I went into Dingle to publish
the web site.
Yes, we are on the end of the telecommunication highway. This I discovered
(and continue to) the hard way. Slow file transfer protocalling to Vancouver, Canada. Slow
as in 0.500 kilobytes/second = server timeout.
EXCERPT FROM SARA'S JOURNAL
October 22, 1998
Near Ballyferriter
Dingle Peninsula
Rich drives into Dingle to post the website and doesn’t come home
until just before 6pm. I spend a happy afternoon pouring through Angela’s Ashes
.
Rich comes in the door at five minuets to six and announces that he has
had the most eventful day in Dingle. By the time he reaches the junction to the town
Alfi’s gears are not working properly. He is stuck with third, fourth and fifth.
There is no first and second. He speeds through the town in third to a garage where
the man says, "sorry sir but I can’t fix those foreign cars". Then the
clutch takes all the force and he hightails to the second garage where Torry, a mechanic
says "I’ll look at it at three o’clock". Rich calls a cab . The man on
the phone says, "oh we can’t get to you until 6". Then the commissioner to
the Dingle Harbour who has a big painting of Fungie the Dolphin (Dingle’s resident
mascot) on the side of his car and who just happens to be checking something out in the
garage offers to drive Rich into town. Well, really Torry arranges it. The commissioner
has a big bushy beard and a pipe and stains on his teeth.
Rich spends the afternoon watching pages from his website struggle to
load via the tortoise Irish phone line at DingleWeb. It is no use. It is hours and still
only one page has made it and he is increasingly frustrated. He walks to the grocery and
picks up more beer, some milk, soup and a loaf of bread. The girl at the till is having a
conversation with her friend at the next till. She doesn’t bag the bread and she
doesn’t notice the paid-for bread left on the checkout counter after Rich had left
the store.
Finally he calls the other taxi number that is glued to the inside of
the phone booth. Kathleen drives her big Mercedes towards the garage and Rich asks,
"do you find it hard to drive on these narrow roads with your big car?" and she
answers him with a tone that says, "what are you some kind of complete foreign
idiot?"
Torry stands at the door and yells into the garage, "who did the
work on this man’s car?" A shout comes from the back of the garage and then the
shouter steps forward. Torry instructs, "Tell the fellow what you did, then" and
the shouter who is really not a shouter but a soft-spoken fellow explains how Alfi got her
bolts knocked off and the pole from the gears was bouncing along under the car. He found
some new bolts and also replaced some fuses and "that’ll be Ten Pounds,
Sir".
Rich opens a beer and remembers that he has left the bread at the
checkout.
