Electronics and The Author
I've finally managed to register my new shredder, its extended warranty AND my rebate online. I got a fairly decent start and then I got bogged down in miniscule numbers and where they might be located and which was which. I called tech support. Frankly, I think I should have just hired a 7-year-old. They seem to innately understand this stuff. And why am I buying a shredder? Why has this world become so dangerous that I can't simply tear things up and throw them in the trash? But I digress...
I first noticed this nasty trend in writers having to deal with electronics when I began using a computer. I still have that very first Mac SE. When the world falls apart, that computer will still be running. It can't access the internet but, oh, baby, can it run! I never quite understood computers. I still don't. They are in constant need of updating, sort of like revising an article but more complicated. They do things like crash which sounds dangerous and it is if they take what you were working on with them into oblivion. And is anything worth the thin air in which it's written on the 'net?
I cringe whenever I need to install new software or download an update. And was that really a sentence?
I remember dating a computer geek before computers became household items. He told me, "I can't talk with many people but I can interface with you." HUH?! Looking back on it, I'm sure it was a compliment but I couldn't help myself, he scared me and I think I left skid marks on my way out of that relationship.
Back when I got that first computer, I coined a word for a computer accessory I needed at the time and would still appreciate today: heyhoney. A "heyhoney" is the person to whom you turn and say,"Hey, Honey! Which button do I push?!"
Lacking said accessory I will continue to struggle along with each new piece of software and hardware, alone in my home office with my flopsweat, praying that nothing explodes or crashes. And, yes, occasionally wishing for the simplicity of a typewriter.
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About Darlene
I was born at the Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts where Jack Lemmon made his appearance in the elevator many years before. My mother managed to make it all the way to the delivery room. It seems as if I’ve always written although my first career...
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The Marcia Polimer Abrams Fund for Canine Behavior Studies at the AKC Canine Health Foundation
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Ahhhh a woman after my own heart.
Boy can I identify with you on this topic. I even flunked "Computers for Dummies." However, I do keep trudging ahead, hoping something will eventually soak into this shut down brain of mine.
Our computer has crashed twice and that is NOT a fun ordeal. While typing on a keyboard is easier and quicker, I do wish for the old standard typewriter when this blasted thing won't work right.
Thanks for giving me someone with whom to commiserate.
I found electronics and I
I found electronics and I were not compatible when I was a teenager, and had to read out the model number to a technician, and gave him the voltage instead.... My first computer was an Apple IIE and I decided it was only an electric typewriter with attitude, and a sensible, adult female could master it. Despite that mistaken belief, I came to love my computer and was sad when I moved on to bigger and better things. My favourite was a later computer that said 'It is not my fault' in a very aggrieved tone when the printer played up.....
Keep blogging Darlene,
Hmm, I cannot complain of
Hmm, I cannot complain of technical difficulty, only canine saturation. As I write, there are two five week old lab/pit bull pups invasively whining at the door. They are guests of the local spca. Apparently their mother rejected them, probably with good reason. So here they are, suffering the tender ministrations and intermittent neglect of my twelve year old daughter and fourteen year old son. There is something quite reassuring about the greasy long haired teenager with a cracking voice groaning: "I need a puppy on my lap."
My own excellent dog, a three year old lab bitch of unending patience and loyalty that bears on stupidity, is crashed on the sofa recovering from a three week tummy ache brought about from too much snorkling in the cow ponds in back of the house. This dog is welcome; though she was not always so. She arrived three years ago, nine weeks old and most unwanted. She was the the product of an impulsive friend's trip to a breeder with her mother. It took the friend less than 90 minutes to realize her error and I am sure a far less time to land it with us. All resentment fell away within a few (make that two) hours, as Rose (as she would come to be known) lay beside me on the kitchen vinyl snoring away as I sipped a glass of cabernet, convinced that we had stumbled upon the smartest dog in the world.
After five months, I was increasingly amazed by her athleticism and retrieving drive. She would run me into the ground and I knew that if I did not reinvent myself, this dog would miss out on the outdoor existence she so richly deserved and was obviously built for. I embarked on a fitness campaign which, three years later, has left me forty pounds lighter and healthier, at 48, than I have been since my early 20's. My wife, after watching six months of this, re-discovered ballet, and lost 45 pounds. (She has since started a blog about toe shoes that I do not profess to understand.)
The thing is this: Inspiration comes from the most surprising places, and sometimes it takes no more than a good lab to set you right. Give them half a chance, they will give you double back, with nothing expected in return, save maybe a rice a cottage cheese diet, when the tum gets tender . . . I too love macs, but the dog I cannot imagine life without.