I did not post here yesterday because I could not get online. I tried several times and each time that I failed to connect with the server (I hope I have the terms right) I read (well, sort of) the comments or whatever that appear when you don’t connect. Even clicked on some help button. Finally I just assumed I was out of time. And could not, on Sunday, buy more time online because – well – I couldn’t get online. When, in the library that day, the sight of the computers got me thinking…..so I fiddled around there for a bit – had some notion I could connect to my server there and PAY them. No luck. Asking for my identification and password stymied me. The former has a % in in, I could recall that, but not the rest. And my password could have been several words. At home on PerCy these are taken care of under that “for goodnessake don’t make me remember them: you do it” category. Well, this morning, I immediately phoned my server with credit card in hand. “You have plenty of time left,” he told me. And then he asked me that question which, quite frankly, freezes my brain. “What exactly is wrong?” I think it is the “exactly” that does me in. I am not a precise dot-each-i type of person. I like my i’s dotted but breathe easiest when I control the time and shape of the dot, if you know what I mean. You do?! Yippee. Anyway, I managed to scramble enough sense into words to tell the server man that when I tried to connect all the appropriate dial-up noises happened but then that funny little disconnect noise sounded (I did not tell him this) which lets me know, sadly, I am not going to be connected but a screen is going to pop up saying we are going into redial or something and that that will not work either but just distract me. I did mention the redial screen. Maybe the server ‘heard’ me thinking about the odd little disconnect noise because he said, “That’s very odd.” Well, that acknowledgment (as opposed to a “tsk, tsk what have YOU done” attitude) melted some of my brain cells back into thinking mode and I said I would go and see if perhaps it was now working for some reason and if not I would call back. It wasn’t working but – dah dah – I NOW NOTED that the identification place was blank. Am I smart or what. Typed in the identification from the trusty sign beside PerCy, and password. Still no luck. Well, damn. Phoned server again. Told him. He alerted me to an error in info. Corrected that. As you can deduce, reading this posting, I am ‘connected’.
And the moral of all this – my learning, I hope – is to question assumptions!!!!