jozjozjoz.com

After all the excitement with the Redcoats and WCL on Day 2, I took the Metro from Capitol South back to Tenleytown-AU and grabbed a cab back to the place I’m staying.

Jan and I were rushing to leave the city before rush hour hit so I could see her weekend home in Warrenton, VA. We got stuck in traffic anyway, but made good time & got out there just in time to walk around her 2.5 acre property in the light of the sunset. Her beautiful house overlooks a small lake, complete with a dock, and a flock of ducks and geese. (Did you know that geese hiss if you get too close to them? I didn’t. They can be mean suckers.)

We had dinner with Jan’s Himalayan cat, Lilo, who insisted on hanging out on the dining room table as we ate. Rainbow, Jan’s Sun Conure, hung out on her shoulder, getting little veggie treats from Jan as we talked.

We had a quiet evening at home, watching Part 1 (of 3) of a PBS Bill Moyers special “Becoming American, the Chinese Experience.” Part 1 sucked. Jan fell asleep before the first hour was over. I was bored, but I watched it all.

I took a shower, looked through Jan’s bookcases (lots of Marilyn Monroe books), and since my insomnia had kicked in, I decided at a very late hour (past 1 am) that I would attempt to get online via Jan’s laptop there.

That was probably the biggest mistake of this trip.

First of all, Jan has DIAL-UP at her place in Warrenton. And you know how I feel about DIAL-UP.

Second, her laptop runs Windows 95. ‘Nuf said.

Third, Jan uses AOL. This proves to be more nightmarish than you can even imagine.

When I opened AOL and dialed up, everything SEEMED fine and dandy… that is, until I tried to go anywhere outside of AOL. Nothing worked. I noticed that she was running AOL 5.0, so for once, one of those junk AOL CDs came in handy as something OTHER than a coaster… I tried to upgrade to AOL 7.0.

This took approximately 25 minutes to do, since the CD & laptop were just that slow. Added to that, AOL is so fucking bloated, everything loaded in super-slo-mo.

When I tried 7.0 the first time, it said I had to “set up the modem.” So I clicked on “auto detect modem,” which of course, promptly crashed the laptop. After several reboots, I tried to manually select the modem from a list of 500 modems. Unfortunately, it did not work when I selected the modem that was on the laptop. Upon further investigation into the way 5.0 was set up, the modem “selected” was some random modem, not even the same brand as what it actually was. Go figure.

Finally, after much troubleshooting, I manage to get online via 7.0… By this time, it was roughly 2:30 am and I am fading fast from the sitting and waiting.

Now, the problem is that there are some glitches with the AOL 7.0 mail, so I cannot leave 7.0 on like that, as Jan will be unable to check her AOL on the laptop.

The point of this long-ass, boring story is that I stayed up until 4:45 am messing with her damn computer.

Sometimes I can be dumber than dirt. It’s not like I didn’t know that I needed to wake up early the “next” morning.