Mauvaise Chance (bad luck)

So last night, I got home from tutoring, in a great mood because the family has invited me to spend Christmas Eve with them for dinner. Before I left, my computer was acting up.... but I had a few tricks up my sleeve I hadn't tried, so I had hope. I eventually figured out what was causing all the trouble; my device drivers were not up to date. The only way I knew how to remedy this problem was to register online and install new ones (costing me 29.95 euros). Everything went fine, until I couldn't open google video chat and my itunes. So I went on to the device driver update website, got in the online chat room with the support team, and they told me to restore my computer... well that worked for about 20 mintues.... and then my computer crashed again. So I logged back into the chat room and they logged into my computer to see what was going on. They installed stuff, uninstalled stuff.... and after several hours, several more blue screen computer crashes, my computer gave up. I can't get off the blue screen. I didn't even open my computer this morning, in fear of getting more upset about it before work.... so who knows, maybe after a good night's sleep it's all better?

I asked around at school today (I'm still here actually using their computer lab) and they don't have a computer guy that works in the schools... sounds like they have a company that comes if they need help... but nothing like what we usually have in schools. One teacher's neighbor might be able to look at it, but her daughter's having surgery and it sounds like she's kind of overwhelmed enough to take my computer and give it the neighbor that might be able to tell me what to do. Another teacher's husband is a tech guy, but he's on a buisness trip and she basically told me, from what I told her, windows vista is the problem and if you can't get off the blue screen there isn't much that can be done. They all said I could take it somewhere, but after taxes, it would probably cost me 150-200 euros. AH!

So- I think I'm going to just hand off the computer to my dad when he comes to visit in less than 2 weeks, use my ipod to email and write short blog updates, and try to keep my hopes up that the old computer my dad can bring me is able to use an attach-on video web camera.... that my pictures and music and documents are not lost on my old computer (the back up I have isn't complete because the flash drive I bought was too small for everything).... and that I'll be able to upload pictures to the old computer so I can continue posting pics on the blog!

Quelle mauvaise chance!

On a more positive note, I learned a new way to play bingo today, I get to help out in my favorite teachers' classes this afternoon, and I'm going out to dinner tonight for Caroline's birthday. We're going somewhere called Brasserie Georges.... it's supposed to be fancy-ish and really good!

Miss you! I'll write when I can!