Exercises in Stupidity

During the cold snap last month, the water in the upstairs bathroom froze.  When it warmed up it thawed and the cold water worked fine.  The hot water worked too but we had water running down the inside wall to the downstairs bathroom, indicating a leak.  Shutting off the hot water upstairs solved the problem in the short term.  Yuri had to tear out the shower and open the wall (removing the tiles and wallboard) to get at the pipes.  He turned on the hot water to find the leak.  There was none. Dry as a three hour sermon.  So he put it all back together again.

Friends from Regina (retired Social Work professors) have volunteered to teach a couple of weeks at Zaporizhzhia and Odessa Universities every year for many years now.  They were to arrive Saturday from Vienna to Dnipro and come to our place for the weekend.  We would drive them back to Zap.  The weather has been less than cooperative all winter and Tanya worried and worried from day 1 about the weather and the roads.  It was foggy and raining when Andrei and I left Saturday morning to pick them up.  The road was terrible, like it had been strafed and bombed.  We got to the airport, to find that the fog had NOT lifted and the flight was redirected to Kharkiv.  Our friends would go more or less directly to Zap.  We drove home in the dark.  Hit one pot hole too many and flattened a tire.  Took three hours to get home, twice normal time.  Tanya was an unhappy camper and chewed out her "Mule" for having gone in the first place.

My internet connection stopped working last week.  I would dial up through my mobile phone, KyivStar would recognize my computer but fail to log it onto the network.  I could use Tanya's modem and my notebook to stay connected but what a pain.  Today Volodya came to fix my internet and work on Tanya's notebook.  He fought with the internet connection for an hour and no luck.  It would not log me onto the network.  Finally he turned my mobile off and on.  Everything worked perfectly after that. 

Volodya took Tanya's notebook back to the shop (along with her USB mouse) so I rigged my notebook up for her to use.  Hooked up the wireless mouse; dug out an old keyboard and plugged it in.  Tanya sat down to text her friend in Germany and the computer went nuts.  It started typing Cyrillic gibberish all on its own.  Sometimes her keyboard would work and sometimes the stuff she typed would disappear and be replaced by gibberish again.  Baffled, I gave her my wireless keyboard and mouse and set up her keyboard and mouse on my computer.  My computer went nuts and started typing gibberish in Latin alphabet.  Lesson - never use two Logitech wireless keyboards and mice in the same vicinity.  They cross contaminate.

Doh!