Buyer’s remorse

We went to the phone store last Sunday. All of us, en masse.  My phone was really acting up, but on a reconnaissance mission earlier I’d learned it might be curable by being sucked dry and reloaded. It seemed like an opportunity to procure a phone for Emily (mine), and outfit myself with a new phone.

Reconnaissance left me with buyer’s regret for not purchasing the new phone last summer, hang the form of the rebate. Verizon no longer sells phones with a two year contract.  They sell phones on time, no interest, no contract, and a plan a la carte. But, I was open to a new phone and to passing the old to the college bound senior.

My sister, keeper of the phone contract, listened to the dollars and cents of saving money by dropping the old contract and buying a new plan. The young phone nerd explained to me that I would prefer a Samsung analog phone to a Motorola, for reasons I cannot recall. As my only reason for another Motorola was because it is an American company (never mind it went offshore long ago), I was easily convinced by technical talk.

The phone fellow went over the highlights of my phone, and my sister, looking on, said “I think I want one of those. I really wish I had GPS.” So, two phones went on the counter, and two eager granddaughters looking over shoulders gleefully recognized now there would be one for each of them to explain to the old ladies. Uncle Tom sat in the chair by the window and watched the trains go by.

There was a stack of tablets near my left elbow, on sale for fifty dollars while quantities last. Now, with Emily’s phone, and a tablet added to the deal, plus cases all around, we were no longer saving money. But we agreed on a divvying up of the extra charges, signed many forms, packed two handle bags with the swag and came on home.

Emily and Laura were in electronic heaven all afternoon, changing ring tones, adding apps, connecting wi-fi, adding email, turning on this, turning off that. Emails from Verizon began rolling in. “You have used 75% of pro-rated data. 80% of pro-rated data. 85%...” We decided not to worry; it was what was left of the old contract, rolled over to the new plan.

By the time I came home from work Monday, I knew I hated Samsung. The phone book, which I use the most, was maddening. Jan was unhappy, too. A flip phoner for fifteen years, her thumb refused to swipe properly and she was missing calls from friends and customers. Only Emily seemed happy; Laura, whose phone still flips, said it must be nice to not have a dwerb phone anymore.

Then the killer email: “You have used all your data. All additional data used will cost megabucks per kilowatt.” Or something like that.

The next day all the goodies went back into the bags and we were off to the phone store. The solution was too simple. Jan returned her phone and after the restorative business happily tucked the old flip phone back in her purse. Bonus—she no longer needed a bigger purse.

My remorse was not so easily solved. The tablet was returned; the phone could not be. Although I thought I’d gathered all the associated chargers, I missed the one that came with the phone. Back to Plan A.1; Emily could have a smart phone. So, the adept young man transferred my new phone back to my old phone, and Emily’s old flip to my new old phone. It took us time to sort through that boggling transaction, and I had to stop and reconstruct it, in order to type it.

And then the painful remorse—the 30% restocking charge means we will be months recouping our “savings.”

A ploy too far

My phone is a smart phone. That is more technology than I ever thought I would need, until four or five years ago. I needed a recording device, and why carry a recorder in one pocket and a phone in another? It was not love at first sight; a smart phone is no flip phone.

I grew accustomed to it, one icon at a time, until the phone became more convenient to use than the computer. It’s easier to make arrangements via texts, for instance, than by email. I like finding the weather forecast for any place I might be visiting, using it to read a magazine while waiting in a doctor’s office, for access to the internet to resolve a point of dispute.

Earlier this year I was in the phone store to get help with square technology, and the enterprising young clerk tried to sell me a new phone; last year’s model of my phone, on sale for a hundred dollars with a hundred dollar rebate. I thought about it. It was shiny red, a big plus, but on consideration I did not want to learn the ins and outs of a new phone, and passed.

The last several weeks, though, my trusty phone has been on the fritz. Missed calls and messages. A grey screen and the tiny bar announcing I could only make an emergency phone call because I had no SIM card. I became the queen of soft reset, but drew the line at the minimum of two soft resets a day.

I went to the phone store today, ready to bite the bullet and learn a new phone. I fooled around with the current model, and it appeared I could tolerate the annoyance of the learning curve. My account was pulled up, and, hello, I was long overdue for an upgrade. I could even have the current model for one hundred dollars plus tax, and a mail in rebate of one hundred dollars. Six dollars and seventy five cents for a new phone! I’d paid two hundred for the one in my pocket.

