I had three annoying tech issues all in the same day chasing
me like the hounds of Hades which is a bad metaphor to use here. Why? Because
I'm not afraid of those hounds guarding the gate that keeps the walking dead from escaping the underworld. Armed with a couple of good steaks, I could outrun them. Ya, I
know Halloween is over so it’s time to get the gruesome imagery out of my head
and replace it with turkeys and pilgrims and wondering if cranberries will be
safe to eat this year.
I’m quite sure if I had a grandson I would have called him
to come over to rescue me from Tech Hell but since I don’t I had to call
1-800-fix-self, extension Jean. I started with my TV which was having a sound issue. I wasn't getting any. With the help of an online
troubleshooting guide, I walked through three questions that if you answer ‘yes’
to any one of them you are dumpier than a stoner: Is the mute button on? Is the
volume turned down? Are there earphones plugged into the TV? No, no and no. Next
they asked: Did you unplug the cable box and plug it back in? Bingo! That did
the trick, but inquiring minds want to know why that works on electronics and
why can’t I ever remember to do it without reading it in a troubleshooting
guide? And why didn’t I consult the troubleshooting guide before spending a
half day of watching the TV in the kitchen while listening to the TV in living
room with the volume jacked up high enough that it drove the dog out of his favorite
chair?
While the sound issue was going on I was trying to get my cap lock key on
the computer fixed. It was stuck which is a serious matter if you go places
that require cap sensitive passwords. That took me a half hour of digging gunk
out from under my keys using the sticky end of a Post-it Note to capture hair, dead skins
cells and dust. It’s like pealing sunburned skin, once you start cleaning one key you can’t stop until you’d done
them all. But be forewarned, you’ll start wondering if it wouldn't be wise to wear a hairnet when you’re playing on the computer.
While I was digging gunk out from my keyboard I didn’t have
enough common sense in my Technical Service Tool Belt to turn off my computer
and I accidentally did something to my Firefox browser, causing it to lose all my
bookmarks and worse yet, no way to bookmark new pages. Let me tell you, that
was panic time here in the big city. But once again a Google search to find a
way to fit the issue did the trick. But as much as I love Google I wish it would
quit asking me to review the places I go. Ya I know, I can change the settings on my
phone so GPS won't track my every move but it’s really a good safety feature for elderly
people who might get lost and their kids need to find them before they run out
of gas a hundred miles from where they were going.
One of the places I was asked to review was a continuum care
complex where I went to hear a lecture, a fascinating lecture about the Orphan
Trains (1854 to 1929). It was given by a woman who wrote four historical
fiction books based on her research in a planned series of eighteen. I’ve read other authors who have written about
the Orphan Trains but I hesitate to share this lady’s name because she’s self-published
so I don’t know how well-written her books are. Her lecture, however was well
done and covered the seventy-five years the orphan trains were a part of our
history starting with how New York City came to have over 250,000 homeless
children who were put on those trains going out west to find homes, and she ended
her lecture talking about the social programs that were set up to help prevent having kids as young as four and five from living in the streets begging
for pennies or bread and sleeping in doorways. Some of the photographs the
lecturer shared of the street kids were heart breaking and while not all the
kids found good homes in the towns along the train tracks it’s estimated that 87%
of them did.
One man, in particular, can be credited with setting up and financing
the Orphan Trains. They were the brainchild of Charles Loring Brace, an ordained
minister who dedicated his life to helping street kids plus thousands of babies
left off at a Catholic nunnery in the middle of the night. Some people today
are quick to bitch about social programs that help the poor (including Planned Parenthood)---calling them socialism and worst---but all we’ve got to
do is look back at the world before we had those social welfare programs and
ask ourselves if we really could turn a blind’s eye to the suffering that would go on without them.
