Wednesday, August 12, 2009

My computer went on vacation this morning

Nearly everyone has gone away and I suppose my computer has imbibed enough Italianness from the internet that it just decided to take August off. Tried for two hours today to wake it up, but it just kept mumbling vaguely about "vacanze" and rolling over and going back to sleep.

So the posting here will be light.

But it's August. Ferragosto. If you're sitting inside reading blogs, you're doing summer wrong.

I'm stuck using an Italian computer and everything is weird. It's like trying to type drunk. Everything you think you are typing comes out just slightly wrong. An interesting exercise might be made of it in left-brain right-brain theory if I were clever enough. It's a very strange feeling. Like trying to write with my left hand. None of the keyboard thingies work the same way. If you use ctrl-A, you get a kind of indent. I haven't figured out where most of the puncutation is and my fingers keep automatically trying to do it the normal way. Typing speed has gone down from about 80 per min to a kind of hunt and peck game of hide and seek. This must be what it is like to relearn to write after a stroke.

So, in short, I'm being driven nuts.

If there are any of our Rome posse out there reading this though, I would dearly love to know a good place to take one's laptop to get fixed in Rome. The exodus is almost complete. There are only two of us left here, not including clergy (and the clergy use Macs).

Jan?

Greg?

Anyone?

Hellooooooo?

1 comment:

John said...

Your word processor should allow you to specify "language". Make sure it's set for the English that you're used to, American or British English. You wouldn't think that would change that much on the keyboard but it does. E.g., if I recall correctly if I change the setting on Word from American English to British English than the # key will produce £. (I use Open Office these days so I can't test to see if that's still the case.)

Cheers,

-John-