Tag: Computers

Book:Seniors and High-Tech

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 2 Comments

One day my husband brought home a book he thought I’d enjoy — and it did give me many chuckles, especially as I remembered our own days of learning how to operate this new-fangled device. If you’re young and tech-savvy you can read it and sympathize with computer sales & support people who must patiently explain what a byte is, how to control a mouse, or how far you should back up when your computer gives the order.

My Senior Moments Have Gone High-Tech
© 2016 by Karen O’Conner,
published by Harvest House Publishers in Eugene Oregon

My Senior Moments Have Gone High-Tech by [Karen O'Connor]

Consists mainly of anecdotes about golden oldies who take up using a computer in their senior years, these amusing tidbits have been gathered from learners, teachers, and fixers. As well as humor, the writer offers hope for those who feel their offspring are tossing them into the sea of technology without a life jacket.

Like the woman who set her mouse on the floor, thinking it should work like her sewing machine foot pedal. Or the irate fellow who ordered tech support to come out and see why his printer wasn’t working. The company rep dutifully showed up, checking things out, and asked how long the printer had been unplugged.

This reminds me of my first attempt at using our computer. Bob had purchased one three weeks previously, so he and our daughter (who worked at a computer store) were babbling in this strange language. Which made me all the more determined not to touch the thing. However, we’d been on a Family Reunion trip to Boston and I wanted to write up a long letter to his mother plus several penpals. Rather than hand-write all those pages, I typed it into the computer.

Starting with “Dear Mom, We had this great trip to Massachusetts…” I went on for eight pages giving her all the details. Then I hit PRINT. Nothing happened. I hit it again. Nothing happened. After the third try I called our daughter at work. She asked, “Are you sure it’s plugged in?”

I checked. It wasn’t. I plugged it in. Out came the eight pages. Then another eight. I couldn’t stop the thing! I unplugged it again, then plugged it back in. Out came another eight. I’m thankful my two penpals didn’t seem to mind an eight-page letter that started with “Dear Mom,” accompanied by a handwritten note of explanation on top. And when hubby got home, he showed me how to cancel a PRINT order. 🙂

My husband is talking now of updating our cell phones. Gulp! I still mourn the obsolescence of my old cell phone. It worked so well; to answer a call, you just flipped open the lid.

Anyway, I think this book would be a great Christmas gift for the senior on your list.

Options & Frustrations

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 3 Comments

We have a lovely spring-like day with a temp of -2 C as I write this. Perhaps I should be out walking off my frustrations instead of writing about them, but they say writing is therapeutic, so here’s my tale:

What I wanted was

Dance Shoes + font
(Thanks, Keith, for the fonts tip)

Dreaming of future poetry book covers, you know.

Buying single fonts can get pricey, I’ve discovered, plus you have to buy a “Desktop” license which covers personal use of the font plus, if you wish, an e-book cover font.

But then I saw several Creative font packages produced by SummitSoft, sold by STAPLES, a Canadian office supplies company. With special decorative fonts for holidays and such. YES!

No.

I bought and installed the package last night, but my computer says (a long-winded form of) “No dice!” To be specific, the prompt I get when I try to install them in my current fonts selection is:
“Although new computers can handle up to 1000 installed fonts installed at any time, you should never have more than 500 fonts installed to maintain the best performance. The more fonts you install the slower your computer will become.”

When I hit TEMPORARILY ACTIVATE I get:

“Access violation at address xxx in module ‘Font Management System xxx’…etc.”

I’m told that Windows has close to a thousand fonts installed. That is not to say oodles of different styles. Rather, there seem to be about five different serif type fonts (like TNR, Georgia), five different sans serif type fonts (like Arial, Verdana), plus their Italic & Bold variations, and hundreds of almost identical  fonts. Yes, some minute variations but basically the same standard serif & sans serif fonts. In addition there are a few Courier types, as well as more rounded serif & sans serif versions like Americana & Tahoma.

You will also find a few basic fonts with a bit of flair like Seagull and Arimo, some more unique fonts like Poster Bodoni and Bernhard Mod, a few hand-printed styles like Broadway Copyist. Cursive fonts are Script,  Freehand591,  and Gabriola.

We went into the Windows font programme and discovered that where we get the Western versions of Jhenghei, YaHei, Yi Bati, LiU and Ming LiU, etc., these show up as Chinese and Japanese type character fonts in the windows menu. And you can’t delete them to make room. “Microsoft protected font” the prompt says. We did succeed in deleting the few Arabic and Greek, languages I can’t write in anyway.

So here I am with this marvy fonts package and I can’t even open it to have a look at what fonts are in it, never mind actually use it. Mind you, I’m technologically challenged. It could well be there’s some tech-whizzes out there — probably ten years old — who’d have the package up and running in minutes.

So if you’re thinking of adding a fancy fonts collection to your computer, be sure to have one of those whizzes standing by to assist you.When it comes to technology, options can definitely lead to frustrations. 🙂

Morning Smile

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 2 Comments

I was talking to my cousin last night — she’s just celebrated her 85th birthday — and she tells me she picked up a second-hand computer from someone who had one to get rid of. A brave new adventure and I hope it doesn’t lead to unnecessary frustrations. I can’t leave a message on her answering machine because she hasn’t mastered how to use her message manager — one bit of frustrating technology for her.

I asked her if she could type and she said, “I can learn.” Spelling will be a problem for her, though. Unfortunately my cousin not only lacks basic education, but also has some type of perception issue. She may read a short poem or quote she likes, but when she decides to copy it for me, she garbles the word order and line breaks. So she’s likely to see a lot of red lines on her screen as she types.

However, writing isn’t her goal anyway; I’m sure she didn’t get a printer in the deal. Another senior told her you can play games on a computer, so she’s looking forward to that. I hope it works better for her than her attempts to operate the TV remote control. When I spent a week with her a few years back, I had to call her cable company frequently and ask them to reset her TV because she’d hit the wrong button on the remote and switched it to “Play DVD” mode — then didn’t know how to switch it back. (Being somewhat technologically challenged myself, plus we haven’t had a TV since 1974, I couldn’t figure out how to fix it without help, either.)

Still, I have to admire her willingness and courage to try something new and am keen to see how this technological ‘step forward’ works for her.

Going through old files I came across this bit of wit, my adaptation of one of Murphy’s Laws. Hope it gives you a smile.

Speaking

Flash Drive Lessons

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 2 Comments

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

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 3 Comments

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

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 11 Comments

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.