My very first introduction to Orphan Trains was on a episode of Little House on the Prairie, if memory is serving me correctly. Either way, Orphan Trains are a well-documented part of our history and PBS did a program about them if you're interested in learning more. But there were also trains running to coal country in the same time frame that took foreign-born men and older boys from the over crowded city to work in the mines. My grandfather was on one of those "work recruitment" trains. ©
My very first introduction to Orphan Trains was on a episode of Little House on the Prairie, if memory is serving me correctly. Either way, Orphan Trains are a well-documented part of our history and PBS did a program about them if you're interested in learning more. But there were also trains running to coal country in the same time frame that took foreign-born men and older boys from the over crowded city to work in the mines. My grandfather was on one of those "work recruitment" trains. ©
Jean, mercury is in retrograde. Now stop laughing....this is when you'll have trouble with all communications like computer, TV etc. We are all dealing with some sort of this right now. And when our satellite is giving us grief they always make me unplug and then plug back in. So now I try that first before calling - damn if it doesn't work but who knows why. I leave that to those younger than me. :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm not laughing, could be a magnetic field or something that the common man doesn't know about or understand but the Einsteins of the world do. Or it could be the Russians messing with us. LOL
DeleteUnplugging satellites and cables is like a reset of some sort but I'd still like to know HOW it works.
Wow. My head is spinning. How you got from cleaning dead skin out of your keyboard to Orphan Trains is astonishing. But you did.
ReplyDeleteOld minds work in mysterious ways. LOL
DeleteI have never of the Orphan Trains before reading this post. Oh no, you have given me a new area to read and study!
ReplyDeleteYou are right about electronics. I unplug and re plug my cable modem, router, and Roku box once a month. If I don't, one or more will mysteriously stop working. It is like your cell phone. If you don't power if off and then turn it back on occasionally, all the data gunk that hides in there in random bits and bytes slows things down or makes web use difficult.
That's a great tip about turning off computers and other devices once a month. I'm guilty of never doing that but it sounds like a good maintenance action I need to start doing. Thanks for sharing that.
DeleteI have often "almost" bought books about the orphan trains--now I may just have to press"buy". I somehow can't imagine how so many children became orphans. Thanks for pushing me out of indecision.
ReplyDeleteThe lecturer showed a graphic of how NYC's population exploded during the Great Migration when people were starving to death in Europe. The city itself in terms of buildings to live in had not changed and 6-8 families were living in one or two rooms. Children as young as 8 were working in factories, the men without work because the children could be hired so much cheaper. If a child got hurt or sick and couldn't work, they usually ended up in the streets. Of course this was before birth control and Planned Parenthood so many of the newborns died until the nunnery opened it's lobby for drop-offs. Mothers often died in childbirth, too, and that was another way their other children ended up living on the streets if fathers went looking for work in other cities but didn't come back with rent money. That's the thumbnail of social issues that fed into the homeless children during that time frame.
DeleteGreat point about the suffering prevented by social programs that half the country likes to bitch about because they don't know or care about history. Our foray into populism is another example of 'forgetting' how the horrors of the last century got started.
ReplyDeleteI was told many, many years ago that turning off or unplugging any electronic item, leaving it for 60 seconds to clear the 'cache' then plugging it back in takes care of the problem 75% of the time and I've never forgotten that. The 'cache' is a dark little room in computer memory where mixed signals get stored and occasionally cause problems. I think.
The president is doing a good job of dehumanizing certain segments of our population. It's easier for people to look away from suffering when they do that.
DeleteThanks for the explanation about the why it works to unplug electronics. I need to start penciling it into my calendar to do it on a regular basis.
Another hilarious post, as usual Jean! Thank you for that 😄
ReplyDeleteI know from work that the first thing the IT people tell you to do in any situation is to unplug the device, let it rest for a minute, and plug it back in again. Most of the time that is all that is needed, in my experience. If only that worked for other things as well...like cars...and people!
Deb
If only it worked with cars and people! Oh, my gosh wouldn't that be sweet.
DeleteI've read a couple of articles about the orphan trains and a novel based on them. They are hopeful and bittersweet at the same time. To not be wanted in one place, then shipped to somewhere else where you might get a fair deal-- or not. Such a life, such a risk...
