The little laptop on which I write this journal is four years old this month.  It's traveled back and forth across the Atlantic, going thousands and thousands of miles; it's suffered through heavy use, many thousands of hours' worth.  The keys are worn shiny from use, and in fact three of the keys have come off (d, g and, just last week, e) leaving me only the stubby little contact buttons underneath to type with.  It's never been what I would call a trouble-free unit, has never given the satisfaction of other machines I've used, doesn't have a whole lot of memory compared with current 'puters.  But it's endured.  It's accompanied me on numerous cross-ocean flights, enabling me to write, to keep in touch with friends, to zip around the net.  It's enabled me to connect with technical help, with online dictionaries, with search engines, with sources of all sorts of information.  It's enabled me to carry on a large part of my life, for which I'm hugely grateful.

But it's weary.  It's kept plugging along, but it's tired.  When the 'e' key came off last week, that felt like a call for help, a plea to, well, if not actually be put out to pasture then for greatly reduced duties.  So I've been wondering about a replacement.  A friend who stayed here recently had a little laptop that looked okay, and about the time the third key popped off this keyboard, a local department store had a laptop on sale, the brand my friend had on sale.  Lots of memory, lots of features, very reasonable price.

So yesterday morning, I made the trip out to the store.  And it is a trip, a trek that requires one to take three different Metro lines.  Thirty minutes or less in duration, but still.  Got myself out there, found the store, waded through Saturday crowds, finally managed to get ahold of one of the genuinely scarce salespeople.  (Is this a feature of current cost-cutting, having only two salespeople to handle the swarms of slavering humans looking to buy computers or 'puter gear?  I was starting to wonder if I'd have to have hurl myself at the feet of one of the two guys, wrapping my arms around an ankle, refusing to let go until he paid attention to me so that he'd have to drag me around with him wherever he went until he broke down and helped me spend money.)  Got the info. I needed, decided to go for the purchase.  He wrote up a sales ticket, handed me off to the department's lone cashier.  I gave the young woman my charge card, she slid it through the machine.  Long, long, long pause.  Nothing happening.  Until finally a message refusing my card showed up on the machine's read-out.  The cashier tried it again -- same deal.

This is a card that draws money from an existing account, an account which had more than enough funds for this purchase.  The cashier could see from my face that the card should be working, she tried to put it through by hand, bypassing the verification machine.  Same result -- nothing doing.

I returned home, computerless.  Not overjoyed.  I pick up the phone, call the 24-hour number on the card, back in the States.  It's about 6:30 a.m. there, Saturday morning -- the guy who answers sounds, impressively, wide awake.  He listens to my tale, tells me it's a security measure, that what the store needs to do is call the Visa office they deal with here in Spain, who will then call Visa in the States, who will then give the needed authorization.

As nicely as I can, I explain that it's not reasonable to ask a seriously overworked Spanish department store employee to take the time to do all that when there are hordes of other Saturday shoppers clamoring for attention.  I explain that Visa's never had a problem with my card, that there's money in the account to cover the purchase, that I should be able to use the card when I need to without going through hell.  He listens, asks me what I wanted to buy and the price.  I tell him.  He goes away for five or ten minutes.  When he returns, he tells me he's arranged the authorization.  God (or someone/something) bless this guy, you know?  He could have stuck by the RULES that some bureaucratic nitwit came up with and made my life far more difficult. 

I make the trip back to the store (lots more people in the Metro this time, the store even more packed), pick up the laptop, come back home, spend the rest of the day tinkering with it.

Sights and sounds from the trip:

-- In the Metro station at Nuevos Ministereos -- a big, modern station where one goes to catch the Metro line that extends out to the airport, stopping at my final destination along the way -- all four times I passed through, the sound system played "Moon River," the classic, syrupy, strings/chorus English-language version.  Loud -- not eardrum-burstingly loud, but loud enough that the air in the station, in all its passageways and concourses, felt saturated with muzak. Why "Moon River"?  Who the hell knows?

-- The trains on the line to the airport are slick, modern, high-tech affairs, each car containing several LCD television screens on which play news of current events, cultural events and sports, along with other odd bits of programming, usually with the narration reproduced in subtitles.  On the return leg of the first round-trip, whatever Metro management had been playing had gotten stuck, so that for the duration of my ride all the TV screens in the train showed an image of Bill and Hillary Clinton at a public event, standing together, talking about something.  The subtitles: 

Los devaneos de Bill le produjeron más de un disgusto matrimonial.
(Bill's affairs produced in her more than a matrimonial upset.)

-- When I emerged from the Metro station here in Chueca Plaza, I noticed that for the first time this season, the tables/chairs that get strong midday sunlight were completely empty, the ones in the shadows on the other side of the plaza were completely packed.  Springtime's giving way to summer. 

And the days roll on.

5:01:02 PM    comment []