October 20, 1998

I had a little adventure this past Saturday. I went with a few of my housemates to the beach about 20 kilometers from here. To call it a beach is a little misleading. When people think of beach they think of sand; there was none of that here. This beach was rocky. That too is misleading. When people think of rocky they think of lots of rocks; there were none of those here, just one of them. This beach was one big rock stretching for kilometers in each direction. It was jagged; it was cold; it was windy; it was very nearly unforgiving.

What happened was this: I climbed down the rocks to get close to the shoreline to take some pictures. (You will see the pictures by Friday. See above.) When I go out to take pictures I of course take my digital camera and also my laptop. The reason for taking the laptop is so that I can download the images from the camera and therefore take as many pictures as I want. (You’re probably already getting the picture: pounding surf, laptop/digital camera, idiot/me.) So here I am down by the shoreline, being very careful because of the equipment and the fact that the rip tide here might rip me right back to America if I were to fall in. I’m standing on an outcropping of rock about to take a picture. Remember I’m being very careful, this portion of the outcropping of rock is bone dry. Not a drop of spray has dropped here for some time. There is a cove that I’m trying get a picture of so I have to turn my back to the sea - enter Poseidon, the Greek god of the ocean. I’m sure the ancient Greeks had some saying about never turning your back on the ocean or an angry woman - and they didn’t have to worry about electronics. (Important safety tip: never, ever, ever, turn your back on a pounding ocean.) As I’m crouching to take the picture I hear a very disturbing sound. It is the water being sucked away from the shore. I turn and look. Where was once ocean about five feet below me is a wall of wet rock with water cascading down the jagged surface about fifteen feet deep. Directly behind that is a wave, a very big wave, that is about to fill the void with a vengeance. I turn and run as fast as I can up the slope. Which means I made it about a step and a half before the air shook with a clap of thunder and the world turned to white spray. All I could think was, “Don’t get pulled back in.” As soon as I climbed up to safety I pulled out the laptop. It was drenched because I didn’t have the cinch cord pulled. I opened the laptop up and the keyboard was soaked. The bottom of my backpack was full of water. Needless to say the camera was drenched. I pulled the batteries out of each and began to pray. I’m not sure what god or goddess one should pray to in a case like this since there are no god/goddesses, or even patron saints, that I know of who cover electronic goods. Perhaps I should make one up.

So, drenching wet and freezing, toting my laptop just filled to the rim with salt water, I went back to the car. When we got home I removed as much from the laptop as possible and began blow drying it. The first time I tried booting up the speakers made a sound like a Geiger counter and I got no action at all from the screen, not a blink. More blow-drying. This time there was a blink from the hard drive, nothing else. More blow-drying. The screen comes alive and I get to the bios login. I input the password - accepted - the keyboard works. It starts a RAM check. 48megs - shit, I have 64 so it’s missing 16megs of RAM. It keeps booting. Windows gives me a message that I don’t have a mouse attached. This is bad. I start up Windows Explorer - no CD-ROM, buzzard-puss! I shut it down and reboot again - same thing. Reboot - the mouse works!!! Reboot - we have spinage from the CD-ROM! Reboot - 64megs of RAM recognized. I stick in a CD and it plays - even the speakers work. After all that everything works. DELL RULES!!! I think they need to get an email about this.

As for the camera . . . this is the second time (IDIOT ME) my camera has had a close encounter of the saltwater kind. The first time it came out of the ordeal with no side effects. This time, well the only thing that doesn’t work is the built in flash. Say-la-vee. It wont make much of a difference because I almost never used the flash anyway.

Hopefully I have learned my lesson: continue to by DELL laptops and I just wish DELL made digital cameras.

Best to all, idano