I Can't Keep Up.......

Image from edudemic.com. Even the website for this image knows what I'm talking about.

I consider myself fairly literate when it comes to technology, but I tend to jump on the bandwagon (there goes my goal of writing an entire blog post without resorting to cliches) fairly late. Then I have to play catch-up, and I never do. Catch up, that is.

When I got my first computer (at school, mind you, it would be several MORE years before I got a home computer), it was a teeny-tiny little Mac. CPU and monitor were a single unit, and the screen was about six or eight inches wide. Black and white.

I was very, very proud of it.

I was so proud, in fact, that as soon as someone showed me how to put a game called Tetris on it (copied from a floppy disk, mind you), I took it home for the weekend. It was small enough to do that with very little effort. But I would have happily exerted a lot of effort anyway.

I took it home on a Friday afternoon and started playing Tetris. My then-husband had a penchant for falling asleep on the sofa (or passing out drunk on the sofa, take your pick), and I sat at the kitchen table playing on my new toy. When he eventually stirred and I looked up at the clock, it was 4:30. AM. Houston, we have a problem. An addiction, if you will.



I love learning new things related to technology, and I love teaching myself how to stretch that knowledge to new boundaries. When I was teaching online, I tried all sorts of new things. Embedding, coding, surveying, recording online sessions, I wanted to do it all. When my full-time job was using a computer-based curriculum in the classroom, I used technology to supplement. I wrote quizzes, created dropboxes, used wikis, engineered voice threads, and implemented discussion boards, all using technology.

But I can't keep up.

I came to the sometimes-nightmare that is Facebook, and it took me a long time to embrace it. In fact, I created an account, established some connections and re-established others, and deleted my account. I said (rather smugly) that if the only way I could know when my daughter made the Dean's List was by Facebook, that was a sad state of affairs. Then I realized that if the only way I could know when my daughter made the Dean's List was by Facebook, I needed it more than ever.

I go through spells of using Facebook. I certainly don't use it as a "good morning, world!" and a "good night, world!" and an "everything in between, world!" like one of my former students. I tend to use it a lot when I'm traveling, to post updates on where I am and what I'm doing. I'm not even sure why I do THAT, but it seems an innocent enough use of social media and not (as) annoying. I hope.

I resisted the Twitter craze for a long time, mainly because I couldn't tell the difference between it and Facebook. I still can't. Except that Twitter requires one to be terse and succinct, and we can already tell by the length of this post that I'm incapable of THAT. I eventually created a Twitter account, and while I rarely tweet, I do check it every day to see what people are up to. Mainly UGA athletes. People I do not know and will probably never meet in person (with the exception of gymnasts, who cannot escape me at the team tailgates because it's such a small environment). Why do I feel it necessary to know their thoughts and activities?

I don't have a clue.

But I figure it's innocent enough, and there are lots worse things I could be addicted to. Besides, I do sometimes get worthwhile information from Twitter, and while it may not be stop-the-presses-this-is-world-changing, it is usually significant. That's how I found out the other day that we lost ANOTHER wide receiver to a knee injury, and his college football career is over.

(Aside: I just figured out why women don't play football. There's no way in hell any of us would be willing to play a position called "wide receiver." Mystery solved.)

So I'm on Facebook, and I'm on Twitter (but mostly as a stalker), and then I find out there are things called Pinterest, Instagram, and a whole host of other media outlets for which I SIMPLY DON'T HAVE TIME!!!

I will probably be the 21st century equivalent of a writer who still composes on a Royal typewriter. A manual one. I'll be clinging to my Facebook and Twitter (although the grasp on the latter will be a tenuous one at best), and the rest of the world will have moved on to telepathy and smellavision.

It will just have to leave me behind. My hard drive is full.

We Have Canceled Your Request.....

We've been having wonky internet at our house for a few days, but we've managed to make do. We've used our phones, my iPad, and I've resorted to using my connect card on my laptop when necessary. When it became obvious that the problem wasn't going to resolve itself, however, I was forced to call our provider.

Not many people say this, I realize, but we've always had excellent service from our internet provider. They resolve issues quickly, they can usually talk me through fixes over the phone, and they are always courteous. Sometimes I even get a customer rep who speaks English. Sort of.

When our problem couldn't be fixed by resetting the router and the modem, I suspected there was an issue with the modem. Like most pieces of technology, it was probably outdated the minute we installed it. And I can't even remember how many years ago THAT was.

