Los Angeles--
I'll be going out later this morning to buy a wireless card for my laptop. I didn't have any techie friends at home who could explain what I needed and tell me how they work. I planned to stop by the IT office at High Point University, where I got my information systems training, but that last week before the plane took off was...well...crazy.
I had to do my taxes before I left, and without the benefit of a W-2 form. My daughter will fill in the blanks and file for me later, but I couldn't leave her with the worst part, the stuff you have to do whether you have an accountant or not. Rotary, at the very last minute, added several things to my To Do List, which was already overlong. I mostly got everything done, leaving a list of things for my daughter of things to mail, videos to take back to Blockbuster, details...I even had to go to the Driver's License office to get a new license my last day at home.
I sat in the airport terminal in Greensboro before the plane left and listed everything I have in each of my carryone items. For anybody interested, I'll post this list in a separate entry, probably on my personal blog, where I can hide such possibly boring details behind link to another page.
I'm staying in LA with my friends Rob and Traci. Once was, Traci and I were writers and her spouse was in computers. Now, Rob and I are in computers and Traci's a writer... Rob is in Corporate Computers, however, and so didn't know anything about N-TEN, TechSoup, eCircuit Riding, or any of the other totally familiar catchwords to most of the readers of this blog. Should I post a glossary? I could put it on my "about" page....
I'm getting a Linksys card, and I've written down exactly what I want: a wpc54g card, 802.11 wireless protocol. Rob went online to check prices: 50 at Wal-Mart, 60 at Staples, Office Max and Best Buy. Bad old Wal-Mart does it again. Ideally, I will find someone out in the world who will sit me down to talk to me about what this card does, why it works and how it hooks up with the wireless world. I'm hoping that I can also use it when I'm going to be in a country for awhile to sign on with a wireless company and have my own internet. I really dislike tying up the family phone line when the homestay I'm doing only has dialup. Of course, there's the satellite option, where if I had either electricity or was solar powered, I could also sign up for an independent satellite option.
But I simply didn't have the time to research all that, do Christmas cards, do CHRISTMAS, deal with the fact that my husband left on Dec. 20th for Tahiti, organize my life to be gone for ten months...and organize my connection with Rotary. After all, the other scholars have at least seven months before any of them will hit the road.
I'm ready for suggestions on where I can read up on this. I'll head over to TechSoup this morning before my hostess gets up. That's one of the advantages of going West. You get up at the crack of dawn and can use the family computer before anybody else needs it. Of course it also means you miss the family movie and popcorn session after 10 p.m.
Check out my personal blog for the tale of how I lost my purse already, and more reflections on packing, baggage and what we take along for ten months on the road.
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