put Picassa and upload all my photos - watch this space....

And now back to the big family party happening next door!

A Tale Of Woe

Our BIL has been kindly looking at our computer this week and marvelling at the fact that, despite undergoing immense destruction and abuse at the hands of the wee ones, it has kept on going! He said that he would recommend it to his clients as a very robust laptop!
Sadly, even robust laptops have their limits. First he fiddled and tugged until eventually he discovered the girls' mini-cinderella disc that had been the cause of the dvd player not working. (I could just imagine one of them slipping it in and then wondering and wondering just why nothing was happening!)
Next we showed him our favourite method for opening the computer with no proper kit at hand - my super duper potato peeler! It is great for peeling too! I would not leave the country without it and if i could, I would post a photo for you!
Once inside, he marvelled at the traces of milk and who knows what else. The inside of our keyboard and the screen were also places of horror for this Computer Man!
In all the turning on and off at the button rather than by the more traditional shut down method, we had destroyed some of the Windows files. Possibly could have been sorted, but then he finally pulled out the hard drive, and almost wept at the damage wreaked by that infamous glass of milk and CassCass last December!
Diagnosis: it will certainly never ever work again and he will do his best to get the stuff off it, but is not holding out much hope. Ahh! I am glad that Sister Evs had the bright idea of transferring all my photos to her hard drive in march so we haven't lost too much.
And for all you dear readers, go save your important files on to disk RIGHT NOW! (And do not let your children near a computer with a glass of milk!)

Electrics Are Jinxed?!

Tee hee, not only has our computer gone, but so has my SIL's next-door that I often use and now our tv has burnt out! (The girls are particularly distraught about this as we just nabbed the parents' DVD player and they have been SO enjoying Balamory! Me too! Love the views , the accents and it reminds me of Thursday afternoons at Esther's house!)

Oh, for those who are interested....have just booked our return tickets for 27 July 2009! How exciting! The countdown really is on!

We are squatting on my nephew's laptop, watching Roland Garros and savouring a ti punch, umm! It is a Bank Holiday (fourth in as many weeks...), this time for the Abolition of Slavery.

Hopefully I will pop in on a computer again in the next few weeks!

Gone Again

And now the computer is more or less a write-off after catching a virus.... (swine flu perhaps?!)

Just under three months till we set off back home, as you can imagine I have started my countdown and begun my lists of things to do, things to take, places to visit etc etc. As you can also imagine, Bertie isn't giving it the slightest thought!

Another strike tomorrow...hold your breath!

A Dream Fulfilled

Dreams are funny things. I constantly have them and many are the strangest things, several are scary and often all too real. But there have been a very few select occasions when I knew that the event in the dream would happen - like when Bertie's wallet mysteriously disappeared from our living room table one night. We wondered and wondered till our brains hurt what could have happened to it until a few months later I dreamt of finding it in our suitcase and lo and behold the next morning, there it was! (We had been unpacking after a trip away and can only assume some little fingers slipped it in there!)

So last night when I dreamt that some French friends of ours crashed Bertie's brother's car because they were watching tv on the sunblinds, of course I knew it was just a dream. But when I dreamt that the computer was mended I equally knew that it would be. And so did Bertie. And so it was! Bertie was chatting to his sister on the phone and mentioned the problem, so she passed over her super duper computer husband who hmmed and hahed and directed Bertie almost in a HelpDesk kind of way and hurrah, they resolved the problem! Do you know what it was? Apparently if you press a random selection of keys you get the computer into video mode (where it will play on another screen but not the original one). Well I never!

Of course, there is the big question of why it happened. Perhaps one of those little fingers was tapping away? In any case, I would also humbly suggest that God uses such moments as a teaching time (get off that computer! what, you won't turn it off? then I shall turn it off for you!) and so it is for me to apply that lesson even now it is back again. In fact, I have been rereading a beloved R T Kendall book, Pure Joy, and one of his favourite phrases is to "dignify a trial", that is, to welcome it and consider it pure joy, and to refrain from grumbling and complaining. Well I really really missed my computer, but what a wonderful opportunity it has been to put such a lesson into practice! However, I am delighted it is back and I can safely say there are plenty of other trials for me to dignify instead!

Plenty of photos from our Easter hols coming up, bit by bit!

Time For A New Computer?

I have been absent for a while....this was initially due to our being in the midst of a funpacked fortnight seeing the entire island and all its delights with LissaLou's BF and her parents and sister. Added to this housekeeping and cooking for 9 and entertaining five children, this hasn't left much time for anything else!

To give you an idea of our travels...
Sunday - (woken at 5am by the kids!!!) walk by the sea, church, beach at Gosier
Monday - Cascade aux ecrevisses, drive along La Traversee to Deshaies, then along the north part of the coast following the sunset
Tuesday - Visit to much more stocked Leader Price, beach at Ste Anne late afternoon with our hot potato tea by moonlight
Wednesday - LissaLou finally made it to the dentist (2 fillings, €72!), BBQ at Pika with Bertie's Bible study group
Thursday - Escaped the rain by driving to most furtherly eastern point of Guadeloupe, La Pointe des Chateau, then to the beach at St Francois
Friday - Easter activities at Pika (Bertie made an impressive Easter Garden based on an empty coconut shell!), made a sorbet in the evening
Saturday - Climbed the Soufriere (our volcano) - it took 5 hours (one for each child!) and my legs are still suffering!! We took the backpack for JoJo but CassCass gave up after a couple of hours so he was in our arms for the rest of the trip, ouf! Very impressive sight though, finished off by a very well-deserved hot thermal bath
Sunday - Eglise de maison, yummy lunch, well-needed 2 hour siesta!
Monday - More rain so Bertie took advantage of it to clean everywhere, then lunch was traditional Bebele and crab courtesy of Mamie. the boy have gone fishing at Le Moule and we are awaiting their return hoping they will be laden with fine things!

