a longer route than anyone has ever taken

[freckles_and_doubt]

To internet connectivity, that is. CMOS battery failure confirmed, blessings on the head of jo&stv, who, despite lurgification of epic proportions, unearthed and lent me one of their elderly laptops which, after much sweet talking yesterday, I have persuaded to connect to the Internet. I feel less grumpy already. I think, though, that the overall character of this laptop is a bit curmudgeonly - it does stuff, but reluctantly, as though I'm hoiking it out of its rocking chair and forcing it to totter across the porch. It possibly detects that I am not generally a laptop-using lifeform and don't speak the language. Admittedly, the ten-minute search for the "@" sign was a bit of a dead giveaway. (They've swopped the " and @! How counter-intuitive is that?)

I believe that wolverine_nun has sent a blow-by-blow account of the Shire Conflict Resolution Meeting, Part 2, to interested parties, and I suspect she'd be more coherent than I was. I achieved an almost zen state of detatchment from the proceedings by doping myself to the gills on muscle relaxants half an hour before, and was able to parse a degree of egotism, wilful misunderstanding, manipulation and power-tripping from certain parties which under other circumstances would have had me incoherent with rage. One of the participants evinced a stunning ability, one I suspect has been honed through a lifetime of boardroom ducking and diving, to simply refuse to take responsibility for anything, mostly by dint of suggesting, with a completely spurious air of wounded innocence, that the really difficult questions were simply not relevant to the current discussion. I have to admit I was taking notes: watch out, English dept.

Cooks' Guild last night, with addition of (a) Bombay Sapphire, thanks to w-n's Nice Man, and (b) a newcomer who bears an uncanny and striking resemblance to bumpycat. Military gear, short haircut and general air of sweetness. This is not, may I add, an excuse for bumpy not to come back to CT. Au contraire.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

My laptop too has switched those two keys, for reasons that passeth understanding. It also has a tendency to decide that certain keys actually mean something else under certain circumstances (I have not yet figured out exactly what those circumstances are) - eg Right Now the cursors do nothing at all, and the apostrophe seems to be acting as CTRL+F.

But that is not* as annoying as my work PC, which regularly and unpredictably rearranges its idea of what keyboard I am using. So that the " and @ get switched around, and the £ disappears entirely. Since I work on a magazine that is All About Money, that is really rather annoying. Evil bloody machine.

scroobious

_____
* Notice the singular lack of contractions in this post?

[pinkthulhu.livejournal.com]

You should be able to modify the keyboard layout from Control Panel. When I first encountered UK keyboards here (instead of the usual US ones) it took me ages to find the | symbol, as it was tucked away under my left pinky. :)

[bumpycat.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it is a doppelganger of some kind ... :)

I will be in Cape Town for a brief visit at the end of October ...

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

Oh, what a long time to wait. Well, at least you are visiting at all :)
How brief?

[bumpycat.livejournal.com]

Nine days - enough time to visit everyone important :)