Paris Journal 2006

Sunday, July 16

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Whew! I hate trying to make computer hardware work. Yesterday Tom and I went out to FNAC again, this time to get a wireless router. It took me all day today to install it because I did not understand that some very fundamental changes had been made to the way the broadband service was connected since last year, and because of quirks in the Dell desktop computer that lives in the apartment with us. I had wrongly blamed the Ethernet connection in my Dell laptop. I’ve apologized over and over to my poor little pal who faithfully accompanies us back and forth across the ocean. Once again, the sales staff at FNAC on boulevard Saint Germain were helpful, friendly, and sympa, as we say in France. Tom had the idea that we should walk home from there, and I agreed that was a good one. We stopped in the café in the garden of the Rodin museum for an extremely late lunch. It was a great escape from the noisy city, as always. It costs only a euro per person to enter the garden, where many of the important sculptures are located anyway. And the café is very reasonable. There was a horrible moment in the long process today where I had neither computer connected to the internet. I still need to go back to FNAC one more time to get one more little thing so that both computers can be connected at the same time. But it turns out the Linksys router works beautifully, although I wish the signal were stronger. Their online “chat” support also worked well. The service tech was able to determine that the modem was connected by both an Ethernet cable and a USB cable, and that turned out to be the source of many troubles. Tom went with Dan and Mary to the Cluny museum (medieval museum) while I pretended to be an IT person today. At the end of the day, I rewarded myself to watching the last hour of today’s stage in the Tour de France. There was a horrible fall in which one of the T-Mobile racers was badly wounded, I’m afraid. I’ll wait for tomorrow’s papers to learn more about it. Lance Armstrong will join the Discovery Channel team tomorrow when they arrive at Gap. The next day, I believe, is a day of rest, during which he plans to socialize with the team members. Le Parisien today claims that Lance recently said of the French soccer team, “All of their players have tested positive for being assholes.” I’ll have to wait until I see a reputable newspaper to see if this is true. If he did say it (supposedly during an ESPN event where he was an M.C.), it is because the French sports organizations were so horrible to him last year when they tried, once more unsuccessfully, to nail him for doping. I do not believe that Lance ever doped, and he has reason to be ticked off. I hope you enjoy the fireworks photos.

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