Finally Back on Track

My computer is finally fixed! So far, almost our entire trip in India has revolved around getting this thing fixed. Unfortunately, getting a new hard drive here in India was looking to be a very bad deal indeed. First of all, it would mean not being able to recover any documents on the hard drive. Second, the warranty tech people here would only install the hard drive – not the operating system. So even then, I wouldn’t have a working computer, nor any recovered documents, and would have to pay for Windows all over again.

After much (much, much!) debating of options, I decided to hold off on getting the hard drive fixed until returning home. The man at the computer store was so kind as to give us a Linux disk (for free, no less), so I put Linux on an external hard drive (thanks to Tadashi for bringing extra memory), and am running the computer off that. It takes 20 minutes to boot up, but at least it works!

Of course, there’s quite a learning curve to this thing. Let’s see: first, getting the wireless internet to work took about ½ an hour, then finding out the special extensions for this type of Linux (we’re using Ubuntu, so we need .deb extensions). Of course we then had to find a DVD player that would work; after all, what’s the point of having all these DVDs if we can’t play them? Then the search for RAW processing software for the photographs (Tadashi downloaded about 5 programs too see which is best). All this in the one shop in Fort Kochin that has wi-fi! I swear: the people her know us by name! If we’re not at the hotel or eating at a restaurant, we’re here at the internet shop. Luckily, all that is finally done – what a relief!

So now, lucky you, you’ll be able to see photographs! But first, it’ll take about a day to get all of Tadashi’s photos downloaded. Then you’ll have some pretty pictures to look at. Sadly, between the cold (that I've finally kicked), and the computer issues, I haven’t taken my camera out in about 2 weeks. So you’ll not see photos from me for a little while.

But there’s hope! Tomorrow we leave for Kollam (Quilon), in the backwaters of Kerala. We should get some nice photos there, as well as some interesting information. It’s a lot less stressful knowing that the trip is FINALLY back on track. So look for “real” India blogs from us soon!

Oh, and by the way: the "surprise" in the last blog was just the book title. Sorry for the confusion.