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This time I thought I had backed up my files up to last week in the (Frank-titled) "master ninj" drive automatically: that's where I thought I was saving things to. It's somewhat protected, because it doesn't have an operating system on it.
Instead, I was saving things to the drive that formatted itself for no reason. The file I tried to format, by the way, is untouched.
So, instead, I'm set back maybe two productive weeks: most of a chapter and half of another chapter. That is, I do have the version I mailed to myself, which is lacking in those things and some continuity work which I will have to reconstruct.
Everything that was on the C drive was lost. Everything. Fortunately, that means very little of my writing, since I did back all that up. It also doesn't mean the photos, as they are backed up. It does mean every single program and piece of hardware has to be reinstalled. It doesn't mean any of my recent email stuff, because that's all webmail. And I never looked at the very old email stuff anymore anyway. And the guy that worked on the computer this time had no theory. My theory? Microsoft's last security update, or else dust on the fans.
How do you clean the fans? Canned air doesn't do it. I can't seem to open the places where the fans are to wipe them off. There's a trick to opening them, right?
---
On a more cheerful front, the triumphant young doctor-to-be is homeish (actually at the moment over the hill being bought a laptop by a doting aunt and uncle). He has a long convoluted story of Kafkaesque experiences in Prague (appropriately enough). In order to expedite his student visa, he was first recommended to go to the US Embassy. The US Embassy was closed on Thursday (his first free day after the examination), but would be open Friday. He arrived at 11:30 on Friday to discover that the Embassy had already closed. But he could come back Monday, except that he couldn't, because his flight was on Sunday. The next recommendation was that he should go to the Foreign Police. This is supposedly much less scary than it sounds. The first place he was told to go to was not the Foreign Police, but the domestic police, who told him that he had to go across town to the Foreign Police. He got to the office that was named, but it was only the Foreign Police dealing with matters in several languages not including English. He had to go to a different office for the Foreign Police who could deal with English speakers. At one of these offices he was told he would have to go underground which was alarming until he realized he was being told to take the subway. Anyway, this next office turned out not to be the Foreign Police: it was the domestic police again, only the multilingual office. He still had to go to the correct office of the Foreign Police. He was given the address. But he couldn't find it on his map. The officer looked at Frank's map. "Oh, that's because I gave you the wrong address," he said, and went to look up the correct address. Which he found, along with the information that the office Frank needed was not open on Fridays.
None of this matters one bit.
It has been explained to Frank that if his student visa does not arrive by the end of the ninety visa-free days he gets as a USian visitor, he merely has to visit Austria and get his passport stamped there to reset the ninety days. Presumably he could do this indefinitely. But the student visa is supposed to take seventy to a hundred days, so he should be all right anyway.
More about the examination: most of it was easier than the USian MCAT medical school test, with odd bits of unexpected lore here and there. The part that allowed Frank to really shine, though, was the oral part. Here they gave him a stack of cards from which to pull a discussion prompt. He could hardly have pulled better prompts: one was about end of life care, and the other was about "alternative medicine." The first he was completely prepared for, because of his grandfather's death the year before. They liked what he said about that, and the other too.
He came home dressed in orange. He brought funny chocolates and a Czech fairytale book. And Cuban rum (of course).
Supposedly Czech is one of the hardest languages to learn. Nouns have four genders and six cases. Verbs may have a transgressive form, which unfortunately does not mean what it sounds like. Wikipedia apparently has four articles referring to Czech pronunciation and spelling alone.
I want to learn Czech.
Instead, I was saving things to the drive that formatted itself for no reason. The file I tried to format, by the way, is untouched.
So, instead, I'm set back maybe two productive weeks: most of a chapter and half of another chapter. That is, I do have the version I mailed to myself, which is lacking in those things and some continuity work which I will have to reconstruct.
Everything that was on the C drive was lost. Everything. Fortunately, that means very little of my writing, since I did back all that up. It also doesn't mean the photos, as they are backed up. It does mean every single program and piece of hardware has to be reinstalled. It doesn't mean any of my recent email stuff, because that's all webmail. And I never looked at the very old email stuff anymore anyway. And the guy that worked on the computer this time had no theory. My theory? Microsoft's last security update, or else dust on the fans.
How do you clean the fans? Canned air doesn't do it. I can't seem to open the places where the fans are to wipe them off. There's a trick to opening them, right?
