Computer Woes!

 

There’s a chain of computer repair places around town and I’ve been using them for twenty years. I woke up a few days ago to find that my preferred internet browser (Firefox) was gone plus all my photos, documents and bookmarks were as well. I packed up the tower to drop it off but when I got to my branch I found a note on the door that said it was permanently closed and to go to one of their others locations. I walked in to the nearest branch and was greeted by someone new-to-me and I barely got the tower set down on the counter when he said, “I’ve got to be honest with you. Your computer is ten years old and is not compatible with the new Microsoft upgrades coming along. You’re probably going to need a new one.”  I’ve got a Carbonite subscription that should have my documents and photos backed up, I told him, and “Their website says I’m still in recovery mode so I probably didn’t know what I was doing when I tried to get my files back. Can you at least look at it?”

Alongside him, facing out to the customers was an 8”x10” piece of cardboard with handwritten letters written with a black marker that said, “God guides all my steps.” It’s probably based on a Bible verse but it annoyed the heck out of me. I don’t know why that’s important to announce it to your customer base. In my perfect world the only ones who would wear their relationship with God on their sleeves would be the men and women ordained by their churches to do so. I know it isn’t fair to judge the guy by that sign but it made me think I needed to hold my hand over my wallet, as my dad used said about certain people. And we can blame my uncle for that. He could have been the inspiration for the movie, Paper Moon. Only my uncle wasn’t a fictional character going across the country selling Bibles door to door and reading the obituaries and claiming the deceased ordered a deluxe Bible before passing away that had a hefty sum of money still due. My uncle really did earn is living traveling across the country, following the good weather to sell Bibles and other religious trinkets. 

The most memorable time I remember hearing a phrase like “God guides all my steps” was when Uncle Abe---not his real name but close enough---used it as an excuse for why he shouldn’t have to pay my folks back for a couple of hundred dollars he borrowed from them. Whatever he “invested” the money, it was lost---a land deal, a ponzi scam, the ponies, I have no idea but because God guided his steps Uncle Abe thought my folks should just forgive the debt and pray about it. “Only God knows where the money is now and God doesn’t make mistakes.”

For years my dad tolerated my uncle while he parked his camper in our driveway, using our electricity and water and tying up our phone for the 3-4 days that he would be there because it was the only time my mom would get to see her sister. They ate our food and while my aunt helped cook it they never contributed anything---my dad’s hard work that earning the money to put food on the table was chalked up to thanking God for "providing this wonderful meal.” My uncle’s prayers went on and on and I hated the oily way he looked at me while he was saying them. 

There’s a scene in a movie that I think starred Gregory Peck---I’ve tried to find it on the web but couldn’t---where he’s doing a smack-down disguised as a prayer that mocked the idea of giving praise for a meal to God, giving none to the farmer---Peck’s character---who planted and tended the fields, brought in the harvest that his wife then cooked. I saw that movie with my dad once and while he was too kind to ever say anything like that in the presence of his brother-in-law I always thought it would be fun if he did.

The computer guy at the new-to-me shop just called and told me the hard drive is fried. He wants to sell me a rebuilt machine and even though I have a backup at Carbonite he’s not promising he can get my photos and documents back on a new machine. I’m not sure what I’m going to do now but it’s an odd fact of my downsizing process that the day before my computer woes began I was about to take all my hardcopies of my first five years of blogging and the hardcopy of book draft I had to the paper recyclers. Thankfully I didn't. I wish this guy didn’t remind me of my uncle! It would make my decisions on what to do so much easier. ©

P.S. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate working on my laptop? It's old too so I'm crossing my fingers it stays running until I get my computer woes worked out. 

P.S. Again. Since so many people (including the computer guy) mention hooking my keyboard and monitor up to my laptop I think I've made a smart decision on what to do. My laptop is old too...11 years and living on borrowed time. I think I will replace THAT now and skip buying a new tower, etc. until after I move and get settle in. That way I'll be forced to give what everyone else seems to prefer doing a fair shot. Who knows maybe it will make a believer out of me and I won't even need to buy a tower later on. More importantly I won't feel forced to make a decision on what tower now just to put it in storage next month. I do need something to put transfer my photos and documents on now and my old laptop isn't going to cut it for that.

