Shore the Laptop and his friend Sam

                                        Shore the Laptop and his friend Sam

Josh was carefully leaving his house with a rather heavy computer under one arm when he was startled by a sound coming from a laptop on his kitchen table. "Good bye" it said and he jumped. "Good grief", he thought and smiled  as he recognized the sound of the internet browser shutting down, "that's a funny coincidence".

It was a long way down to the Staples store where he hoped he'd find help to fix his desktop. Vermont was sparsely populated way up north where he lived. It was sparsely populated altogether. This was part of its charm, but it also had its drawbacks. So, you had to wait for things to arrive in the mail. You had to drive fairly long distances for what many people were used to being close by. You had to explain to people where you lived in terms of mountains and trees and interstate exits. Sometimes, you had to explain why it was that you lived in the forested "wilderness" to begin with, which sometimes became awkward.

There weren't that many people in the parking lot on this weekday  afternoon. "How can I help you?", the technician asked. The screen lit up and "safe mode" was selected. Soon, the diagnosis was complete. "I can fix the software problems for $129.00 and any hardware problems to for $159.00." This wasn't that much money actually and Josh was relieved. After all, he wasn't  going to have to purchase a new one - not for a while at least. He watched some customers walking around, looked at the display of new computers and asked about them. There were many store employees, in their red shirts and black trousers, darting here and there too. Finally, the time came to sign the contract and pay the fee. It bothered him to have to pay in advance. It bothered him more to have to write down his password. It was like being forced to give up secret family information. He'd never been asked to do this before.

 The technician kept talking and Josh finally decided to take his computer, cancel the order, and leave the store. He asked for  the papers, that had his password printed on them, back, but the technician told him he'd shred them and Josh could watch. The machine was padlocked. "What in the world was this?", he thought and watched the papers going in the shredder. "What's the difference", Josh thought., he knows the password anyhow." It was another strange experience, just like the "good bye" when leaving his house. He wondered if he'd been getting enough sleep or whether he was hungry. He didn't like to have to drive all the way back home without the repair at least in progress. Nothing had happened and it was at least an hour on the interstate to get here.

Josh had plenty of time to think on the way back. He was still stuck in the loss of his parents decades ago. It was natural. It should have shifted to the past after his first marriage and birth of his son, but it didn't. It just hung  there like an old barn that needed painting.

It had been a long day and after a quick dinner and shower, Josh was fast asleep, miles of roads he had driven going by in his dreams. He was awaken by the sound of someone speaking. "We're having a very difficult time correcting the startup sequence." "Who's that?" Josh asked, startled. "Sam", came the reply. "Sam" was the name Josh had given his computer. "I'm having a hard time too Sam. I need some sleep. It was a rough day for me." "You can't sleep on the job!", a voice from the computer stated, matter of factly. Josh fell off to sleep...

It was early in the morning  and Josh got out of bed and decided to try to start his computer on a hunch. It started and quickly went into "setup".  "Good grief" thought Josh - I wonder what's going on?

Going on? "Going on", you ask? About twelve thousand miles away in a small superb in Indonesia  something was going on alright. Jaqui Pnobing, a young man with an extreme interest in high tech had landed a job with a major Asian internet concern that employed him to troubleshoot problems for their customers. Jaqui was runnng - phsically running - all over his little community trying desperately to find one of his techie friends to help him interpret a new table of diagnostic data that had him totally flumoxed!!