Luke 6:38  Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

Computer Love

Soooooo my laptop just literally se murió (died) this afternoon after having a great lunch with my longtime mentor and committee member Anne Bliss.  She had just arrived to Chile after having to deal with the craziness from the Colorado flooding and being in New Zealand for a while as well.

I sat down at my laptop to do some work than all of a sudden… black screen.  I didn´t panic because I knew I had backed-up all of my research data in Dropbox and had just last night sent Dr. Sandmann our article revision (that copy is safe in UGAmail) so I was good.  Everything else from my computer I had backed-up to my external hard drive at home in Athens, prior to leaving for Chile.

But then, all of a sudden I realized… ¨Dang!  I don´t have a computer for the next two weeks!!¨ My Chilean friends immediately sprang into action.  Graciela consulted with Director Ricardo Chacón and they immediately provided me with a loaner laptop to finish out my last two weeks; José diligently tried to reboot what we had finally come to accept as a fatally injured machine; and Veronica contacted a friend in IT who is going to help me recover my remaining files and transfer them to the 16GB flash drive I had the presence of mind to bring with me to Chile.

The biggest challenge today was for me to learn all of the different positioning of the telcas (laptop keys) and finding the @ symbol that I so took for granted in the past.  Many of the keys like the shift key, apostrophes, *, required I go on a search mission to find them.  It is however very cool that the keyboard has an actual Ññ key. 🙂  The other challenge for me was that everything on this laptop is in Spanish language and that really helped me to appreciate the value of image memes.  Because what word (or letter) I don´t readily know, I at least remembered its symbol and position in the Microsoft program(s) enough to figure it out.  Also, I originally learned to type on an electric IBM typewriter and by most accounts I am a pretty fast typist.  However, all I can do is laugh and hit the backspace button because cognitively the keys aren´t where my brain remembers them to be. Lol

Dr. Anne Bliss and I with the sun in our faces.  She was smart to wear sunglasses.

Therefore, not having my old laptop might slowdown my blogging over the next couple weeks (though not likely ha ha).  Purchasing a new laptop was on the top of my agenda when I got back to the states in early December.  In the interim, I have yet again had another wonderful experience reflective of the love and support I´ve received here from my Chilean hosts.  The words tranquila and cálmate have become a regular parts of my new vocabulary and lifestyle.  I am so excited about returning here for the next year to be with my new friends, make others, and also being able to hang out with my ¨new roadie¨ Dr. Bliss.  Hopefully, she´ll be able to come up for some air as already everybody is trying to track her down for help with their manuscripts now that they know she´s back in country.

Thank you Lord for watching over and blessing me yet again.  I am sincerely grateful for everything you´ve provided for me. 🙂