Pause For The Cause

 There was a massive lightning strike here that lit up the world and made me think the end had arrived. 

I had company at the time, a friend spending a week with me and another who had dropped by just before the storm hit. He sat down at my dining table, so I unplugged my closed laptop and moved it out of the way to another spot while we chatted over coffee. My other friend was out in my shed using the tools, tinkering around with something.

 My little dog oscillates from high energy circus dog to scared little baby who begs me to hold him to my chest until his bad feelings pass then when he is fine again, he leaps out of my arms, romping around all happy again, beating up his toys, tossing them around and doing silly things to make me laugh. 

He suddenly stopped playing and scampered over to me, begging me to hold him. He looked deeply worried and this has happened before.  I was sitting down again at the dining table, so I held him next to my chest when a few seconds later the world LIT UP so bright I was sure I had moved from earth to the heavens. 

Even now, I am still confused about whether I am on earth or not. 

I was sitting down, but the lightening strike jolted me completely out of my chair still clutching my dog. There was a bit of confusion for a few moments with more lightening strikes that seemed subtle compared to the mega one that had just lit up the world with such blinding light. My friend having coffee sat there with a crazed grin on his face. We had a few seconds of chat then I stumbled for the door with dread wondering what had happened to my friend in the shed. Suddenly my RV door flew open and he appeared with these huge saucer eyes in a bit of shock as he was wildly confused and talking excitedly. 

The three of us discussed the lightening while I ran around frantically unplugging anything electrical. My dog had leaped out of my arms but was now planted firmly on my friend's lap. A monumental headache hit me. It's extremely rare for me to ever get a headache. I put an ice pack on my forehead and sat back down holding it. We laughed and giggled, continuing to talk about THE lightning strike,  it was so surreal. 

The next morning I woke up with tremendous pains and great difficulty walking. How strange. A new old problem or related to the lightening?

The day after that my techno life crashed in the strangest ways and I haven't been able to sort it out. My technology is old. Very old. I used an old flip phone, my phone is not smart. I use an old laptop with Windows 7 (used to be I had Windows XP which actually worked better than Windows 7)


If you are trying to reach me, my cell phone is not working. I went to use my Skype phone to call my cell phone company. Skype has ceased working. At some point I went online to check my email and there is a huge problem with the AOL gold email program that won't let me crack the code. Aol was swallowed up by Verizon and the AOL email programs I have been using since the start of time (har har har) just vanished into thin air along with all my email files.

Seriously? 

When Skype was gobbled up by microsoft, they made a monumental mess of a simple program and now they have updated it in such a way that it no longer works yet I have prepaid service with them for the next year. grrrrr!

I was using Skype 20 years ago overseas when Americans refused to use it because it was free and anything free wasn't trustworthy. Skype was owned overseas and worked nearly flawlessly. Well now that an American company bought it, they complicated it in ridiculous ways and did away with the simplicity we used to contact friends around the world without paying $4-6 a minute which was the long distance rate when I lived in the Caribbean.

Windows updated and the computer went on walk about to parts unknown in the cyber world.  As is typical with many windows updates, they try to disable my old USEFUL programs so that I can't use them anymore perhaps because it would way too efficient if I did use them and efficiency is seemingly not allowed anymore.

It seems the programs and services I use have updated themselves into oblivion.

Theprogrammers motto for the day must be "If it works, break it!"

So to make a long story longer...

I have a more serious problem than technology woes. So that's why it may take me a few days (or weeks) to sort things out so that I have communications again. 

I borrowed wifi to post this message. 

Some of these companies have merged and purged and yet when I check 5 different companies all crashed my accounts on the same day and several are in no way connected to each other or this computer. 

The first company I called had an estimated wait time of  2 hours and 10 minutes to get help. The net one, the phone company refused to acknowledge a problem existed yet when I went out to walk the dog, I ran into people that had also lost their cell phone service while others with the same company, had service.   I gave up trying to reach the various gurus to get things working again. Clearly they had a problemm they weren't acknowledging.


It was a monumental hassle to go "borrow" phone or internet, so I just decided my techno and communication life would just be on indefinite hold.

There is a more urgent matter going on about my health and ability to walk without extreme pain. 

Add to that I do have a hyper active dog who needs lots of exercise and attention.

So it's a real goofy world here right now.