(Or, In Which QB Finds Out Just How Net-Dependent She Really Is)
I have a morning routine, which rarely varies. Get up, take pills, go to bathroom, eat breakfast while reading newspaper. Pretty normal so far, and that’s exactly what I did this morning. But then my happy little routine was disrupted.
You see, after breakfast I go check my email, read FoxTrot online, and (usually) log onto the SDMB. Having assured myself that my online world is still there and functioning, I then get on with my day. But a horrible thing happened this morning.
THE INTERNET WAS DOWN.
This isn’t exactly a new thing around here, understand. We have Adelphia broadband, and as we all know Adelphia is slowly crumbling into bankruptcy. Unfortunately, Adelphia is the only choice in our area for high-speed internet, and my dad isn’t quite desperate enough to go back to dial-up. But usually the outages don’t last that long. Hang around and play Solitaire or Taipei for a while, and the net’ll cough back to life. This morning, the outage lasted for several hours. Dad, who is home recuperating from surgery, was going bonkers and calling every ISP company in the phone book trying to find another source of high-speed internet. I was dealing with a whole different problem.
You see, I’m enrolled in a certificate program for a system called GIS; Geographic IInformation Systems. It’s basically hooking up maps to spatial data, versatile stuff which is in demand. In order to do my work at home, I got the GIS software that practically everyone in the field, including my class, uses; ArcView. It was working fine until yesterday, and I only have one stinking assignment to go before I can take the final and get DONE with this one class at long last. (Can you tell I want to be finished?) But yesterday, Othello (the computer on which I use ArcView) decided to act up. Long story short, I had to uninstall and reinstall the frickin’ thing. So this morning, I figured that since nobody was on the Internet for once I could get some work done. Click on ArcView, and…
I forgot to re-register the software.
It wasn’t letting me in without a registration code from ESRI (the company that makes ArcView). Never mind that I already registered the damn thing once, that data must’ve been lost when I uninstalled. Mutter, mutter. QB goes to re-register, and it recommends registering over the Internet. I DIDN’T HAVE ANY INTERNET! Arrrrrgggggh! So I ended up faxing the info to ESRI, and praying that A) they’ll get back to me sometime in the near future and B) they don’t get their bureaucratic tails in a knot over the fact that my name and purchasing code will now be in their files twice.
Gahhh. Technology… can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
Sorry for the general rantiness. Maybe I should’ve posted this in the Pit, but I’ve already typed it in MPSIMS. Besides, the Pit is Scary. 
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