“How much is a new SIM card?” I inquired. They were free, but they were on order. The clerk fished out my SIM card, blew off the pocket dust, put it back. The phone fired up without a soft reset. I considered, but the lure of a six dollar and seventy five cent phone won over. I’d take it.

The paperwork was humming through the printer; the clerk picked up his pen and began. “Now,” he said, “the rebate comes in the mail, a hundred dollar Visa card with your name on it.” My wallet simply snapped shut. “Well, that’s the deal breaker,” I said. “A prepaid Visa card is not a rebate; I cannot put it in the bank.”

I’ll go back in a week or two for a new SIM card. Beside, that new phone was black.

I thought I was Road Runner, but I may be Wily Coyote or, I’ve absorbed a Niagara Falls of credit card technology in one afternoon.

It took me one trip to the phone store and two calls to the help line to get my cute little square up and running today. At the phone store two young women, I’d guess eighteen and twenty something, helped me download the app to my phone.  The younger one, Amanda, began the download, which took several minutes. Waiting, I said to Morgan, the older, I quit all this technology more than ten years ago and the last mobile point of sale terminal I used was a radio signal transmitter.

“Wi-fi?” queried Amanda. No, I told her, this was before Al Gore invented the internet. An actual radio signal carried the swiped credit card data winging to the processors and the approval back to my terminal. “Wow.”

I became an entrepreneur about the time credit cards were offering revolving credit, not thirty day terms. It was the wave of the future to a forty something weaver with goods to sell. We started with a knuckle buster, an imprinting machine, put the day’s slips into a glassine fronted envelope and took them to the bank to deposit.

Linda still uses her knuckle buster. She tells about a young man at the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts last summer who wanted to interview her about her knuckle buster. He was a Penn State student in a Business and Technology class who had never seen such a thing. Could she process a check with it? He took a picture of it to show his class.

I was not long at out of state shows to realize there is a class of lowlife who depended on knuckle busters to deprive craftsmen of both their goods and their money. We had a point of sales terminal on the wall in the studio by then, and every night I would call home on our 800 number and read the imprinted slips to my sister to key into the terminal. The few iffy cards I took were generally resolved by finding the person in the local phone book and straightening it out.

It was still a cumbersome enough process to look into mobile technology, and we undertook the expense of the radio terminal. The scalawags were more numerous by then, and I learned to look up from my terminal and say “Oh, dear. This card was declined. Do you have another one you might want to use?”

Or the time I looked up into the eyes of a handsome young college man, making about a hundred and fiftyish dollar purchase. “Oh, dear. My screen says I am to keep this card if I can and call the police as soon as you are out of sight. What should I do?” And he said, “Oh, that must be the card I reported as stolen and forgot to throw away. Here, use this one.”

That wonderful little terminal was the end of my credit card processing experience; I sold it to another artist and left the world of sales forever. I thought.

Now I want to process credit cards again, and got the little square and a no monthly charge plan for less than we used to pay for actual point of sale processing. Cute little bugger, isn’t it:

Pretty little app on my phone; that dollar sign there to the right of the middle row of apps. Who could ask for anything more?

After supper tonight I whiled away a few minutes reading my news feed. There was an article in the “picked especially for you” section. On October first, the new and improved EMV credit cards will be deployed by all banks. To convince merchants to accept them, the processors have adopted the expedient of shifting the liability for fraud from the bank to the retailer. As more and more customers pull out their Europay Mastercard and Visa (EMV) chip embedded plastic which is not swiped, savvy retailers will buy the new readers.

Card reading terminals will soon join knuckle busters.  Oh, the irony of being drug into the post millennial era of credit card processing and obsoleted, all in the same afternoon.

Mysteries of a new Sony Walkman

If only I were electronically literate!

A long time ago, in the mix-up of several resident grandchildren with missing earplugs, power cords, and even I-pods and Walkmans, I lent pieces parts of my Walkman, that I had mastered for the sole purpose of taking audio books to the gym. When I reassembled all the parts returned to me, I discovered I was a power cord short, and no one had it, or had one that fit.

Such is life with children. I quit the gym anyway, and life went on without it. I put the remaining pieces in the Goodwill bag and forgot about it, for at least a year. Then I had a burning desire to own a new Walkman and listen to books through the magic connector that goes between my car radio and a Walkman—you know what I’m talking about. I don’t.