---
On a more cheerful front, the triumphant young doctor-to-be is homeish (actually at the moment over the hill being bought a laptop by a doting aunt and uncle). He has a long convoluted story of Kafkaesque experiences in Prague (appropriately enough). In order to expedite his student visa, he was first recommended to go to the US Embassy. The US Embassy was closed on Thursday (his first free day after the examination), but would be open Friday. He arrived at 11:30 on Friday to discover that the Embassy had already closed. But he could come back Monday, except that he couldn't, because his flight was on Sunday. The next recommendation was that he should go to the Foreign Police. This is supposedly much less scary than it sounds. The first place he was told to go to was not the Foreign Police, but the domestic police, who told him that he had to go across town to the Foreign Police. He got to the office that was named, but it was only the Foreign Police dealing with matters in several languages not including English. He had to go to a different office for the Foreign Police who could deal with English speakers. At one of these offices he was told he would have to go underground which was alarming until he realized he was being told to take the subway. Anyway, this next office turned out not to be the Foreign Police: it was the domestic police again, only the multilingual office. He still had to go to the correct office of the Foreign Police. He was given the address. But he couldn't find it on his map. The officer looked at Frank's map. "Oh, that's because I gave you the wrong address," he said, and went to look up the correct address. Which he found, along with the information that the office Frank needed was not open on Fridays.
None of this matters one bit.
It has been explained to Frank that if his student visa does not arrive by the end of the ninety visa-free days he gets as a USian visitor, he merely has to visit Austria and get his passport stamped there to reset the ninety days. Presumably he could do this indefinitely. But the student visa is supposed to take seventy to a hundred days, so he should be all right anyway.
More about the examination: most of it was easier than the USian MCAT medical school test, with odd bits of unexpected lore here and there. The part that allowed Frank to really shine, though, was the oral part. Here they gave him a stack of cards from which to pull a discussion prompt. He could hardly have pulled better prompts: one was about end of life care, and the other was about "alternative medicine." The first he was completely prepared for, because of his grandfather's death the year before. They liked what he said about that, and the other too.
He came home dressed in orange. He brought funny chocolates and a Czech fairytale book. And Cuban rum (of course).
Supposedly Czech is one of the hardest languages to learn. Nouns have four genders and six cases. Verbs may have a transgressive form, which unfortunately does not mean what it sounds like. Wikipedia apparently has four articles referring to Czech pronunciation and spelling alone.
I want to learn Czech.
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I wish I knew enough Czech to enjoy Lemonade Joe (aka Limonadovy Joe), one of my favorite movies. Thank heavens for subtitles!
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"Lemonade Joe?"
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Years ago, my sister and I watched this movie on Denver's KLZ. Host Starr Yelland seemed almost nonplussed as he explained that they'd shown this movie before, and had so many requests, they were showing it again. And what a movie! Filmed in black and white on variously tinted stock, it's a western ne plus ultra. The version we saw must have been severely cut, but what we saw, we remembered. The cast is mostly unknown to those of us in the West (Fiala was in the extended version of AMADEUS as Don Giovanni, and the heroine was on the cover of Playboy once), but everybody in it is superb in their part, however small. Bartenders, undertaker, telegraph agent... they all shine in their turn. Along the way, there is inventive cinematography, crazy sight gags, and a host of memorable songs (in Czech, of course -- I'm glad to have to subtitled version, so I can hear the original actors deliver their lines).
My favorite bit is when Doug Badman, the saloon owner, is talking with his brother, the villainous (and adroit) Hogofogo. Badman balks at the evil his brother is capable of, and turns away to watch the dancing girls. Hogofogo opens his ring, spills some powder into Doug's drink, looks at Doug's back for a moment, swishes the drink to stir it, then gulps it down and belches.
For years, literally decades, I checked the TV section every week, hoping somebody would show this again. On a trip out to Colorado three years ago, I was told by a friend that he had found a copy of the movie, and we watched it several times. On my return home, I ordered my own copy, made a DVD from the tape, and even extracted a soundtrack. Movie and soundtrack both are on my iPod now.
There's more about it on imdb.com. I was searching YouTube for clips the other day, and found a parody, with apparent political intent -- so the movie, which was quite big in its native country, is still remembered! I hope to get it on DVD some time, because I think the disk has extras like a documentary and an update on what the cast members are doing.
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