The Portkey

After many weeks of procrastination, the deed is finally done.
The evil green Zombie - courtesy of the Cyberian Cat has commenced sentry duty and the bright shiny new Big Mac has finally got the green lightseses

And like anything delayed for so long, the anticipation and fear of disaster was way out of proportion to the reality. The map is indeed most definitely not the territory
It was exactly two years ago that the serpent signed up to the 3 mobile broadband 24 month plan which at that time was half price - 1gb for $14.95 per month instead of the usual $29.95
That was very cheap by the uber low Oz ISP standards in those dark days

The Izzie memories were that it was an absolute nightmare trying to activate the usb dongle portkey thing. Windoze users could apparently just plug and play but Mad Macs had to use some CD and follow some seriously complicated instructions
The computer kept refusing to recognize the usb dongle and it took several visits to 3 shops and online support to finally get online. Part of the problem was that nowhere was it written that it was necessary to wait for the green lights to change to blue at each stage of the process
Less than a week after finally finding our way to the center of the labyrinth, the old laptop froze and had to not just reinstall the operating system but zap the whole hard disk and start from scratch. Having to endure the whole Portkey ritual again was just too awful to contemplate but it worked surprisingly fast. It turned out to be all a matter of timing - the green and blue lights and stuff

But those memories still lingered along with the fear that maybe Izzie would not succeed connecting the usb dongle to the Big Mac but would also then render it useless for its previous partner
Then there was also the numerous distractions caused by the dramas at the day job - a lot of them strategically and bitchily timed on Wednesdays - the start of the serpent weekend - designed specifically to ruin them

So it was quite surprising that it was so straightforward after all. Unlike two year ago, the Big Mac recognized the new Huwei usb dongle straight away so that was the biggest hurdle out of the way.
Was not able to invoke the proper page for filling in the 3 phone number and stuff in spite of numerous attempts so just pressed 'connect' anyway and was amazed to see the scrolling change from connecting to authenticating and then the time instead of the previous experience of 'no device detected' 'this modem does not exist' or some other mean nasty variant of 'portkey status failed'

And it wasn't just a fluke. This is the third time connected with no problems
But it is strange navigating this huge screen - especially with a very cranky mouse and having to constantly check on the old Precioussss - having forgotten half of the serpent passwords

Still got the same primitive 3 Portkey but it is seriously speedy now compared to the old snails pace - still not one single spinning beachball.
Downloading the bright and shiny new Firefox took less than 6 minutes. Next stop is Google chrome although the froggies have warned the serpent that Google chrome just eats memory
well - with 4gb instead of a pissy 256, there's plenty to spare
Wonders if it would be a silly idea to see what it takes to invoke a bunch of spinning beach balls

At the moment, it's still the mouse that's the big obstacle. Resorted to using the old half chewed up microsoft version rather than the bright and shiny sleek Mac mouse. Izzie needs her fix of right clicks.

Still got to work out how to get all the old pictures and iTunes music onto this new toy before venturing over to collect the juiciest morsel of all - the half price copy of Scrivener software
And then there'll be no more excuses for procrastination on the squiggling front

Now there's no more excuse for postponing posts about the Howlers from the evil blond blue eyed aryan and her minions at work
Should be tomorrow since then we will be conspiring with witnesses and fellow rebels

The Portkey

After many weeks of procrastination, the deed is finally done.
The evil green Zombie - courtesy of the Cyberian Cat has commenced sentry duty and the bright shiny new Big Mac has finally got the green lightseses

And like anything delayed for so long, the anticipation and fear of disaster was way out of proportion to the reality. The map is indeed most definitely not the territory
It was exactly two years ago that the serpent signed up to the 3 mobile broadband 24 month plan which at that time was half price - 1gb for $14.95 per month instead of the usual $29.95
That was very cheap by the uber low Oz ISP standards in those dark days

The Izzie memories were that it was an absolute nightmare trying to activate the usb dongle portkey thing. Windoze users could apparently just plug and play but Mad Macs had to use some CD and follow some seriously complicated instructions
The computer kept refusing to recognize the usb dongle and it took several visits to 3 shops and online support to finally get online. Part of the problem was that nowhere was it written that it was necessary to wait for the green lights to change to blue at each stage of the process
Less than a week after finally finding our way to the center of the labyrinth, the old laptop froze and had to not just reinstall the operating system but zap the whole hard disk and start from scratch. Having to endure the whole Portkey ritual again was just too awful to contemplate but it worked surprisingly fast. It turned out to be all a matter of timing - the green and blue lights and stuff

But those memories still lingered along with the fear that maybe Izzie would not succeed connecting the usb dongle to the Big Mac but would also then render it useless for its previous partner
Then there was also the numerous distractions caused by the dramas at the day job - a lot of them strategically and bitchily timed on Wednesdays - the start of the serpent weekend - designed specifically to ruin them

So it was quite surprising that it was so straightforward after all. Unlike two year ago, the Big Mac recognized the new Huwei usb dongle straight away so that was the biggest hurdle out of the way.
Was not able to invoke the proper page for filling in the 3 phone number and stuff in spite of numerous attempts so just pressed 'connect' anyway and was amazed to see the scrolling change from connecting to authenticating and then the time instead of the previous experience of 'no device detected' 'this modem does not exist' or some other mean nasty variant of 'portkey status failed'

And it wasn't just a fluke. This is the third time connected with no problems
But it is strange navigating this huge screen - especially with a very cranky mouse and having to constantly check on the old Precioussss - having forgotten half of the serpent passwords

Still got the same primitive 3 Portkey but it is seriously speedy now compared to the old snails pace - still not one single spinning beachball.
Downloading the bright and shiny new Firefox took less than 6 minutes. Next stop is Google chrome although the froggies have warned the serpent that Google chrome just eats memory
well - with 4gb instead of a pissy 256, there's plenty to spare
Wonders if it would be a silly idea to see what it takes to invoke a bunch of spinning beach balls

At the moment, it's still the mouse that's the big obstacle. Resorted to using the old half chewed up microsoft version rather than the bright and shiny sleek Mac mouse. Izzie needs her fix of right clicks.

Still got to work out how to get all the old pictures and iTunes music onto this new toy before venturing over to collect the juiciest morsel of all - the half price copy of Scrivener software
And then there'll be no more excuses for procrastination on the squiggling front

Now there's no more excuse for postponing posts about the Howlers from the evil blond blue eyed aryan and her minions at work
Should be tomorrow since then we will be conspiring with witnesses and fellow rebels