I ordered a new device. It arrived with the packaging open, but no obvious problems, so I forged ahead. Except my computer could not recognize the device, and after a couple of days of trying to find a driver out in the ether I realized my power cord had been substituted for one that did not fit the device. I returned that whole problem, and forgot about recorded books again.

Except in passing, I did learn I did not need to scotch the Walkman separated from its power cord by a grandchild; I could buy missing parts at Radio Shack. Day late, dollar short, but somehow that piece of information stuck.

When I began weaving again, and wanted recorded books I scoured the house for my MP3 CD player last lent to Hamilton. No one knew where it was, but my sister located an old CD player, sans power cord and ear phones. Off to Radio Shack, where I purchased those items for a nearly obsolete CD player for just short of the cost of a new Walkman. Since summer I've been weaving and listening to my personal collection.

It came to me this week I can recite whole passages of JRR Tolkien by heart. I finally opened the new Walkman I bought a month ago but hadn't screwed up the courage to investigate. I have a granddaughter in the next bedroom, for crying out loud.

For the record, I proceeded bravely on my own all the way to downloading a book of choice from the library. In my defense, the entire site has changed in my two year absence and I once again forgot the difference between e-books and audio books, but Emily, of course, knows. I have two books downloading as we speak.

In good conscience I can leave Frodo and Samwise with Faramir and start anew tomorrow!   

And the gas is going down

Gas at my station was $2.55 a gallon when I passed yesterday morning. My last purchase, last Monday, was $2.74. Half a tank, I didn't stop, although after the errands and jazz band practice pick up tonight it was closer to a quarter. So, it will be lower—or higher—when I fill the tank.

Gasoline and I go way back; I remember paying twelve or fifteen cents a gallon. Its production must have been heavily subsidized; I don’t know. I do know that price inflation in the seventies was exponential. The pumps indicated cents, with hand lettered $1’s preceding.

OPEC put a strangle hold on the world economy then and the scrabble to alternative energy was on. I wonder how much the need for inexpensive energy gave rise to the alternative life style that brought Mother Earth News into mass circulation. We all read it, even if we didn't gravitate to subsistence living on an acre of land.

Many habits I developed back then are with me now. Turning off my car engine while waiting in line, for a train or at the bank, for instance. My uncle, who worked for Ford, thought it stupid. Mom, who even opened the dishwasher to “air dry” after the wash cycle, cited “saving energy.” As I waited for the jazz band practicers to leave the building last night I decided if it’s even a little colder next time, I’ll leave on my warm car.

Natural gas for heating went into short supply back in 1978, the bitter winter my dad passed away “riding this freezing cold, slow train to Siberia.” Natural gas rationing was threatened, although it did not materialize. Mom kept Dad under an electric blanket, but he never was warm enough. In hindsight a goose down comforter was in order.

My parents kept the house at sixty back then, warmer than they grew up with. It was more economical, and, “saved energy,” to quote mom.  When we all moved in together here, nothing changed. Mom simply wore more clothes than the rest of us. And so it went, until a few years ago, long after Mom left us. We were cold; Jan turned up the thermostat to 65 in the winter. Creep has set in; now it’s 66 degrees. We think back to Mom and feel bad.

When we moved here and had to renovate the entire house to move in, I toyed with installing a geo-thermal heating system under the garden that was not a garden, then. The cost was close to prohibitive and my window of opportunity passed while I dithered. I guess I regret it. When I look at power generating windmills on our skyline I think at least this opportunity is not lost.

I like the giant white turbines revolving slowly in the sky. Someday they will be obsoleted by another energy source and be smelted into electric cars or personal transportation devices. I do not agree with all the policies and devices that have brought us to falling gasoline prices, but I like the cost. And that’s the end of a complete ramble on energy in my lifetime. Except, gas was 2.47 when I filled up tonight.

Analog – digital – time

“Digital” seemed to sweep the world round in the seventies. LED’s, light emitting diodes.  Some men I worked with could afford an LED watch, and pushed a button on their wrist to see the time. The watches didn't pack enough battery power to be lighted all the time.

My father, the engineer, was enthralled by advances in science, and the digital age did not pass him by that last decade he lived. He and mom woke up to a digital radio alarm.  We disputed the validity of that clock for some time. It was completely mechanical, and thus “analog” in my opinion. The numbers were tiny sheets of paper that flipped from one number to the next, with a little clicking sound that made me nuts. I probably still don’t grasp the concept of finite, discrete, the number changes and is gone.

