Tech Troubles

I haven’t been posting recently because of
a) broken camera
b) broken laptop
c) general busy-ness
d) all of the above

The correct answer would be D…sort of.

In the case of A, I was wandering around a couple weekends ago when I noticed that every photo I took that afternoon was extremely overexposed. I rechecked my morning photos, which looked fine, the ISO settings, which were normal, and every other setting I could think of, but I hadn’t changed anything that could explain the problem. After a little web research, I diagnosed the problem as a broken shutter, but now the question was how to fix it, if possible.

I asked around some of the ELC teachers, and fortunately Manuel had a recommendation for a good camera shop that would do the repair in Macau (instead of sending it to HK) and would charge me a fair price. It’s a bit out of the way, behind a school next to the Cinema Alegria, but the owner was very professional, calling me the next day with a repair price and an estimated date of completion. I thought about just giving up and buying a new camera, but I figure it’s worth paying the 530 MOP (about $67 USD) because it’ll extend the life of my camera another 2-3 years (this is the only problem I’ve had in its 4.5-year lifetime), and I’ll have a working camera faster than if I bought one online and had my family bring it over.

In the case of B, it’s not my laptop that’s the problem, it’s the charger. It’s been having connection issues for a while, but it was still working well enough when plugged in just the right way. However, just a couple nights ago, I was grading papers, when I suddenly noticed something flashing and sputtering under my desk. Yup, the charger was sparking. I quickly unplugged the surge protector it was in, then unplugged the charger after the sparks stopped, put it away, and haven’t touched it since. I borrowed Susan’s charger to backup my files one last time on to an external hard drive, but now my Dell is officially retired from service and I’m relying solely on my netbook. It’s a little annoying because the screen is smaller, and I no longer have programs like Photoshop readily available, but I can deal with it until I get home, since I need to get a new computer for med school anyway.

As for C, English Festival was last week (got photos off the ELC’s camera), and now we have prom on May 14, so it’s not letting up anytime soon. The EELC102 exam is just the day after, May 15, so we also have to hurriedly finish preparing our students for that…the reading material has been interesting (subcultures, cults, and potential issues in the future), but the advanced vocabulary and sentence structure has most of them struggling with comprehension. Don’t even get me started on the listening – when I asked my students if they wanted more practice listening exercises, it was actually a unanimous YES! Who ever heard of students asking for more work?!