Computer Hell, Life as an Assassin and Country Lunches

I love computers when they work the way they’re supposed to but then for some reason known only to the gods of software and routers, everything changes. My printer wouldn’t talk to my computer and I had e-Bay labels I’d have to print the next day. No problem, I thought. It’s happened before and I breathed down the neck of a young tech guy wearing a black leather vest full of pockets that I lusted after---the vest not the guy---as I wrote down the steps he took to get my printer back online. And I used those directions a couple of times since without a hitch. This time, however, when I followed the steps---deleting the printer and then adding it back on---it didn’t work. 

Long story still sort of long, I discovered my wireless printer wouldn’t work from my backup computer either and Detective Nervous Wretch put two and two together and decided I was dealing with a Wi-Fi issue. Yup, the cell phone also had that explanation point next to the Wi-Fi icon---but wait! My Kindle was still connecting to Wi-Fi and was working! Why? I checked the settings thinking maybe I was piggy backing off someone else’s unsecured Wi-Fi. Nope. I spent way too much time trying to troubleshoot this and that. Found directions that involved turning off everything but the nightlight in the garage in an effort to reboot the whole kitten caboodle. I didn’t have the guts to do it before my e-Bay closings in case I couldn’t get my internet connected again. So there I was on Sunday night after my auctions closed, writing addresses out long-hand so I could get stuff to the post office in the morning. My plan was to enter the tracking numbers at e-Bay, plus write this blog entry and schedule it, before trying the whole reboot thing. If it failed I’d call Sexy Vest back to the house. If no blog appears on Saturday you'll know I'm curled up in a fetal ball wondering why I couldn't have been born in the era when long-distance communication required going down to the telegraph office to watch a guy tape my messages out in Morse code.

Stink bugs: Every fall they come to the south side of my house to embed themselves into the vinyl siding to winter over. Some years I’ve vacuumed them up with a little insect spray so they’d die before finding a way to walk back down the vacuum hose to make a winter resort out of my closet. For a few years I sprayed them with soapy water using a hose attached to a garden sprayer. The soap makes it impossible for them to fly, they die and then I have messy windows to clean. This year Mr. Google showed me how to make a cute little stink bug collector out of a pop bottle. So every evening when they park their slow-moving butts on my house, I’m on sentry duty every fifteen minutes, walking my deck looking for bugs to nudge into my trap. But it took them too long to die and I hated that. They’re only doing what Mother Nature tells them to do and for that they have to die slow? Does that seem fair? This morning I put a little soapy water in the bottle---duh---hoping they’d drown and they did but not before they had panic attacks before finally falling victim to my assassination attempts. Made me wonder if fires, floods and hurricanes aren’t God’s pop bottle trap…and that random thought makes me sound like a rabid, street corner preacher. “Repent your sins! The end is near!” I really do feel like a Supreme Being to my stink bugs. It's not fun to have the power of life or death over so many living things.

Monday was my third Mondays Lunch with my Gathering Girls pals. We carpooled to a near-by village like so many other specks on the Michigan map, that was founded in the mid-1800s on an old Indian trail next to a river. They built a mill, a blacksmith shop and a few other buildings and most are still standing today. One of those buildings was a pub back in its day and is still a pub that serves food and that's where we ate. Their menu says they are an Irish pub with a polish owner and I had a corn beef and sauerkraut sandwich on rye that was wonderful, especially paired with sweet potato fries.

There were six of us around the table and as usual we had lively conversations that went from bucket list activities like going on zip lines and hot air balloon rides to serious topics like human trafficking. One woman had been to a lecture about the sex trade recently where she learned that according to the expert who spoke, we average 400 girls (and boys) who get caught up in the trafficking trade every year…in just our town! Of course, we came up with solutions that ranged from teaching young teens not to be naïve thus easy pry to castrating the guys who’d buy them. I don’t know if the business men at the next table were listening and cringing when it was mentioned using a dull Bowie knife to do the task, but I was proud that I didn’t suggest cooking those balls and adding them to Purina Swine and Pig Feed. Vengeful thoughts might be fun but should never be expressed in public...Oops! ©

Stink bug trap photos from Pinterest.

cut

reverse top inside lower part of the bottle

tape

add a little soapy water

A gentle nudge and a shake causes the slow moving bugs to fall down the slippery slop of the bottle.