I've never had a digital clock on a wall. I don’t like digital time. Like every child, I struggled with, then learned to “tell time.”  I taught two daughters to tell time, another feat. It was all hard work and not to be thrown lightly away for flipping numbers.

Most of my clocks do tend to the unusual. I have a forty year old Brookstone clock on a wall at work. It registers temperature, humidity and barometric pressure, as well as time.  Another old clock is a Seth Thomas with external hands. Every grandchild has removed its hands multiple times, or multiples of multiples. About eight years of age most were able to fess up and stop.

Twenty five or so years ago I acquired the clock du jour, with singing birds. Like every clock, it had to come off the wall twice a year for a time change, and occasionally for a battery change. Two batteries in this case, one for the bird’s songs. The shorter I became the harder to lift down the clock, so the bird battery eventually did not get replaced. A while back a new battery, then another new battery did not bring the clock into proper time, and I relied on the digital numbers at the bottom of my computer screen while I thought about a new clock.

I found it, an atomic clock! Well, really a radio controlled clock, set by the master atomic clock in Colorado. There were bells and whistles on the clock I saw in a catalog, so I checked my friend Amazon and bought one for about thirty dollars.

I followed the written instructions, then the YouTube tutorial, but my new clock could not find the radio signal. In that event, the instructions said, put it in a west facing window and wait three to five days for it to locate the signal. The only such window in this house is upstairs, Tom’s TV room. I turned it over, with instructions to give it back when it was displaying Pacific Standard Time, and touch no buttons!

Tom is an inveterate button puncher. Something of interest might happen. If not, he punches harder, or shakes and listens for rattles. I needed my clock back, displaying PST, nothing more. It’s been a couple of weeks, but I remembered it tonight and asked if it was telling time yet. Yes, but three hours behind! In spite of that, he touched no buttons. Rather like the grandkids not taking the hands off the Seth Thomas.

I turned my clock over and slid the switch from PST to MST to CST to EST. It came with a switch preset to DST, to be moved only if the clock would reside in a rare place that does not observe it. On the other side the clock hands already were cycling from five to six to seven to eight. I hope the battery does not give out for a long time, as that is the only reason to take it down.

Blogger’s bug

As most of us know, the blogs we follow don’t load on our Google/blogger home page, commencing yesterday morning. It’s a bug they’re working on, they say. How long does it take a whole lot of computer programmers to fix a “bug?” 

Don’t make me figure out how to use Feedly or Google Reader or Fark or those things more savvy folks use. Or, folks with savvy relatives to set them up. Perhaps I already use Google Reader and it has the bug. I don’t know. Here’s where to add you name to the frustrated list:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/blogger/lTtsw3f92Zk/discussion

The most recent blogger posting is all that’s on the home page, although the list of blogs I follow is down the side. Scroll down and select one, then scroll back up to read it is stupid. I realize I don’t often scrutinize that list and can’t recall the last time I pruned it down. So many bloggers not with us, gone for one reason or another. I can’t take them off.

How do you manage receiving the blogs you follow? Are you suffering the one blog home page, or do you have a work around? What is it; I’ll sign up in a minute.

Sly dogs

Synchronize: in time with

I asked Google to define synch. The top line came back with Webster’s definition. Think eyes intently on wristwatches, setting each timepiece to the time called out by the leader of the group.  Now, in the old movies, a plan could be precisely executed.

What does synching do, I next asked Google. A thousand user boards answered, Synch synchs!

I let that sink in for a day, while I read my comments, and looked around the internet for unsynching. (Unsynching is also a word on thousands of user boards.)

In my mind’s eye I saw all the brooms in Fantasia carrying buckets of water, the music synchronized; the action relentless.  The applications, or uses of our devices are synchronized (oops, synched) to the wand of our device’s conductor.

The electronic world is synchronized to travel the information highways, mostly in harmony. There is no benevolent mind intoning for the greater good. It simply is for the greater ease of information, commerce, recreation, communication. All the ageless activities of man, facilitated by the speed of electrons and radio waves.

The option to unsynch seems to be parked in every device and every application. I found some easily. I can disconnect Chrome from my Google account. I can unsynch the data back up from my android phone. Free at last…

But what happens. If my phone data isn’t backed up, it is no longer available to be restored on the occasions I get stupid and lock up my phone. Soft reset, my miracle go to, would have nothing to put back in my phone. No apps, no numbers. NO GOOGLE MAPS!

