Tad's Life

We live in the tropics, right? It is nearing the hottest time of the year in Dakar, right? So what happened last night, exactly? Jonathan was buried under a heavy bedspread this morning and needed Dad to bring him a sweatshirt and pants before he would come out.

Which is a blessing though. I'm sure we'll see the real heat many times in the next couple months, but for now we're enjoying very pleasant sleeping weather.

In fact, the cooler nights are particularly helpful this year since our power company continues to cut us off daily. We woke up this morning in the dark once more. I find the candle next to the computer monitor a bit ironic. And indicative of the kind of experiences we're having all day long. We don't just get 4 hours cuts in the night time. And we never get any warning. But worst of all, they cut us for 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there. I'm not protected by a UPS unit yet, so that means waiting for the power to come on and then waiting for my old computer to slowly reboot.

Also, I think that the cuts sometimes hurt the equipment. In fact, that very computer in the photo gave me a real scare last night. The wireless USB modem was suddenly on the fritz. It just didn't want to work for more than 5 minutes in a row. Then it seemed to disappear altogether. And the regular modem was showing it had no driver. I spent the evening messing around scanning for viruses and reloading drivers and whatnot. It's up and running again now and perhaps a USB port is the issue, but I'm sure it is the power company's fault!