St Isidore of Seville

Image of St Isidore of Seville from WikiCommons, part of the Yorck Project and in the public domain

I previously mentioned that bear is having issues with an extremely fancy and expensive graphics card that was uninstalling, reinstalling and deinstalling all sorts of stuff and causing chaos. It has been tense in the study as bear tries all sorts of different solutions, aided by my brother, DH and a swathe of internet searches. I suspect it's only because bear is the sensible adult in the household that the whole computer hasn't been flung out of the window. 

In other technological news, DH's laptop has been on the way out for a while. I swear that it's older than bear, which is implausible, but he's definitely had it for plenty of years. A few keys have finally failed and he caved in and got a much needed replacement. He did all his due diligence and picked up a refurbished laptop from Amazon. 

70% of the keys on the new laptop also didn't work. 

DH sent that laptop back, picked out another refurbished laptop from a reputable seller which arrived yesterday. It arrived with a US style charger which is completely incompatible with our British power outlets. Some harsh language may have been used. Another, more compatible, cable is on its way.

After this spectacular run of tech bad luck, I had concerns. Did we have cursed tech? If you lose your keys, you should pray to St Jude. I wondered who the patron saint of computers was and it's Saint Isidore of Seville who compiled knowledge back in the sixth and seventh centuries CE. It's been getting so stressful that I even googled how to set up a shrine to a saint. By the way, if you put 'holy water' into the search function of eBay, it's surprising and somewhat concerning what you can find.

I can't help feeling that it's not very good faith for me to be thinking like this. Proper faith, for me, isn't about technical difficulties. I have always felt that the divine is more than 'insert rote action, push button, receive outcome'. I can understand why people feel like that. When everything seems to stack up and you are feeling overwhelmed, being able to do something is at least something to hold on to. I am still fighting the temptation to print out a pic of the saint, though, which then bugs me because it's not rational. Then again, putting up a picture of St Isidore appeals to the side of me that always looks for stories... 

Also, the printer is acting up. We tried to print out a recipe last night and the print was faint with the colours not showing properly. When DH printed out the 'test cartridge' sheet, everything was perfect. I am somewhat unimpressed. 

Hugs and good health to all.