Tag Archives: Computers

Flash Drive Lessons

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salesman + title 2
The older gentleman was fishing in his coat pocket as he approached the customer service desk. Mark greeted him with a cheerful, “How may I help you, sir?”

The customer pulled out a small bag with the store’s logo on it and plopped it on the counter. “My wife got me these for Christmas and I wanna return them. Useless things don’t do nothing for my computer. Nothing at all.”

Curious, Mark upended the bag and two very ordinary flash drives fell out. He picked up each one and examined it for damage. “They appear to be okay…”

The man continued his complaint. “I plugged the one in and nothing happened. I tried the other and still no change. So I plugged both of them in. They made no difference whatsoever.”

“Excuse me? What difference were you expecting them to make?”

The man scowled. “They’re flash drives, right?”

Mark nodded, totally clueless.

“My computer’s old, like me, see? Well, a couple of weeks back we were at my nephew’s place and he was telling us he’d bought himself a new computer and a couple of flash drives. Got them right here in your store.”

“I see,” said Mark, though the picture was still fractured.

“He was showing us his whiz-bang machine and what all he could do. Man, that thing was fast! Click-click-click and he was all over the internet. Weather, maps, whatever, all in a flash. So I says to my wife later, ‘I need to get me a couple of those flash drives to speed up my computer.’ She got me these for Christmas but, like I said, they don’t do nothing.”

“Uh…but flash drives are just storage.”

The man looked bewildered. “I thought they’re supposed to drive something?”

“Listen, sir. Just let me call one of our sales reps and he can explain what a flash drive is and how it works.” He pushed the intercom. “Pete to Customer Service, please.”

~~~

At lunch time Pete sat down beside Mark in the staff room and gave Mark a nudge with his elbow. “About that fellow with the flash drive problem… That’s called passing the buck, you know. You could have explained just as well as I.”

Mark grinned. “Can you forgive me? I could see myself being tied up all morning. I noticed he didn’t come back for his refund.”

He gave Mark a thumbs-up. “Sure I can. I sold him a new super-speed system , plus he kept the flash drives.”

Visiting a Favourite Site

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Fandango’s prompt word: ROUTINE

While my husband and I are enjoying a relatively normal day at home, today’s a break from routine for most of the folks here in Canada: Thanksgiving Day. A holiday for most working people at least, and for many it’s a time to gather with family and gobble turkey, mashed potatoes, veggies and pumpkin pie. I think there’s usually a play-off football game happening somewhere as well.

For me it’s been a day to visit one of my favourite sites, Troutswirl, the Haiku Foundation’s blog. I was going through an older post where poets shared verses about the sights seen in meadow and field. Here’s the link, if you’d like to take a look.

Which has inspired me to write my own verse, suitable for this post-harvest season we’re in:
out-of-work scarecrow
fallen in the wind
shredded by young coons

This is also the day I can’t get proper responses from WordPress on my desk computor. I can’t fathom what ails it, so I’m working totally on my laptop. One issue here: the keyboard is bilingual — and the spell check is all francais. It’s highlighting almost every word I type as a spelling error. 😦

The Word of the Day challenge is FATHOM, a very useful word. For some time now I’ve been trying to fathom why I get into obssessing about small issues. (Was I always? Is it old age settling in — or the result of chemo?) Molehills so soon become mountains.

This prompt gives me a new senryu:
sounding the issue
I fathom the wrinkles
of my obssession

Maybe I’ll print this off and tack it on the fridge. 😉 I’d like to be more aware of when I’m sliding down that slope and catch myself, learn to skip over the issue. Procrastination should come in very handy here, right? Worry about it later.

For over thirty years I’ve had a friend with mental health issues (paranoia) and talk about obssessing! A look from someone — always interpreted as negative — can set her off on a deep examination of how hateful that person — and everyone else in the world — feels toward her. She could spend an hour on the phone with me, analyzing all her interactions with that person.

I’ve discovered that you can’t fight fire with fire. You can’t reason with obessession, nor counteract it with positive thinking. “Try and look on the bright side” has never worked for her. Likewise the commonsense, “Most people don’t even know you, never mind hate you,” goes nowhere. I’ve learned to deflect her thinking into a different avenue altogether, by reminding her that someday the troubles of this life will be over and we’ll be in that better world where love and peace govern everyone’s heart. She starts thinking down that line and her fears over today’s evil plotters shrink to a more manageable level.

I looked outside a few minutes ago and saw big white flakes coming down. A quick flash of winter again. Well, we can be thankful that our weather is changeable rather than boring, and we’re not subject to hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.

Beset By Techno-Trials

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Fandango’s challenge for today: TRIALS

Very fitting, seeing I am having serious trials with Word Press on my PC. In the first place the computer is slow to load and obey any commands. Secondly, blogs I click on, wanting to read the latest post, often come up squashed to the left side of my screen so I have to click on the title to make the blog come up normally. Sometimes it just won’t.

I don’t see LIKE buttons on anyone’s blog, just a tab saying “Loading…” Worst of all, I can’t customize or access my dashboard to make any changes. I don’t know what ails the thing; it works fine in with all my other programmes.

Thankfully it’s business as usual working from my laptop, everything comes up as it’s supposed to, including the WP Administration. Are any of the rest of you having trouble with WordPress or is it really all in my PC’s electronics?

You’ll notice the lovely header I put up yesterday in memory of our recent snowfalls. I’ll soon have to replace it, though, as the temp today is supposed to be 7̊C ( 44 F) and on Sunday 11̊C. (52 F) I was just hoping for a smidge of sympathy from the WP crowd. 😉

Now here’s a chuckle for you. We writers have our TRIALS and one of them is wandering metaphors that settle in the wrong part of the sentence. Actually this perfect illustration comes from the book Sixth Cabin, A Writer’s Retreat Mystery by Kathi Daley. This is a very interesting cozy mystery with a rare — SPOILER ALERT! — relatively happy ending. And fine editing except for this one eye-catcher:

What the Well Dressed Burger — or Jack — is Wearing…

I sat in the waiting room with Jack eating a cold hamburger wearing a dress that cost more than my first car.

The New Laptop

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“Look! This laptop is loaded with the latest and the best software programme available,” he proclaimed, holding up his newest acquisition.

“Right. For the next two months.” His wife looked at the clerk, rolled her eyes and sighed. She’d been checking out jigsaw puzzles at the stationery store next door, now she berated herself for not being here in time to officially protest this purchase.

The clerk who’d rung up the sale sensed an approaching atmospheric disturbance and strolled toward the accessories aisle. She’d be within shouting distance if the customer asked for a refund in a minute or so.

“Dearest,” said the wife in a longsuffering tone. “Remember the last time you changed computer programmes and it took me three weeks to figure it out enough to do our women’s club monthly newsletter? Two months ago you got me this new cell phone with all the bells and whistles, and I still haven’t figured out how to reply to incoming messages.”

“It’s not so hard to figure out. Besides, your old phone was a dinosaur.”

“So is my brain. I’m technologically challenged, remember? You can’t keep throwing new devices and new programmes at me.”

“You have to keep up with the times, dear. You’d still be working with WordPerfect 3.0 if I wouldn’t have upgraded.”

“And Word Perfect 3.0 worked just fine.”

He sighed. She sighed. The marriage counselor standing behind them at the cash register grinned — and pulled his business card out of his shirt pocket.