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Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Mind boggling



I had a funny feeling yesterday, it had been my birthday, and I had not received my 2018 car registration and license plate renewal sticker by mail. I looked, and there is no current tag.

This morning I called DMV. Ours is efficient and courteous, so bad news is a little easier to take.  I had to appear with ID and they could see if there was current registration, in which case, for a fee, they could issue replacement registration and sticker.

“Well”, said the clerk, comparing my driver’s license to his screen, “they have your address wrong”.  “I’ve lived here for three years”, I complained. “No accounting for the bureaucrats,” he said, correcting the mistake and passing over my current registration.

That was the easiest part of today.  I have a new computer. Windows 10. My easy peasy Windows 7 is gone. Years ago my computer guru convinced me to use Google. “It’s the future”, Jim said. “You should start with gmail. And Google Drive”. 

Having my life out in the cloud never appealed to me, but the ubiquitous ease of gmail is astounding. It can appear on any device, I’m sure, and there it is, back at fingertips. Though the next generation seems to be texting, instead.

And so I am learning new stuff, like how to locate missing files that did not transfer. Finding an accounting program. Staying out of the Microsoft Store, where I might find original Mahjong. Who remembers that old DOS version? Was it really so great, or just the novelty that appealed?

In spite of the learning curve, I am grateful for one component of the new system. I have a keyboard with registration bumps on F and J. I wore the mark completely from J on Windows 7, that I bought in 2010.


Birthday tulips

31 comments:

  1. A very happy Belated Birthday to you. Love the tulips. Sigh on beauocracy. They are the same the world over it seems.

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  2. Happy Birthday! The tulips are beautiful!

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  3. Happy Birthday. Aren't we oldies good getting to grips with modern technology!

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  4. Hari OM
    ...I don't think I ever had a keyboard that didn't have the F&J bumps... despite constant use. Ugh. Win 10... I know I said it before, but am nursing my Win 7 to the grave if I can... YAM xx

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  5. Happy Happy Belated Birthday Joanne! And good luck with Windows 10! As for the F and J bumps, I never noticed them until now. My old desktop keypad (with Vista) has those worn almost completely off too...

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  6. Happy Birthday, Joanne. I am sure you will have no trouble with Windows 10. You are our champion as there is nothing that you can’t conquer.

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  7. Ive kept my email from california and am glad I did at first because everyone knew me by that address and then I realized the benefits since they have an almost perfect spam filter, windows 10 automatically downloaded on my old laptop so I waded through but it came late after all their glitches. I was using google chrome but have now downloaded duckduckgo which embeds itself into google and works just fine and they do not track anything; I kept seeing ads for things I had look at briefly and I didn't like the fact they track and store everything about me. Happy Birthday to you. Are you back from vacation? I've worn bare spots on many keys on my laptop. ha.

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  8. Happy Birthday. I am so unaware of my surrounds...sigh...I've had this computer for at least seven years and only since you mentioned the registration mark did I notice that they are present on my keyboard.

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  9. Happy birthday! Glad things went so easily at the DMV!

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  10. well, that should keep you busy for awhile. I always wondered what those little dashes on the F and J key were. what does that mean, 'registration marks'? and happy birthday!

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    1. Your fingers know where they are

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    2. they are there so that blind people can centre their fingers for touch typing purposes, much like the raised dot on the 5 of touch tone telephones, for blind people to be able to work out where the other numbers are.

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  11. Happy birthday to you Joanne. And don't ask me. I have the feeling you know much more about computers than I do.

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  12. Happy birthday, good luck with the new computer.

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  13. I wish those bumps were bigger on our keyboard - I use them to orient my hands for touch typing and can hardly feel ours . . .

    Belated happy birthday - and many happy returns :)

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  14. Belated best wishes Joanne. Good luck with Windows 10.

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  15. Don't you just hate when they mess up at a government office?

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  16. I wish you a Happy Birthday, Joanne!!! XXX
    And you do the absolute right thing to stay young: learning new things (instead of thinking that all the old ones were better. Of course: some were, but most were not).
    Though I feel with you very intensely: for a few weeks (!) I lived in the nightmare of AOL not giving me access to my mails - horror! I had not even written the email-dresses into a book, I had not made copies - for years! - of important letters, private and others... honestly, I was shocked! (About myself too: how could I? I mean: the word "cloud" says it all, or? When I think of all the photos, uiii).
    The user help-desk of AOL could not help. Whaaah!
    But then: my son - he managed!!!
    I am so thankful! (And instantly jotted down the email addresses, and will start to copy the most important documents, and delete those things that are not necessary any more - spring-cleaning my computer...)

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  17. Happy Birthday! And yay for mastering, or almost mastering, Windows 10.
    I don't know anything about the Cloud though.

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  18. Happy birthday fellow Aries. Lovely tulips, I have some exactly the same colours in a vase in front of me now. As I was taught to touch type my fingers automatically go to the home keys and so never used or thought about the bumps on F and J but I note my Chrome Book has them.

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  19. I refuse to use any form of Cloud until I am forced to. They are setting everything up so that with some applications you are forced to use cloud. Google is buying everything up and everyone is gathering more and more personal data to sell on to people for so-called 'targeted advertising'. I hate this virtual world more and more, but we can no longer do without it - like food and housing.

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  20. I've used GMail for about 14-15 years, since the early days. Not only can you switch devices, but it stays with you wherever you roam, or whether you switch internet providers. One downside is that some institutions refuse to talk to GMail -- my bank for example.

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  21. Happy Birthday, and congrats on the new computer.

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  22. Hey, happy birthday! And love those tulips and pussywillows -- if that bouquet does say "Spring," I don't know what does!

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  23. Happy Birthday! Such beautiful tulips! Wow!
    And you reminded me that my sticker for this year is still in my purse, since January. Well, I can go change that!

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    1. Mine's still in the car. Pouring rain yesterday, forty mph wind today!

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  24. Happy belated birthday, Joanne! The tulips are lovely.

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