The Sexy Tech and Other Tempting Things

I spent four and a half days being a post-surgical toad so Tuesday I ventured out of the house to go to the grocery store. I didn’t need anything that couldn’t have waited a week, but I did need to test my driving and the store is only five miles away using the back roads. (It went fine, by the way.) That morning I had hit a low on the bathroom scales that I hadn’t seen in five years---yippee-I-a!---and I was in the mood to take a break from my diet. I looked at cakes and cookies and ice cream but I rejected them all. Then a 1.75 oz. bag of potato chips found its way into my shopping cart and after I ate them in the car before going home I wondered why I sabotaged myself like that. Oh, but those carbs and salt sure tasted good after a month plus of being on a high protein diet of two shakes and one ‘colorful’ meal a day. I was feeling slightly light-headed when I was standing in the checkout lane and I grabbed that bag of chips, telling myself I needed the sodium. But I had made it that far into my shopping trip without making any bad choices. So I will call the trip to the store an ‘A-’ on the Be-a-Good-Girl test.   

There’s a business I found online called 911-POOP that claims to have francizes all over the country including where I live. I was looking for a service that cleans out dog runs, thinking I could talk them into not only picking up poop in Levi’s pen this winter but also shoveling the snow out once a week. The pen is three steps off the deck and there is no way I can drag my little snow blower down there. I called Monday morning but by Wednesday afternoon they hadn’t returned my call. What good is having an answering service if you’re not going to use it? If I don’t hear back from them soon I’m calling 1 (800) WAA-WAAA next. I can always go to Plan B and stand by the open overhead garage door with Levi on a retractable leash to do his business where my driveway plower has been, but that’s not ideal. Aside from the yuck factor at the front of the house, he’s used to his routine and so am I. On the way home from the grocery store I stopped by the pet store to check out their bulletin board. No luck. I didn’t find a dog run cleaning service posted. I have shoveled snow since I could walk. I actually like doing it. I can’t believe my surgeon won’t let me do it this year! Other than that flaw, the man is near perfect even if he did give me three new scars last Thursday.

Today a nice looking young guy with spiky hair and designer sunglasses propped on the top of his head came to my door. He was wearing a black leather vest with a million pockets like cameramen or fishermen wear. Have I ever mentioned that I’m a sucker for those vests? I have long promised myself I’d own one if I ever get to be a skinny-Minnie. Or if I ever get so poor I have to live on the streets, I want one of those vests. And if I ever go to a nursing home I want one of those vests so I can carry with me all the things I don’t want stolen from my room. When my husband’s mother was in a nursing home half our visiting time was spent tracking down the stuff the resident “shoplifters” carried back to their own rooms---her teeth, her glasses, her shoes and underwear included.

One and half hours later the young man left my house and my whole laundry list of computer issues had been resolved. It was worth every bit of the $150 it cost me. Some of the issues were left over from my Month in Computer Hell last fall that I could never have worked out on my own.  I can now scan photos and file them. I can now edit photos. And I can print a webpage without going through a stupid cloud. Whoever thought that was a good idea for a computer default is crazy. Does anyone really want to send their bank statements to a cloud hovering over God-knows-where just to get a hard copy for your files? Not me. Anyway, my tech world was set right again and the young man who did it all is lucky I didn’t try to steal his vest. It he had been fifty years older I probably would have flirted with him long enough to get that vest off him so I could try it on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black leather pocket vest and it was damn sexy! He was damn sexy which only goes to prove that I might be old but I’m not dead yet. ©

Politicians, Art and Stupid Computers

The dog let me sleep until 10:00 on this fine Sunday morning and that hasn’t happened in a long time. But alas one of his stuffies had to pee and so Levi shoved the bear in my face until I got up and let the two of them out the back door. I thanked them both for the extra sleep. I really needed it after the busy week I’ve had, a week that included seeing the doctor, dentist and audiologist and going to an art class and a fund raiser.