When the (very nice, very cute) technician arrived, he said the first thing he was going to do was check the modem, and sure enough that was the problem. He said we had a good signal coming into the house, but the modem itself was bad. He also said the new modem would have a built-in wireless router, so we got rid of one of the boxes. (Now if we could just do something about all the WIRES.)

We used to have a secure wireless network, but once when Sweet Girl was home and couldn't get on the network, I removed the password (bad idea) and then couldn't remember it to put it back (stupid). So we've gone for years with an unsecured network, and I realized anyone who stumbled across it and wanted to sit in our yard and use our internet could do so. And the security issues, yada, yada, yada. So far no one has been intrigued enough with my identity to want to steal it. So far.

The technician said the new router would build a new network anyway, password protected, and I was giddy that I didn't have to make ANOTHER call to get that issue sorted out. (The woman I originally called said she would be glad to help me for $29.00. Probably plus tax.)

He was only here about 20 minutes, he said it probably wouldn't cost anything because all they did was replace the modem (huh? can it really be FREE?), but if there was a charge they would just put it on my phone bill.

About 30 minutes later I got an automated call on my cell phone letting me know that I didn't have an internet issue, that there was a widespread outage, and they were canceling my request for a technician to come. The outage would be repaired as soon as they could get to it, and they apologized for any inconvenience.

Well. I was mightily surprised that the problem the technician fixed never existed at all.

I hope he doesn't come back to reclaim the modem that the automated call said I didn't need.

Some Assembly Required - Sense of Humor Not Included......

I will have to apologize in advance to my buddy Maggie and her man-friend ITSam. I am sure that ITSam is the exception to the rule I will expound upon within the confines of this blog post.

Is it a requirement that technology types have no sense of humor? Computer geeks have no funny bone? Network nerds have no tickle box?

A couple of weeks ago, I got some strange message of death on my school computer, something about the LDUEAHN (or some other random selection of capital letters) not being found. Our secretary emailed the technician assigned to our school, because a computer-based school should NOT have an I.T. guy on the premises at all times, no sirree.

When he showed up on the premises a day or three later, he immediately unplugged the tower and said he would need to take it with him. I said something along the lines of, "Can't you just bring me another one?" I explained that it wouldn't read a flash drive, I had to walk ALL the way around my desk and plug one in the back of the unit, and the CD drive wouldn't open anymore.

He looked at me in all seriousness and said, "I don't just have a stash of these to give away." He didn't crack a smile.

Because my unit had been making grinding noises that sounded like a Cessna 182 that would NEVER get off the ground, I said to him, "It sounded so bad I was afraid it was going to take off a couple of times." He replied that there was no way it was going to take off, not with a message like the one I had received.

Well duh.

He unplugged the flash drive I had left in the back and left it on my desk.

A week or two later (or it may have been the next day), he brought my unit back.

He explained that the problem was that there had been a flash drive plugged into the back of the unit when I turned it on. It was trying to boot from the flash drive instead of the thingamajig it usually boots from.

HE unplugged the flash drive. Shouldn't he have thought of that? I actually had the fleeting thought myself, based upon back in the old days when I would leave a floppy disk (remember those?) in the drive and the computer would try to boot from that. Because it said something was MISSING, though, I didn't give it a whole lot of thought. Besides, if HE didn't think of it, I wasn't going to mention it.

He did replace the CD drive, though, and I think I was supposed to give him a trophy or something for it.

Then he explained about the computer not reading the flash drive in the front of the computer.

Have you ever bought a new computer (camera, video recorder, GPS unit, iPad, iPhone, dozen eggs, scented candle, Snuggie, African Violet, baseball cap, jar of dry roasted peanuts) and found one of these in the box?

I had seen them before, and when he mentioned it, I found one in my desk drawer. I had no idea what it was.

Apparently not all flash drives are created equal. The ones that my computer wouldn't read are apparently "inferior" (read: cheap) and the little silver piece that plugs into the computer isn't as long as the "superior" (read: expensive) ones.

This little cord fixes that. You plug your cheapie flash drive into one end, and the other end is the appropriate length for plugging into a USB port.

Huh.

That would explain why I was unable to scan on a flash drive from my printer/scanner/copier/fax machine, in spite of the fact that it clearly had a USB drive.

You learn something new every day.

I wish technology would slow down just a tad, just long enough for the I.T. guys to go to humor school.

Internet Woes.......

I love technology.

