Monday. April 13

Well it has been a busy week or so here in the wilds of Okemos. I had my computer crash in just about the worst way. Then to make things interesting the dishwasher conked out. Just to make sure everything is as difficult as it could be, my back has gone south, a result of too much time in the Subaru and water polo bleachers. Somebody up there hit the “lets dump it all on Ed” switch.
My computer disk drive containing the operating system decided to go to sleep, kind of permanently. An end of retirement thing. As in, kaput machen. New computers do not come with the operating system recovery disc anymore. So I had to call Dell support and talk to my new best friend Puneet K Sharma over in Mumbai and plead for a new operating system CD. But Dell doesn’t want to just ship out Windows operating system disks to any yahoo that calls them up. First I had to prove I really had a Dell computer.
Puneet: Ah, my friend, thank you for calling Dell support. How may I help you?
Ed: My computer hard drive crashed and I need an operating system restore disk.
Puneet: My friend, that is very painful indeed. Did you not have a restore disk made?
Ed: No that was on my list of things to do.
Puneet: My friend, you should always make a restore disk.
Ed: Thanks, I’ll try to remember that.
Puneet: We need to prove you have a Dell computer. Can you give me your name and the service tag number?
Ed: My name is Ed Schools and the service tag number is @#$&^$&*!@)7*# – 666
Puneet: Is that Schools like the places you go to learn things?
Ed: That’s it.
Puneet: Ah, that is very interesting. Well Mr. Schools, we do not have that computer registered in your name.
Ed: I probably never registered it with Dell.
Puneet: Well we must prove it is your computer. Can you tell me where you bought it?
Ed: Uhhhh, probably at Best Buy.
Puneet: I am sorry my friend but you did not buy this computer at Best Buy.
Ed: Well if I didn’t get it at Best Buy where did I get it?
Puneet: Please sir, you must tell me that.
Ed: It was two years ago. How am I supposed to remember where I bought this thing?  Maybe it was Staples.
Puneet: I am very sorry my friend, but you did not buy it at Staples.
Ed: Did I buy it online directly from Dell?
Puneet: No my friend, you did not buy it directly from Dell. I have never had this happen before. I will need to call my supervisor.
Ed: (getting desperate and mumbling to myself) Think, where could I have bought this damn computer. What places are left? Did I buy it at Walmart or Sam’s Club?
Puneet: Did I hear you say Sam’s Club my friend?
Ed: (sensing an opportunity) Yes, yes, I said Sam’s Club.
Puneet: Very good Mr. Schools, you answered correctly. It was Sam’s Club my friend. Now I do not have to call my supervisor. I can send you the operating system recovery disk. It will be the original version that was installed on your computer two years ago. And we will call you in four days to make sure it arrived. 

So Puneet sent me a DVD of the original version of Windows 8.0, the worst operating system ever foisted on the free world. I installed a new disk drive and then loaded that joke of an operating system. Then came the updates. There were 125 updates to the original version 8.0 operating system. That took overnight to download and install. Once that was done , next came the update to version 8.1, another night of downloading and installing. Next was the 41 updates to version 8.1. Then loading all the software packages. All told, about 10 days to get back in business and I’m still fixing things. So the moral is, as my friend Puneet says, “My friend, you should always make a restore disk.”

The dishwasher was another grand adventure. It decided to not clean dishes anymore. After some troubleshooting we figured it was likely a filter down in the bowels of the dishwasher. So we field stripped the dishwasher down to the filter. Not a pretty sight. The filter was coated with something resembling the primordial soup. We’ve had this thing for 13 years now, way long enough for evolution to start happening. Lots of simple life forms, like slime molds and the Indiana Republican party. Lord knows what life forms we washed away. Unfortunately not the Indiana Republican Party. 

While I was buried up to my waist in the dishwasher, Puneet called to see if I got the Windows 8.0 disk. Lise said I got the disk but was now in the middle of fixing the dishwasher if he needed to talk to me. He just said, “No, no, god bless you and your family.” He probably heard me cursing in the background. I know he’s thinking, why not just call someone to fix your computer and dishwasher. 

In an amusing turn of recent events, Fido has started defending our yard against mammals. She doesn’t bother with birds, probably some ancestral kinship link. But she has decided that Fat Boy the ground hog and squirrels do not belong in our yard. She has treed two squirrels and chased Fat Boy out of the yard. Fat boy is bigger than her by a couple orders of magnitude but she went right for him. He must have thought Fido was a snake with legs or something else crazy but he took off when she came for him. There was some fire in her eyes. She wanted a piece of that groundhog. 

Despite my home repair gig, we have gotten out a bit for birding. Waterfowl have mostly moved through already but passerines are drifting in. Got some new sparrow and blackbird species. Saturday we did a morning walk about Maple River State Game Area. Cormorants suddenly appeared in force and we also got our first of the year great egret, neither of which have been reported for this area yet. So I’m up to 109 species for the year and Lise is up to 116.

Cormorants, new on the scene.

First great egret of the season.

I love the Unit names, A, B, C, D, E, then jump to X, and Y. Where did X and Y come from? Aren’t we missing a few letters? Maybe X and Y are the chromosomes that build all the other units.