The class:  Friday I got up before the sun and off I went into the morning mist along the river to go to a one day class at the sculpture garden on using pastels. Actually, a half day class and, boy, did the time go fast. We all worked on the same, cookie cutter landscape which made it easy for the instructor to demonstrate technique. She had some of her own work on display and it was impressive. I liked working with the pastels and I can see me dabbling in the median on long winter days.  After class, I had lunch at the gardens and wandered around the temporary exhibit of sculptures from around the world, none of which I’d like to own except for the fact I could sell one and use the money to pay cash for a luxury car or two.  I don’t know, maybe I’m getting too old to understand ‘cutting edge.’ Ya, I know Michael Angelo has already been there, done that with realism----it’s old school---but I still like his naked marble men better than hunks of metal that look like they were produced by a bunch beer guzzling guys in a junk yard in the wee hours after last call. “You wanna have a welding contest?” “Count me in, Bubba!”

Saturday evening I went to a political fund raiser…nothing fancy. It was a hot dogs and beer affair with a handful of political figures coming in to pitch themselves or another candidate. I went mostly because I’ve been going to these for nearly two decades and I know a lot of the people who organize the event. It was more fun when Don was alive and we stayed to the end but I mostly just put in an appearance this year and picked up a bunch of literature. I don’t drink beer but I took a break from my diet to eat a hot dog, beans and chips and to shake a few hands, hoping none of those hands I shook came in contact with someone with coming down with the flu. I really don’t like shaking hands this time of the year…especially at doctor’s offices. Why do they still do that? I learned from Facebook a few days ago that I’ve already been exposed to highly contagious virus that gives you severe diarrhea.  Oh, goodie. If I get it you can be sure I won’t be posting an SOS on Facebook for someone to bring me Gatorade and toilet paper. That’s what phones are for. Is there nothing too personal for young people to post on Facebook?

Have I mentioned lately that computers drive me nuts? You get one thing working just the way you want it, then a mysterious force comes along and changes your settings or otherwise messes with programs and you have to start all over again. It took me several weeks to get my email working after my month in Computer Hell, now it’s gone again. Then yesterday I wanted to edit some photos and discovered I no longer have an editing program, presumably a victim of having to have Windows wiped off my computer and reinstalled. I don’t remember the name of the program I used and loved and now I have to research photo editing programs…and I can’t get back to my eBay sales until I do. I wanted do a heavy round of auctions leading up to Thanksgiving, then quit for the winter months. That’s not likely to happen now. I also can’t do the photo albums and genealogy books I want to work on over winter until I get the photo editing issue resolved. I’m too old for this! Woo is me! I need a grandchild to work some magic on my keyboard and say, “There, grandma, it’s all working again.”

I promised myself I would manage this coming winter’s expectations better than I did last winter in terms of signing up for too many activities that are subject to cancellations due to bad weather. But then the senior hall newsletter came out for November, December and January and I put in my reservations in for eleven events. Add nine Red Hat Society outings and, oops, I did it again. They are predicating another bad winter for Michigan so expect me to be belly-aching, again, about being too chicken to drive to interesting lectures, luncheons, outings and classes or they get canceled due to the weather. Oh, well, as long as all my petty problems remain first world, middle-class problems I am still one lucky widow lady, aren’t I. But if the day ever comes that I have to stand on the deck with a shot gun to protect the dog and his stuffie from ending up in the neighbor’s soup pot then I reserve the right to complain and be heard!  ©

Not the greatest painting, but I haven't picked up a pastel crayon in 35 years and the set they gave us to work with didn't have all the colors I would have liked to use.....excuses, excuses.  The class did inspire me to try the median again, though. I liked it much better than the color pencils I tried last spring and quickly abandon as too frustrating.