When it works.

Last week, on the night I was SUPPOSED to teach online for the first time, my internet let me down. I wasn't sure it was the internet, because they had suddenly "upgraded" the whiteboard program we use for our live online sessions. Don't you love it when they "upgrade" something with no warning? There are always glitches.

It was my first session with my new students, and the audio wouldn't work at all. Then it randomly kicked me off. And kicked me off again. And again. And again.

My students couldn't hear me at all, so I had to TYPE every word I wanted to say to them. What a wonderful first impression. I even had to type the part about having a back-up plan in case of technological difficulties, because there are NO EXCEPTIONS when it comes to turning in work.

I'm supposed to teach again (again?) tomorrow night, so tonight I thought I would have a trial run with Sweet Girl and see if it would work.

Same problems. She patiently waited while I went to Hubby's computer and tried there.

No luck.

Then on a whim I tried to use my connect card. You know, the things that are supposed to be wonderful out in the wilderness but are notorious for being slow?

Worked like a charm.

After the session last week, I tried to upload a document for my students. It sat there and spun for 15 minutes before I gave up in frustration. At school the next morning, it didn't take two seconds for the same document to upload into my course.

So now I have to call my internet non-provider and educate them as to just how many other internet providers there are out there. It's just such a pain in the rear to change email addresses. Maybe my bluff will work. We'll see.

Great Plans.........

I had such great plans today. I knew there wouldn't be many kids at school because it was the last day before Spring Break. I planned to keep up with my online grading so I could start the weekend with an empty dropbox. (Why does that sound a little obscene?) I didn't count on two of our kids being in a terrible wreck this morning. (They are fine.). They were on a school-sanctioned activity. For which we did not require permission slips. They are brother and sister, both under 18. I didn't count on my boss thinking it would be better for me to acccompany our services coordinator to the hospital instead of her going herself. I also didn't count on the Internet connect card I bought for the laptop being useless because we are in a no-service area. I didn't count on blogging with my thumbs. That's so 2009.

Ain't Technology Wonderful?........

I mean, when it works?

Sometimes I find myself cursing technology and wishing some things had never been invented, because they just make my blood pressure go up. Like when my iPhone arbitrarily shuts itself off and won't come back on. But then I use another wonderful piece of technology, namely Google, and I find out how to jump-start it again.

But that's not at all what this post is about.

Today I got one of those pesky, annoying "toll free" calls on the caller i.d., the ones I usually ignore and let go to the answering machine. Yes, we still have one of those, but it doesn't use a tape, so there.

I don't usually answer those calls because it's either the American Red Cross calling again, asking me for a donation of my rich O+ blood because it's the universal donor type. I don't understand why the folks who told me thanks but no thanks, I can't donate blood again until after April because I had the audacity to go to a malaria-risk country such as the Dominican Republic can't talk to the folks who man the phones and tell them to stop bugging me until after my year's penance is up.

Or it's the mortgage company where my ex's house is financed, wanting to know why I won't catch his payments up for him. I explain that I signed a quit claim deed to the house, and I have no legal claim on the house, and although I realize that it will shoot my credit to hell and back because he refuses to refinance the mortgage and get my name off of it (10% interest he's paying ... uh, I guess not paying), I have no intention of helping with his financial crisis. Which isn't really a financial crisis at all, just a terminal case of sorriness. I actually told the last person who called that my ex would never take her calls, would never return her calls, and probably had no intention of ever paying his mortgage again, and the best thing she could do was to foreclose on it. Oh yeah, and leave me the hell alone.

Or it's someone wanting me to answer a few questions for a survey, the subject of which I've never determined because I don't let them get that far.

Or it's the golf equipment company from whom Hubby has ordered a few times in the past, offering him three new irons (or woods or putters or drivers) for free if he will just give them a try. That's one way we wound up with 892 golf clubs in our basement.

I'm not sure why I answered the one today, or why I stayed on the line once I realized it was an automated caller. Nothing irritates me more than a toll-free call, unless it's a toll-free call that turns out to be a computer.

It got my attention when it said it was conducting a "fraud" alert on Sweet Girl's bank account. It asked me to verify the last five transactions on her checking account, and I felt pretty confident doing that, since I had just looked at her account online this morning. Our checking accounts are still linked because it makes it easier for me to keep up with her finances when she goes out to sea. It's also quite convenient to transfer money from my account to hers if the need arises. Which it doesn't very often.