ReplyDeleteIt sure was a risk. The families were supposed to be approved by a community of local business people but some towns did a better job than others approving homes. But life on the streets of New York and Boston was even riskier.
DeleteI have participated in a Cajun radio show for the past nine years..La Tasse Dr Cafe..KVPI..out of Ville Platte, La and the orphan train subject has come up many times as the decendents of some of the orphans are still there and active in the community. I am sure many were adopted to be workers on farms, but then treated no differently than other children. I also have a friend here whose relative was adopted and had a good life. It was a massive experiment. I would enjoy learning more and wonder if the DNA kits now so popular have yielded more information.
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DeleteIt is my understanding they went to most states, even here in Montana, but oddly enough, not Idaho or Utah. Both are Mormon based.
ReplyDeleteHere's an interesting quote from Wikipedia: "Orphan trains were sent to 45 states, as well as Canada and Mexico. During the early years, Indiana received the largest number of children. At the beginning of the Children's Aid Society orphan train program, children were not sent to the southern states, as Brace was an ardent abolitionist." I'm thinking the earlier trains probably didn't go out as far from New York as the later trains and my lecturer was talking about the very first train when she said its first stop was MI and Iowa was the last. I didn't write that right up above and I'm going to delete it so I'm not dispensing bad information.
DeleteOne of the two Orphan Train Museums is located in Opelousas, La. Just up the road from Ville Platte. I looked up the information that over 2000 children from the train were adopted. I did not mean any criticism of your post but just wanted to add to the information for those who are interested in this subject. I do know the people in Louisiana are very proud to have been a part of the project as it is often discussed on La Tasse de Cafe.
ReplyDeleteI didn't take it as criticism, not to worry. Not all the kids were formally adopted. My state took over 5,000 but because an adopted boy could inherit property families weren't too quick to take that step here. In AZ there was a big scandal because one batch of kids were set up as indentured services and they had a court battle over that. Tons of interesting stories came about because of the trains.
DeleteI have a copy of the novel "Orphan Train" on my bookshelf that I haven't gotten to yet. I found it used in near perfect condition and had heard good things about it. Since we're looking to downsize next year, I'm trying to read my book backlog (ha!) so I don't move those I won't read. Needless to say, it's a fool's errand, but I'm trying. I'll have to put that one near the top of the pile. Very interest post.
ReplyDeleteI've read that book and liked it. It's very popular with book clubs. I'm working on a post for next week that includes my woes about downsizing books. I don't have a lot of fiction to catch up on reading but I sure hate the whole idea of downsizing my books which are mostly non-fiction, collectible and reference books.
DeleteEveryone's having tech problems this month. You are far from the first. I am too. Blaming it on Mercury Retrograde which lasts for another few weeks. I don't get why, but it always seems to happen -- I've been tracking it for years.
ReplyDeleteThe Orphan Trains lecture sounds really interesting. I don't know much about it. I might have to read up~!
I don't know much about Mercury in Retrograde but you're the second person to mention that. Guess I should read up on that. LOL
DeleteYes, some of that History of abject Poverty and Homelessness, even of the most vulnerable, is Heart wrenching and may History never repeat itself! You do crack me up tho' and your Tech Challenged Stories had me laughing out loud! As well as the bit about moving on from Halloween to wondering if Cranberries will be safe to eat this year... is there a Cranberry epidemic I should know about? *winks*
ReplyDeleteGosh, has it been that many years ago that cranberries were killing people before they got pull from the market? Probably. I have a knack for remembering obscure stuff.
DeleteMy explanation of why rebooting so often works in solving tech device problems is that "you have to erase its little pea brain and start over." Glad it worked. Last week, I spent ten hours on the phone with charming Dell tech support folks in India, who all speak excellent English very fast with British pronunciation and Indian accents, after an automatic Windows update went awry and Widows couldn't restart itself. It's a good thing they were such charming company.
ReplyDeleteTen hours with tech support is my nightmare. I have a hard time understanding accents!
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