Monday, September 22, 2008

Why Did I Bring My Laptop?

Currently at a cafe. As seems to be par for the course here in Japan, there's no wireless. It's amazing that I'm in the middle of a city of eleventy-billion people and I can't detect one wireless signal.

I figured they'd have wireless all over Japan. I mean, I first discovered that "Seattle's Best Coffee" with free wireless in Cosomosquare back in 2005. That was 3 years ago. Surely they'd have wireless signals up the wazoo by now, right? (Especially since it's supposed to be one of the most connected places in the world.) Guess not.

There is a ton of those 24-hour internet/manga/karaoke places but I much prefer using my own laptop (when it works) and sitting in front of a large picture window looking out over a busy street while nursing a grandemungous caffienechino and musing about the subtleties of life.

And yeah, Megumi's got internet at her place but I had to get out of the house. What I thought would be a productive morning of breezily blogging ending up being a frustrating morning of trying to figure out why my computer keeps freezing up. And why the video and audio playback on my computer is so choppy. And why my "active desktop" keeps shutting down. And how glorious it would look seeing this laptop shatter after being dropped from the top of a large building.

I'm normally really good at figuring this stuff out but this laptop's OS is in Japanese (I bought it used from one of my stage assistants back in 2004) so, aside from the handful of basic commands I already know by memory, there's little I can do to troubleshoot without being able to read the menus.

[Several minutes now pass as I have to reboot my computer and resist the urge to dropkick it.]

Grumble.

I'm guessing it has something to do with the newest versions of Firefox and iTunes I (regret having) installed when I was in Osaka. While they're probably great versions of some good software, I fear my little laptop just doesn't have the horsepower anymore. Either that or it's a hardware problem. The software's all up-to-date and the computer is virus- and spyware-free, but it still keeps freezing up.

It's crazy frustrating.

So, it looks like it's going to be a little while longer before I can get my blog caught up with all of the glorious posts full of spectacular photos I have been working on. I do apologize.

Thank god for Twitter, huh?

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