What if Google is disconnected from Chrome? Apparently my Google account (Blogger!) is used by Chrome to encrypt and safeguard my internet sessions.

There is no going back. We bought into the ease of information in a flash, phone calls at our fingertips. Even my sister, with her old flip phone in her purse, bought into the system with the iPad that’s in her purse, too.

That’s the long and the short of it—this technology is predicated on everything working together. Everything running on the same information highways.  Gatekeepers along the way protect some of our data by encrypting it, but there is a trade off for them to be out there working for us for free. The gatekeepers fund themselves by selling advertising.

No going back. I am many light years from my first phone number, Hemlock 9805, that I memorized at age three. No going back and not going back.

Hemlock 9805

And we thought the government snooped…

Recently I read that Facebook tracks what I don’t post. I don’t post on Facebook, except to cheer on my nephew’s quit smoking endeavor. But, if I would write “Tommy, you little addict, you’ll never beat it. ", reconsider, and don’t hit enter, the big processors at Facebook remember I wrote it. If I would start over in another box, “Tommy, you…” Facebook will fill in the box with everything I already wrote. Just being helpful.

What does Facebook do with all the posts we've thought better of and never entered? Keep them safe, like Target? We all know what happened to millions of their transactions recently.

Google+ is completely incomprehensible. Google already knows everything about me; it can prefill my queries faster than I can type. Google knows me because Blogger belongs to Google and you can’t have one without the other.  I have a Google email address I do not use. My phone knows it, and uses it to email phone pictures to my real computer.

I get emails that my son-in-law shared with me on Google+. I have no idea. I do like him, but I won’t open the emails. He has my phone number and my email; we can talk.

Google+ sent me a message recently, with a picture I used here on my blog:

A moment from this week ready to share on Google+

It also informed me the AutoBackup on my phone automatically saves my photos to Google+.  But I took that picture with my autonomous Nikon and it is nowhere except on my hard drive and on Blogger.  Does Blogger automatically save to Google+?

I also read recently that every smart phone picture is stamped with the date and GPS coordinates. That is over the top.

Everything we do, and apparently do not, post out there, is available. I have locked down my grandchildren’s internet access; the most they can look at are Donald Duck cartoons, unless I type in the magic code, behind their back. I also get a spiffy weekly report of what they looked at and tried to look at.

That should work in reverse, too, but probably never will. My project for the afternoon is to learn how Blogger saves to Google+. I also must end my phone automatically saving my photos to Google+. It’s in the fine print somewhere; I’ll find it.

How I manage technology

I do manage technology, but incrementally.

I push some virtual things too hard or not hard enough, too quickly, too slowly. When all else fails, I hand the offending device to someone who knows more, to make it work. Generally a grandchild.

Some applications are too big to understand.  I am past believing “it’s intuitive.” That’s mean geek speak for “you’re too old, give it up.”

To install and initialize a really big application I read the manual. I read the internet.  I may try a couple of YouTube videos. But in the end the instructions must be condensed to one page, step by step, with soothing phrases interspersed: “when you have done that, a green light will blink, and you are ready for the next step.”

If my instructions do not make me comfortable, I drag the piece of technology to someone I’m sure can help. Recently it was my car. I dragged it to the phone store.

I’m no stranger in the phone store. I’ve occasionally put my phone on the counter and intimated a replacement might be in order as the damn thing no longer works. “Did you try soft reset?”

That means hold down volume down. Then add on/off.  And hold and hold and hold and soft reset begins and solves everything. I wrote the instructions in little letters on a slip of paper and taped it to the back of my phone.

Then I got a new car. New to me. With a phone icon in the panel. I could ignore it forever, except the car knows I have a phone and tries to answer if it rings in my pocket. Complete confusion.  I went to the phone store and found Calvin. Named for Calvin Coolidge, thirtieth president of the United States, and proud of it. Now that’s a twenty something to pay attention to.

Calvin “synched” the phone with the icon. Don’t ask. Now a nice lady tells me I have a call and push the synch. That means push the phone icon. I do, and my caller and I chat away on the radio. Lovely. If I am on the phone when I get into the car, the car takes over the call. When I get out of the car, I must get my phone out of my pocket to continue the call. It all works.

