Greetings From India! ! ! !

SHIP'S LOG:

Yesterday it was supposed to rain (it didn't) and I was planning to take that opportunity not to go to the boat and do some work on line. I had to use this computer because it was the one that had WIFI Internet Access via Verizon. Unfortunately, my back up computer, the one that made the trip up & down the ICW, the one that perform so brilliantly the whole trip, developed a bit of a problem. The key board decided not to work all of the time. I was typing along and suddenly some keys wouldn't type, not unless I hit them repeatedly. Not the same keys but all of them in a random manner.

Now two months ago, the keyboard on that computer stopped working completely and when I contacted DELL, they very kindly sent me a brand new keyboard( for free!) which I had installed by my friend Mark who is an I.T. guy and all round computer wiz. Now that the keyboard was crapping out again, I called DELL again and spend a good 4 hours on the phone with Sanjay Gupta's brother, "Bob," and they did a complete cleaning, updating and re-alignment of my backup computer. After this stint, during which " Bob" controlled the computer from Mumbai or Cleveland, I'm not sure which, the conclusion was reached that it was not a software problem but a hardware problem and I was promptly transferred to "Out-Of Warranty-Hardware-Tech-Support." They immediately wanted $59 for this "technical Support Incident."  When I asked them how they were going to fix the machine's hardware when I had the machine with me and they didn't, Sanjay's other brother, Larry, decided that didn't make much sense. So he went and talked with his supervisor and they came to the conclusion that they would send me another keyboard "for which I would have to pay!" When I protested, saying that the keyboard I had was new, only two months old, and asked if it wasn't still under warranty, they said that it had been sent to me "as a favor" and I would have to pay for another new one.

After one long day on the phone and online, eating up minutes that I would eventually have to pay for, it wasn't what I wanted to hear. I hung up the phone and stewed.  Nothing like being semi-cut-off from the world for stewing. So this morning, I took my new computer to Skip & Nancy's, got access to the Internet, downloaded VZ Access Manager and can now get online again in my latest digs. I will get my backup computer to my I.T. friend to see if he can do anything. If not, I'll check with the Nerds/Geeks at Best Buy and see what they can do.

While it didn't rain yesterday, it is pouring today. This is both a good and a bad thing: bad in that I find the rain "depressing"; and "good" in that it will test out all the leak repairs I have done. All should hold and hopefully no new ones will be discovered.