One pattern of the new year is that since I can remember being dragged into the digital age by my friend Paul Leisz and Celia Duthie I have been plagued by  almost with no exception finding myself without internet in those days right after Christmas.

This was the case this year and it took Sherlockian (or is that Holmesian?) investigation by Leisz, Benson at Powersonic Computers and of Dhalia a Filipina tech support expert in Manila working on the behalf of Telus to get to the solution.

Sometime around the 26^th I went to my computer inside my oficina in what used to be the garage of our Kits Duplex and I was unable to connect to anything.

The culprit, thanks to those three experts was a Telus home router that was losing its ability to send a strong Wi-Fi signal from our piano room all the way to my office.  I had a very efficient Asus Wi-Fi received that simply was not powerful enough to get the signal. All three gurus recommended a more advanced Wi-Fi receiver equipped with a USB connection.

The folks at Telus (very efficient) and Dhalia extraordinary with her sense of detail have programmed a technician to come on Thursday to investigate the status of our home router.

As a photographer I was always aware of Patterson’s Law that stipulated the Murphy was an optimist. In all my years as a magazine photographer I always brought duplicate equipment  of everything (just in case).

And so Patterson has dictated that my Microsoft Surface laptop would not charge and all I saw was a little red light. I took it to Best-Buy today and Akbar (an Indonesian) and Edgar (a Filipino) solved the problem that I thought was going to be expensive. Akbar pressed the on button and kept it pressed. And the computer (he said this was a hard start (came to life).

My Galaxy A5 phone had a bothersome new glitch. When I would attempt to answer an email I would get a box that said (ad infinitum) “loading messages”. It seems that this problem occurred to others at around mid-December. I believe the problem came about because of one of those feared updates. From the internet I found out how to disable a feature in my Galaxy and the problem has resolved.

So life at the Kits duplex is back to normal. Everything is working. Rosemary is in bed with Casi-Casi planning our trip later this month to New York City where we plant to see the Michelangelo exhibit at the Met and to have dinner at the Algonquin with Jerome Charin and his new wife Lenore Riegel. I want to make a special trip to that little old church in Wall Street that is surrounded by towering skyscrapers and that in its tiny churchyard it houses Alexander Hamilton’s grave.