I guess the fraud alert was triggered because she still banks with our little hometown bank here in Northeast Georgia and most of her transactions occur in Florida. Yesterday she and some girlfriends went to Savannah, so those transactions must have raised the little computer antennae.

It gave me great pleasure to know that some little gerbil running on a wheel inside a computer somewhere in the world is looking out for my girl.

This happened one time before, when she was on one of her two Persian Gulf cruises. That time I talked to an actual person. She called because a transaction had come through at 4:00 AM from Chicago in the amount of $3325. She declined it because of the amount and the time of day, and she called me. I laughed when she told me the amount, because it would have taken a whole lot of luck plus an act of God to get that much out of Sweet Girl's account anyway. But when she told me the name of the business, I recognized it as a place Sweet Girl had told me she and some friends had gone to eat when they ported in Dubai. (Why the transaction went through Chicago is beyond me.) I figured out that the amount of the transaction was incorrect because they had left out a little bitty decimal. By the time the transaction was declined, Sweet Girl and her friends were long gone, so I guess they ate for free at that establishment. The girl who called me was so proud of herself for declining it based on the time of day. I told her that when it was 4:00 AM here, it was noon in Dubai, so it wasn't that out of the ordinary at all.

She never DID understand that one. I'm not sure she knew where the Persian Gulf was.

Technological Close Call........

I wrote a post a few months ago about how I feel obligated to use the whole set of something. If I have a 5-piece luggage set, I feel guilty if I don't use all 5 pieces. Even if I'm just going on an overnight trip.

I feel the same way about gadgets. If I have them, I consider it my duty to use them. I have a GPS for my bicycle, so I won't just hop on the bike for a casual little ride anymore. It has to have the GPS on it to document my mileage, elevation gained/lost, and a map of the route.

My first motorcycle had a locking helmet hook on it, so I felt compelled to hang my helmet on its designated place, never mind that the cool people just hung their helmets on the sissy bar or the mirror and it was a B-I-T-C-H to lock/unlock anyway.

Some gadgets, however, I find useful in their gadgetness, not just because they are cool toys or features to have. For example, the key pad on my SUV. It was one of the features that sold me on this car. That and the fact that Hubby had a tee time and he had already told the salesman, "Wash it, we'll be back for it when I get off the golf course."

Using the key pad eliminates the need to carry my keys. Since I also abhor carrying a purse, this is very handy. I don't often have pockets, so I like the convenience of being able to lock the car but not carry a set of keys with me.

You can probably see where this is going.

It almost came back to haunt me in a bad, terrible, rotten, no-good kind of way. My apologies to the author of that childhood story, because I'm sure I just mangled its title.

Yesterday Hubby and I ran some errands, since the weather was too yucky for him to play golf. We meant to go to the tanning bed (give me a break, we're going to the Dominican Republic in a month and we don't want to get sunburned to a crisp), but we had already bought groceries when we remembered.

We took the groceries home, and Hubby said he didn't want to get out again in the yuckiness. So I went off to the tanning bed alone. That was the first good stroke of luck.

When I came out of the tanning bed, my key pad code would NOT let me in my vehicle. No reassuring click, no unlocking of the doors, no flashing of the lights, nothing. I did it a few (hundred) times just to make sure, and then I was pretty sure I had locked myself out of the key pad for a period of time. So I went to a nearby grocery store and bought something I had forgotten on my FIRST grocery buying expedition that morning, and just to kill some time.

No luck. The code just would not work.

So I called Hubby, and he came with the spare clicker and unlocked my door as he drove by. I'm sure the girl working at the tanning salon saw me walk out to my car and open the door and thought to herself, "Well the dumbass could get in all along." But I digress.

We tried the code again and again when we got home. It wouldn't even LOCK the doors. Hubby looked in the owner's manual to see if it mentioned a fuse or anything that could be wrong with it, but he came up empty.

And everything was basically okay, since I had the spare and now I know not to lock my keys in my car.

But I shudder to think what COULD have happened.

Because last night was the night that Katydid and Nurse Jane and I went to the Billy Joel/Elton John concert.

If I hadn't gone back to the tanning bed, I wouldn't have known that my keypad didn't work anymore.

Until after the concert.

In downtown Atlanta.

At midnight.

On a Saturday night.

With Hubby 60 miles away.

NOW who says tanning beds are a bad thing?

Must Be Friday the 13th.....

Not that I'm superstitious or anything.