However, our latest computer disaster (will they ever end?!) is that the screen has gone kaput - the computer wioll turn on but you can't see anything for love or money! Sigh! So can't promise you will be seeing all my lovely photos of the above events in the near future!

Back....soonish!

You've Had The Written Now Here's The Visual

My hopefully trying the camera out each night to see if it has changed its mind about the USB not working has paid off, and I downloaded (or did I upload...anyway...) 132 pictures today, hurray! Perhaps it was to do with Picassa changing to Picassa 3. It always seems more hassle than its worth when new versions of things come out and this one is much slower. In any case, here come some pictures as blogger allows...

The Laptop Is Back!

Hurray! A bit of prayer, a bit of jiggling around and cleaning, a bit of rest...and our laptop is up and working again! Great news! I have already downloaded my most important documents, just in case...The comma button isn't working too well so that may show up in the posts! Now I just need to check out with the Post Office what exactly has happened to my camera and we will be ready to rock for the New Year!

Woe Is Me

You may have noticed a lack of entries recently...well this has not been due to the busy Christmas season, but rather, more internet problems, sigh. Ok; so it would have helped if we had paid our bill on time (!) but Mediaserve could have reinstated us in the 24 hours they promised, rather than 5 days...
But before that could happen, further disaster struck, of a more long term nature. This time in the shape of CassCass and a glass of milk and the laptop and, er, you get the picture! It is now out of action and I am wondering if I will ever again see my photos and accounts and things. (Yes I know I should have had them saved elsewhere, yes I know CassCass shouldn't be allowed near the computer with milk! Guilty on both counts!)
At first the computer would only beep and show an error message, then Bertie opened it up and now it at least gets as far as the log in page for your password, but now the keyboard doesn't work so we can go no further. And I am back at my SIL's getting bitten by mosquitoes and struggling with azerty!

Going Wireless

Today is a splendid day...after many weeks of waiting, Bertie finally visited mediaserve and set up an account with them. They said it would take 10 days or so to get our phone and internet connection, but in fact surpassed themselves and did it in 5. Meanwhile, my BIL said that our (dodgey old) computer would not work with the internet - frustration! But lovely man that he is, he offered to put a computer together for us. He has 4 working in his house and the parts for several more under the bed and behind the sofa apparently! This sounded great, but the impatient side of me wondered how long it would actually take and the tidy side of me wondered where we would stick it in our upstairs flat and the practical side of me wondered how we would get a wire from the downstairs to the upstairs without the girls damaging it... Then came wi-fi! We hadn't looked into it before thinking it to be too expensive but it turned out to be a very reasonable €29. So here I am sitting upstairs in my own little flat, tapping away on my faithful little laptop, ready to catch up on many many blogs and other things....Bliss! The only problem now is that I keep typing azerty instead of qwerty!

Photos R Back

The internet people said it could take a month or more to get it installed so I have put some on my SIL's computer. I have added them to previous posts so do have a look back!

Computer Things

Bertie downloaded Mozilla Firefox (not sure whether it was deliberate or not!) and since then my computer has gone a bit haywire! The Internet Explorer (which I much prefer) no longer allows add-ons, and I don't know how to change that. So I can't check my email on it or watch Youtube and iplayer. Mozilla does allow wikipedia (which for some bizarre reason always crashes on IE) but it didn't allow me to drag text and photos on my blog and changed all the text. Any suggestions on getting back my add ons?

Tracksy has gone down - this site allows me to look at all the visitors that come to my site...and then wonder, just WHO are you?? and how can I have had 10 visitors today and yet no comments left???!! (I never understood all those bloggers obsessed with comments until I had my own blog!) I will be trying my brother's suggestion of another site, Sitemeter, but in the meantime, be kind and leave me a comment to say you have visited! For those who are unsure how to, just click on the 0 comments at the bottom of the post, and fill in your name under Name/URL.
(May I also take this opportunity to recognise and thank those of you who are faithful commenters!)

Our faithful second-hand laptop is gradually getting slower and the keys are sticking lots. Hopefully it will continue for a while longer though, as it would be like losing an old friend...

Back Online!

How exciting, after 10 days, to finally be back online - with the purchase of a replacement modem from ebay, that wonderful source of just about everything! So much has been happening and so many blogs flying around in my head, let me try and catch up...

The timing for going offline was rather funny, as Bertie was just organising a 40 day prayer and fast at church. I excused myself from fasting on grounds of breastfeeding (either that or pregnancy has been my excuse for the past 5 years now!) and he suggested I found something to fast from. I vaguely considered fasting from the internet but concluded I couldn't possibly do that, then...hey presto, down it went! Sometimes God steps in...!

I had to find a way of filling these long evenings feeding Baby JoJo without a computer to entertain, so one night I fished out the instruction manuals for the camera Dad gave me and read through. Can't say I understood all that much, but I did pick up a few things, including how to do black and white - groovy!

I learnt how to take panoramic pictures which the camera then stiches together to produce one long uninterrupted picture but apparently you need software for this - any ideas where to find this?

On two nights I got active and did some pilates - with the girls accompanying me on one occasion. Feel better already!

I Ha..Seriously Dislike Modems

Our modem has failed YET AGAIN so no blogging (or internet access for that matter!) until we have replaced it. Rather annoying to have to spend £20 for two more months but I guess it is crucial to our existence! I can't actually find a reasonably priced replacement at the moment so come back in a few days and see if I have been more successful...