Romantic Influenza and a lap top

We are all still suffering a little from the Romantic Influenza. My good friend Rebecca had it a few days before I did and that is what she calls it. When she first pegged it as the "Romantic Influenza" I said, "Why? Cause we can die from this?" That made her giggle, okay rasp-giggle, so it must be why.

The Romantic influenza had me out of any sort of rational participation in life for five days before I realized I just needed to go to bed and stay there. So I did, for three days, then I resumed to a level just below rational participation for five more days. On the first five days I didn't go anywhere and on the last five days I wished I hadn't.

I would also peg this influenza as romantic because I fell in love during this bout of the crud. My husband has of late gone on a technology upgrade feeding frenzy. Since February we have new TVs and the components that go with them but the latest, just five days before the romantic influenza, was a new computer, a lap top. And I am in love! Okay so for the first few days of the new relationship I was so over whelmed if I wasn't just staring at it, I was playing spider solitaire. But right at about the time the romantic influenza hit so did my acceptance of this new relationship and once I accepted it I quickly fell head over heals in love.

You need to understand that the last computer purchase was back in '96! So I missed several system changes that you all had the pleasure of experiencing. I am not in the ranks of those who are complaining about Vista, claiming that XP was just fine and that "they" should have left well enough alone. Heck I missed the whole "we were fine with Windows 2000 why do we need XP" thing that probably happened too. Trust me anything that doesn't give me the time to clean a whole room between commands is a good thing. I wanted to say that it was like going from a crank up phone linked to a local operator to a cell phone but that would have been hyperbole. It really is more like going from a rotary phone with a party line to a cell phone. You really have no idea the leap of change. I feel like Rip Van Winkle.

Once I upgraded my e-mail program from Windows Mail to Windows Live Mail and called to have the techy help me through fixing my whatever so my battery would work properly I have been good to go, smooth sailing. I don't see what all the fuss about not liking Vista is all about, how it is so horrible. Okay, my learning curve on language etc. is more like a 87 degree incline but it is good exercise for my brain right?. I haven't cried for ten days. Well except for that one John Wayne movie I watched.

The whole e-mail thing kinda cracked me up after all was said and done. When I first opened my new e-mail via Windows Mail, DSL no less, I was ready to go at it. I wrote a lovely letter to a friend and then I went to spell check it. Mind you I must use spell check. Even though I am the daughter of an incredible English teacher who knew Latin and every play ever written, I stink at English, spelling most of all. And no thanks to a garage sale I had once and an appliance I had for sale all my friends have experienced my lack of spell-ability. Okay here is the dirty laundry, I hear an "l" in stove. Where, you ask? Why like this, S-t-o-l-v-e. And that my friend is just the tip of the iceberg. My spelling is sometimes so bad that I'll just bag the word and use a different one that I can at least get close enough for the spell check program to figure out what I want.

So when I was using Windows Mail, went to spell check my lovely creative endeavor and all I got was some ridiculous notice that it couldn't check my spelling because "this language is no longer available for spell checking" and would I "Please select another in the spelling options dialog" suffice it to say I was shattered. I had no idea that my spelling was so bad that it couldn't even be recognized as English. But then I went to try and find this "spelling options dialog" and as far as I could tell no such animal existed. So I went to the "Get help from communities link" and after a thorough search all over all the possible places that had anything to do with my current problem, I found that I was not the only one who could not get past the "this language is no longer available for spell checking" and "Please select another in the spelling options dialog" message. Somewhere in all my searching (I spent a full day on it and nothing else, except drinking plenty of fluids, taking aspirin and using my neti pot) I came across the recommendation to download Windows Live Mail. So I did. And even though I am not excited about the layout of the window and getting used to it not looking like my old aol e-mail page I am okay with it. Hey, I can spell check . I did go through a bit of a rigmarole at the start cause I didn't set it up right with my DSL folks, after that nice lady at fairpoint solved that problem I was good to go.

The battery thing was a way easier solve. I know that probably somewhere in the itty bitty manual or in the web page explaining how to use my computer there is some mention about how to correctly use the battery. For the first few days of using my computer I was near a plug so I left it plugged in and didn't think about the battery. I had put it in when I open the package and that was the last time I thought about it. Maybe when I changed rooms I recognized that I could cause I had a battery in it so I could unplug and not stop what I was doing. But then I needed to go to a spot that to have a plug in would have been a problem. After all I had a battery I would just go. Not so. When I unplugged my computer went immediately to sleep. So I called the technical support people and the young man stepped me through this hocus pocus thing with taking the battery out, turning the computer back on, hitting the f10 key till something happened and then doing something else. I don't remember what all I did or the technical terms for what happened. I remember him saying something about "build up" somewhere that needed to be discharged?

Anyway what he did helped and then he told me not to leave the battery in when I plug in. So now I have a routine for taking out my battery while I run the computer on AC. I just slip it into a nifty little bag that I bought for my lap top the last day I was out before I went down with the Romantic Influenza.