July 4th Joy and Computer Catastrophe

July 4th was wonderful in so many ways. We enjoyed a neighborhood parade and party with friends whose kids are friends with Amy. It had the joyful feel of community. Thanks to Amy, we know people in the community! The Mayor, Meyera Oberndorf, was in the parade (photo of motorcade below). At the party, she said nice things to say to and about Amy. As she walked away from us and up to the microphone to speak to the crowd, Amy said, is that Grandma?

We loved our dinner picnic on the beach. What's not to like about eating dinner on our towels, listening to the Virginia Beach Symphony and Virginia Beach Chorale group, and watching fireworks at the ocean?

While I love our laptops and iphones when everything is working, when they aren't it is a different story. I have to have a high speed connection for my work machine, and of course we want to use it for our personal laptops. What does that require? A family network. We have two different operating systems (Mac and Windows), a cable internet service provider (Cox), a router (Linksys), and a mess of cables. This weekend we had to find the needle in the haystack that was causing our laptops to be simple paperweights. Poor Amy and Don have had to endure hours upon hours of Mommy talking to one tech support agent after another, from India, the Phillipines, Canada and the US. Forgive the rant and wish us luck getting our paperweights to surf the internet again, via our ailing family network.