Calvin said I could come back and he would synch the button that calls out. I have to teach it to call Ann if I say “Call Ann.” Too much, that will never happen.

There was red everywhere around me yesterday, and I had my camera. But it was out of battery! I took all those pictures with my phone. I have learned to send the pictures to my pc email account, then save them to my editing program.

Even sending all those pictures only four at a time, I could not receive them. I spent several hours, and accomplished nothing when I left to get Hamilton at noon. We stopped on the way home for the picture of the crows at the three red maples. Nothing from earlier in the morning had arrived in my email account when I looked after lunch.

I called Calvin. Even simpler than soft reset. The USB that makes the charging cable into a wall plug—pull it from the plug, stick it into the computer and the other end into the phone. Oh, and turn the phone on.  The computer offers a choice of several programs, one of which was my photo editing program and I clicked on through just like it was my camera.

As it was.

Calvin asked if I've reconsidered activating outgoing car phone calls.

No, I haven’t.

Another technical term

I was not interested in going to work this morning, but I did. Not early.

There sat that shiny new computer, in all its Windows 7 glory.

I wandered over to the road department.  The men on mowers were gone.

I filled my water and went back to the computer.  Pushed the button. It fired up, just like that.

I tried email.  A prompt to register Microsoft programs.  But it crashed in a second, for want of an internet connection.  Oh, well, I would add that to my list for the technicians.

I tried to open a document. The same prompt, the same result.

I called tech support.  I spent the next five hours watching techs remotely shove around my cursor. Once I said, “Ed, I’m putting this phone on the desk to go to the washroom.”

“Sure, no problem.”

Ed gave up and turned it over to Gregorio.  Gregorio resolved the inability to register my programs on line. I’d have to do it by phone, then text him to start on the other problems.  Three hours!

I got that done in a New York minute and texted him, “I’m going to lunch.” He replied “Me, too, back in 30.” I replied I’d be back in an hour and went home for a leisurely apple with peanut butter and no stress.

One o’clock, back at it. I explained the missing folders that George said were on the golden transfer disc. Gregorio was not hopeful.  In fact, he bluntly said “No, they were on your old computer, which was wiped yesterday.”

But, he humored me.  I  put the disc in the drive and he sent those files whirring up and down the screen. I recognized many of them.  My old friends in the documents folder. My old friends in the accounting program.  But the lovely names I’d given the folders in my old email program did not go by.

Gregorio pressed me.  Did you save them as instructed.  Of course they were saved.  To be absolutely sure, I gave the instruction sheet to Darius.

What name did he put in the first line?

My name.

Long silence.  The penny crashed. The transfer program was not looking for me, it was looking for the auditor of state file.  And now retrievable me is irretrievable; the old computer wiped clean before I tested the new one.

“Well, “ I said to Gregorio, “shit happens.”

“Yes,” he replied, “Sheet happens. Eef you need any more help, you call me.”

Up is the only direction left.  I’ll be back, after several long days of construction, as there is nothing to reconstruct.

Distraught and downhearted, but not defeated

I hustled this morning; ate my breakfast, skipped emails and blogs. I was out the door and in front of my township computer by 9 a.m., to greet the technician engaged by the great State of Ohio to install my new government accounting computer.

He arrived at 10:30.  Traffic. As I live in the middle of a large area currently untrafficed as a result of the shut down of the national government, I was inclined to put it down to lying abed.  But I was gracious and carried on; I finally had the technician to install the computer that was delivered August 31^st.

There is a protocol for saving all the data on the old computer and installing it on the new. Two hours were required to run my old computer through the protocol.  It was a completely hands off affair; the State of Ohio provided the program to gather the data and reinstall it. 

While that happened the young man (named Darius, can you believe), unpacked the new one. Then we chatted and I told him some features I knew locally of our federal park, which might reopen for his pleasure some day. He is a great bicycle enthusiast, and it’s not like we don’t have hundreds and hundreds of miles of bicycle trails, starting just outside the town hall door.

He’s from the central part of the state, and had no idea we even exist, up here.

Then the transfer was over and I noodled around to see what is going on. 

First, we have been migrated from XP to Windows 7.  Although I am used to it at home, it’s a new shock at work. I’ll get used to it.  I checked the all important government accounting program. It’s there.  I checked My Documents. It’s there. I can’t find the scanner image manager, but I will.

I checked email. No addresses. No folders and folders of public records. I checked for bookmarks on the internet, like the site I use to pay federal withholdings.  Nothing.

