Larry the Hobo is using my hot spot!

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Step away from the laptop!

I have a love/hate relationship with technology. I love it when it works, but I’ve yet to find technology that is Wendy-proof, so none of it ever works correctly and I end up being frustrated and angry at inanimate objects a lot.

I’m currently having hot spot problems. I realize this sounds like something I should keep completely to myself and be ashamed of, but it’s actually pertaining to my connectivity. Which also sounds lewd. On a related note, computer nerds are pervs.

I do 100 percent of my work from afar, using a wi-fi hot spot to connect to the interwebs. This enables me to send happiness and unicorn dust to my editors, even when I’m in Albuquerque. My handy-dandy little magic phone has a portal to the universe built right into it, and I can connect my dinosaur laptop to it and upload hilarity with a quickness. This is awesome when they’re on speaking terms, but apparently the laptop got drunk the other night and said something unkind about the phone’s Momma, because they’re no longer cordial enough to connect me.

I know it’s a problem specifically between the two of them, because my phone doesn’t hesitate to connect Larry the Hobo’s laptop to the interwebs. Larry lives in the drainage ditch down by the railroad tracks and lies in wait for me to enable my hot spot so he can surf the hobo web. George says Larry is a figment of my imagination, but I’m pretty sure I don’t shop for anti-fungal socks and beanie weenies online, unless I do it in my sleep, and, well, that’s another story….

I’m having to use George’s hot spot, which would be illegal if we lived in West Virginia (Heziciah 12:37 – “Thou shall not fiddle with the hot spot of another in Appalachia”), and it requires me to remember a password. Passwords are the bane of my existence and possibly the cause of most forms of cancer. George has really hard passwords, with numbers and symbols, mine are all in the vein of ihatepasswords or screwyoupassword. The thought just occurred to me that I now have to change all my passwords. Thanks.

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The hot spot trouble, coupled with an annoying electrical short in the dash of the truck, has made me certain the electronics are plotting to kill us. The phone and computer aren’t speaking to one another because they’re busy listening to the dash, who keeps screaming, “Hey y’all, watch this!” as it plunges us into darkness. The computer tries to one-up the dash by eating two weeks’ worth of my work while I watch horrified and crying. The phone trumps them all by connecting only on International calling towers for a week, resulting in a $40,000 phone bill, which causes us to simultaneously have strokes and heart attacks.

There’s been chatter all day. The dash chirps, the computer whistles, the phone dings. I’m sleeping with a fire extinguisher and a tin foil hat on tonight. And my cowboy boots. Because I am perfectly normal.

It’s the electronics we have to watch out for.

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