Mark Terry

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

The Glamorous Life of A Writer


March 6, 2007


Monday (yesterday, for those of you keeping track), started the same as usual, then, because my online service had been flakey recently (or "unstable" in cable company jargon), after I walked Frodo, I promptly got on the phone to solve this problem. It was 9:00.

Around noon I got off the phone with my third rep and instead of "unstable" internet service I had NO internet service. The first rep was a lovely lady (presumably enjoying life in sunny Bangalore, India) who gave up after about an hour and put me on hold for a supervisor. Fifteen minutes later, said supervisor showed up, his English even worse than his staffer with a total lack of VOLUME to go with it. ("Could you please TALK LOUDER!!!") He told me to plug the modem into the computer and forget about wi-fi (not useful; my work computer is on the WAL) for a while. Well, that worked briefly until it didn't work at all.

The third guy was an American and he actually seemed to know what he was doing, which is more than what I could say about his customer (er, moi). By noon we had determined:

1. There was something wrong.

So we made a work order for somebody to come out to the house (today).

Since it was noon by this time and I needed to go to the credit union (and had missed my workout and...) I headed out to lunch, hit the credit union, then stopped by the local public library, which has free wi-fi, so I could check and see if there was anything important going on via e-mail. There wasn't. So I headed home. It was now 1:10 and I had done almost nothing resembling work. So I spent time working on my rewrite of ANGELS FALLING until 2:00.

What was so magical about 2:00? I had to go pick up my oldest son, bring him home, force him to brush and floss at gunpoint, then take him to the orthodontist. Finally, we got back home again at 4:20. My, what a productive day.

I should go work out. But I'd skipped one dog walk already and he was going crazy, so I took him for a long walk (in the cold, high winds, wind chill of about 0 degrees) and sat down with the USA Today to pout for a while.

Now, the wi-fi is a'goin' again, so we're back in business. Bet you wish you had as glamorous a writing life as me.

Best,

Mark Terry

T

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Almost makes me appreciate dial-up. Computers and all are great until they don't work. Then I'm up the proverbial gum tree.

I see from your photo evidence that humans and word processors have evolved together.

1:02 PM  
Blogger Mark Terry said...

Eric,
I'm not entirely convinced humans are more evolved than monkeys.

1:06 PM  
Blogger Spy Scribbler said...

Eek! Last week, I spent a whole day backing up computers. (One was going to the shop, and in our family, all three tend to go at once. This time only two went at once, so we were lucky.)

The one computer came back yesterday, hard drive wiped, so it's taken me two days of staring at the screen, incessantly restarting after downloading and installing program after program after program.

I feel your pain.

6:49 PM  
Blogger Keith Snyder said...

That's the funniest list I've seen in a long time.

10:56 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home