Death of my Phone Card

12.18.07

I guess I should just take a deep breath and laugh. All these ridiculous problems with technology are quite hilarious.

I bought a 2 gig flashdrive in France for about $30. I brought it here. The first day I was with the Hammouri’s, Hibba and I went to Yarmouk to start an equally tedious process of signing me up for classes in the language center. Sanaa had a problem with her phone. It couldn’t open the media files anymore. Granted I was observing everything that was happening in a second non-indoeuropean language, what I got out of the whole thing was that somehow the driver became corrupted or was deleted. Hibba wanted to recover the files that were lost. I heard the words, “bring me a flashdrive tomorrow,” so I decided to be a really cool person, and pulled out my flash drive. The idiot stuck the thing in the computer, and started moving the files. But the computer was slower than a turtle and the files were many and big – it kept fluctuating between “49 minutes left” and “39 minutes left”. We had already been in the stupid store for about an hour and fifteen minutes. So the guy decided to stop, so he just pulled the flashdrive out of the computer without ejecting it, while the files were being transferred.

The next time I tried to use my flashdrive, it was not recognizable by the computer. This annoyed me. I tried it on at least four computers, and none of them worked. I talked to my Information Technology Savy friend, who said that taking a flashdrive out of a computer while files are being transferred may ruin the whole thing.

We went back to the store and explained the problem to the guy. He agreed with us, but also thought that the problem might be that somehow my computer didn’t have the right driver. My IT friend had explained to me that one of the advantages of Windows XP is that it automatically has the driver for any flashdrive you put in. He told us to come back tomorrow, and if it didn’t work, he’d give me a new one. I was pissed off. I rely on my flashdrive to transport pictures and blog posts; there are SO many changes I am dying to make to my blog, but I can’t because there is never time!!!!

So we went back the next day, and he said that he wanted to give the flashdrive to his friend in Amman because he is much more technology-savvy. He said that he could give me a 1 gig flashdrive in the meantime, but I should come back in two weeks. I told him I was pissed off at him, and that I need at least a 2 gig flashdrive. He said he didn’t have any there, but he’d give one to me if he finds out that his friend can’t fix mine.

Allah ya-oghdhoo!

So this flashdrive has been pretty good so far, except for the problem with opening the word document the other day.

Internet is ridiculous. Mama said that she would use it maximum once/month. I obviously know that I can live without the internet, but…I love it. Instant information. Instant connection. A worldwide network in one place. I can’t express to you how much I love the internet. Life without it is frustrating.

Life without a telephone is frustrating. I have a telephone, and I have friends, but I don’t have the bridge between them.

I finished my phone card. I bought another one, for the soul purpose of calling Pierrick. It didn’t work. There was a whole craziness of exchanging SIM cards. We’re gonna go see someone’s friend to figure out what the heck is wrong.

Calling France is three times more expensive than calling the States.

If anybody is out there, and doesn’t mind figuring out a cheap way to call me, CALL ME.

PS
Two days later, which would be yesterday, the 20th of February, I ended up buying another phone card to call BYU's admission office. It turns out the deadline for my reapplication (having deferred more than 2 major academic semesters, it is a whole reapplication process) is in a week, March 1st. Good thing I bought another card!

So far I have tried three different types of international calling cards: eyoonik, AmmanCall, and faraH. By far, faraH has been the cheapest and most reliable. It means "happiness" in Arabic.