The Great Mac Meltdown of '09 and the Healing Waters of Lamalou-les-Bains

I'm back online, after a short trip to Computer Hell. It's not a nice place to visit, and I certainly don't want to live there. But I'm a better (bitter?) person for having made the trip. Spolier alert: It's a somewhat long (and heart-wrenching) story, but there's a happy ending with pretty pictures. You can just skip to that part if you like. That's why your mouse has a scroll-wheel, after all.

Picture it: A wee hamlet in the south of France, where the church bells have just struck 23:00 (aka 11 pm). We wend our way up two flights of stairs in a lovely, well-appointed home to the office, where we find a diligent Web worker (who fancies himself a "digital nomad") burning the soon-to-be midnight oil.

He has a secure VPN connection to his client (PC World, in this case), a strong wireless signal, and is fervently posting technology stories when his MacBook freezes. He reboots the sleek (and some would say overpriced) laptop, but can't log on to the computer.

After a wee period of panic, he calls Apple for technical assistance. Turns out his log-in file has been corrupted. Yes, his log-in file — as in, if one can't get past that window, one's MacBook becomes a sleek and wholly useless chunk of white plastic.

The mystical, magical modern technology that has allowed our hero to live and work on the road — and afforded him a summer of travel in the warm Languedoc sun (thus saving him from the chilly fog of SF) — has taken a moment to mock him.

The technology gods giveth, and they taketh away.

Luckily, the helpful folks at Apple restoreth what the ghost in the machine taketh. Oh, there was a long phone call to Apple Support on Tuesday night. And two more long phone calls on Wednesday. One rather small file glitch required a big cleanup.

And that's my saga.

My computer now thinks I'm someone new and we've never met. I'm no longer the User-Formerly-Known-As alec. We are no longer familiar enough for first names, lowercased like ee cummings (OK, kd lang). I'm now Alec_Wagner. First and last, capped, and with a decidedly cyberesque punctuation mark for a middle name. It makes me miss my real middle name, Cunningham. Yes, Cunningham. Please stop snickering. It's a family name, and I like it (now that I'm not a kid and no one remembers nerdy Richie Cunningham — who was once the much cuter Opie Taylor — from Happy Days).

But I again have access to my applications; e-mail; pictures; music; browser bookmarks, log-ins and passwords — and best of all, a way to get back to blogging.

It feels great to be back online, even if (according to my MacBook), I'm not quite myself.

Now here's they really happy ending: Vince and I did some more exploring on Wednesday. We took a short trip to Lamalou-les-Bains, known for its natural springs. It was an easy trip, and a welcome respite from the heat of Abeilhan. A few degrees cooler, and very cute:


It was just a short afternoon trip, so we didn't stay to "take the waters." We did, however, stop for a long, leisurely lunch at the Hotel Belleville Restaurant in the center of town.


We had the big fish platter:


Yummy mussels, tuna-rice salad, calamari, cucumber-tomato gazpacho, and fritures (little whole fried fish — like French fries from the sea).

Honey loves fritures.