DOWN THE TECHNOLOGY RABBIT HOLE

Last month I told you my internet access troubles and ended with my printer dying. After some research and fervent hoping it wasn’t true, I realized that to replace my printer/fax/copier I would have to replace my whole PC. No new printers were compatible with a non-upgradeable Windows 7 PC. So…

New printer. New PC/Monitor/Keyboard. Had to buy peripheral CD drive since PC didn’t have one and expansion slots to have room for my external disk drive. And you have to go online to load all the software and activate all the features of your new stuff. The new device comes loaded with nothing but the ability to find the internet. Oh joy! Thankful my internet access was restored I plunged into cyberspace installation mode. 

In the middle of moving everything to the new equipment, my editor sent back my next book for further work so I had to go back and hook up my old machine to recover some stuff I forgot to copy over to the new PC. Can you say “Things that make Kim very, very cranky”? My husband claimed none of the adventure was improving my disposition in any way. It didn’t improve his either because instead of watching him from the deck as he mowed the steep backyard, I was running in and out checking on the software load. I was inside when he hit a nest of yellow jackets and didn’t hear him screaming from inside the house. Not good.  

Some of you are shaking your heads saying “How can someone who was once a CIO have so much dislike and so many struggles with technology?” Easy. My forte was the applications side and ferreting out what people needed to do their jobs. Not the blasted technical/hardware side of the IT world. I told my spouse that I had minions who dealt very well with the technical side of things.

My husband gave me these minions the year I retired (has it really been more than ten years ago?). He did that to make certain I still had minions to help me…although other than to keep smiling when I could not they were not much assistance on the hardware migration.

I survived all of it (my husband did too). Everything kinda works but I’m still tweaking things and arguing with the AI that wants me to auto back up everything to the cloud and wants to get Hollywood news alerts about people I have no idea why they are celebrities. 

Then when that hurdle was successfully leaped, I went to the phone store to switch two prepay flip phones into a plan with my tablet. Being a glutton for punishment, I switched my dumb phone to a smart phone. What was I thinking? Next stop, the bookstore to get an android smart phone for senior dummies book—yes that’s a real thing. I’m working through the book and figuring out how to use this new piece of technology. 

Unfortunately, things happen on a regular basis that presume you have a smart phone…so now I do. And I confess I was a little excited when I could pull up the Piggly Wiggly app at the store last week and show them my rewards card on my new phone. And I finally got the spam filter to work on all those Medicare scam calls! It doesn’t take much to make me happy. 

I hope to go into fall without further technology foibles to pull me farther down the rabbit hole. Enjoy!!!!