But tonight has been sort of freaky. In a technology-related, pissing-me-off sort of way. Sorry. I don't really like that expression. But sometimes "It's annoying me" isn't quite enough. Nor is "It's irksome." Or even "It's getting on my nerves."

First my Blackberry sort of died. Sort of because it still evidently gets email, it "beep-beeps" when a text message comes in, it even rings.

But none of the buttons work. Including the "off" button. I've removed the battery three times and put it back, to no avail. I can scroll through all the menus, but when I push the track ball, nothing happens. When it rings it tells me who's calling, but I can't answer it.

I was going to write a blog post about Gus, whom we consider our other child. Hubby and I were just talking the other day about how it's hard to believe that you can love an animal that much. Anytime we go out of town, it's a race to see who can get to Granny's first and see Gus. Don't tell Granny; she thinks we're that happy to see her.

But almost all of my pictures of Gus are on Hubby's computer, and my network won't let me retrieve them. When I click on the network, it just sits there and spins and spins, and I'm pretty sure I heard it laughing at me. I'm too stubborn to give up and walk aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way across the living room and use Hubby's computer. Oh no -- I want to WIN.

Yet when I stopped long enough to take a phone call, the screen saver on my laptop came on. It started scrolling through my pictures.......that are stored on the network.

I give up. Maybe since tomorrow is Valentine's Day, technology will decide it loves me.

Technology Exhausts Me.....

I have spent the better part of three hours...... count 'em, three hours..... this evening setting up our new printer/copier/scanner/fax machine. I mentioned casually to hubby last week that we would need a new printer soon, and he saw one on sale in this morning's paper. When he pointed it out to me, I took that as a directive to go out and purchase it. He may not have meant it as such, but I wasn't taking any chances when it came to a new piece of technology.

Following the directions on setting up something as simple as a printer shouldn't be that difficult. These particular directions were written in English by someone who apparently had a relatively firm grasp on the rules of syntax and grammar. But I invariably either skip an important step or I don't understand something that should be crystal clear. Tonight it involved installing the print head and the roughly 7 different colored ink cartridges. (I forgot to check for that before I bought this model. Bummer.) The print head was a plastic compartment that had to be installed before the ink cartridges could be installed. "Push the Print Head to hold it in place, and lower the Print Head Lock Lever." (No idea why those words were capitalized. I mean, I know they were important, but that would mean capitalizing about every third word.)

I am relatively intelligent. Words (used correctly) tend to make sense to me. I can follow directions. The pictures, on the other hand, often leave me drooling in my soup. There was a photo of what was apparently the Print Head with a large portion circled, and the words "Do not touch" out to the side. Only it was difficult to ascertain exactly what was not to be touched. I tried to avoid touching all parts of it, but that was hard to do when I needed to both push it and hold it in place. There I was with the printer cover open, wires everywhere from the dozen or so items we have hooked up to our network, a flashlight with a dying battery held between my chin and shoulder, and sweat dripping from my nose. I tried nine times (or nineteen, I'm not sure) to "Push the Print Head to hold it in place, and lower the Print Head Lock Lever." It wouldn't stay locked, and the ink cartridges wouldn't go into their places.

Then I glanced at the picture again. Seems the Print Head works best if you aren't trying to install it UPSIDE DOWN. That makes me really paranoid, because if I was holding it the wrong way, chances are I touched the DO NOT TOUCH part as well.

Then I got to the ethernet cord part. My old printer didn't require an ethernet cord because it went through a router and a modem, so I assumed this one wouldn't need one either. Even when the directions told me to plug it in. I didn't HAVE an extra ethernet cable lying around, so when it got to that part, I just lied and said it was already plugged in and clicked "Next." Like the computer wouldn't figure THAT out. (I said RELATIVELY intelligent.) I tried it more than once. You don't know how it hurts my heart and soul to admit that.

But I don't give up easily. And the computer, naturally, doesn't give up AT ALL. After a trip to the nearest Wal-Mart for the required ethernet cord, I managed to finish the installation process and have successfully printed and copied. Tomorrow I will attempt the fax feature.

And none of this is what I intended to spend my money and free time on, which was a Christmas gift to myself. What I went to six stores in search of today doesn't exist anywhere in the free world. Except on eBay. Where you can get it for a mere $150 more than it costs in the store. Mine will be shipped tomorrow.

When it gets here, and I can do so without hiding my face in shame, I'll tell you what it is.