Darius direct dialed a super secret help line number. I sat in mute silence.

Darius and George (I know George; I’ve been in big enough computer trouble in the past to be connected to him) exchanged technical banalities. All systems can fail. No code is perfect. The protocol was complete. This was unforeseen.

The sentence of death: “Yes, I’ll relay that to the customer.”

Bottom line:  Darius did nothing wrong.  Underscore line: the customer will have to call the Ohio Auditor of State, who is assuming responsibility, to see if their technicians can devise a solution to find the missing bits and pieces on the disc of gold, the one used to gather the data.

Darius went on his way at 2:30, late for his second installation of the day. I came home. I’ll think about it tomorrow.

Soft reset

My phone does more than I know of.  My grandson wonders why gramma needs so much phone; gramma had a flip phone last summer and learned to text less than a year ago.  The crux of the matter was the manner of the death of the flip phone.  It fell into a toilet at a wedding.  It died on the spot.  The marriage ended about a year later. 

Just like marriages, there is no guarantee that phones will withstand circumstance.  The little fellow was drownded and there is no warranty replacement for a phone plucked from the toilet. 

I have owned a mobile phone since the 1990’s, when they fit in a big purse, not in a pocket. My first phone came with the plan.  Over the years I upgraded the phone four or five times, and the upgrades all came thanks to extending the contract two more years. 

I had to pay for this replacement phone! There was no contract extension long enough to throw in a free phone.  Then, too, the price for the smart phone was almost the same as the price of a new flip phone. I took a deep breath, and went straight upgrade.

That was six months ago.  I won’t confess how many months I spent learning the smart phone’s smarts.  Let me just say I now have ten icons on the screen, and I rolled them out one at a time.  I moved Sarah, my navigator, to the dashboard about three months ago.  I like her best of all.

Now I’m OK with change, but I don’t find it wonderful.  So when the green blinking light would tell me I should download some upgrade, I didn’t.  The screen didn’t tell me how it would change my phone, only that change would happen.  That didn’t please me.

One morning I took the phone off the charger and saw an ominous warning.  Uninstalled changes were backed up a country mile because of my neglect and would I kindly do something.  I relented.  I will admit it was still downloading after my shower and after I got dressed, but it was done when I finished breakfast.

Nothing seemed different about my phone, until I fired up Sarah last Saturday for a trip to the near west side of Cleveland.  She took me the three miles to the turnpike without incident, then told me to go east and quit talking.  Hamilton told me her little green arrow was still going west, but she said nothing.

This afternoon I had my first opportunity to take Sarah back to the phone store.  She still had nothing to say for herself.

“How unusual,” said the young man at the counter.  I wonder if he believed me.  He did agree she might have choked on her upgrades.  “Download the navigation app again,” I suggested. 

“We’ll just try a soft reset.” He pressed the off and volume down switches simultaneously. The screen collapsed into its middle and then reappeared.  “Let me know if it works,” he said.

I’m happy to report, Sarah is back.  Soft reset it was.  I wonder if those buttons can be found on people.

The phone that drowned

J (Joanne) PS

I live in the catbird seat.  In eight hours or less, driving, I could be in Chicago, New York City, Louisville; Washington DC, Virginia, at a show.  I started before there were cell phones.  Although we did have a friend with an early monster that filled up her purse.  And I did own a cell phone the instant they were practical.  Concerning the amount of cash I might wind up carrying, our accountant asked me if I carried a gun.  “No, Bob, I carry a cell phone.”

My directional dysfunction does not even rise to joke worthy.  I’m pathetic.  “She means the other right,” is heard standardly in my car.  I have a compass, and can tell what direction I’m going, but need to squeeze my eyes shut and mentally orient the compass in order to turn and go a different direction.  Not good at stop lights.  In order to drive four or five hundred miles and arrive at a specific location in order to set up a show, I needed a system.  Mine was an envelope.  Business size.  To get to New Paltz, for example, the first line on my envelope said I80E to exit XX, I84N.  Second line said I84N to exit XX, route 208 north to New Paltz.  Third line told me to turn left at the light in New Paltz.  Fourth line to turn left on the fairground road.  Then I had several lines to get me to the motel.  I did not deviate, even if other people said “We could probably get there if we took that road.”  I could tuck my envelope in my steering wheel cover and follow my instructions line by line and get there.  I took good care of my envelopes, added notations, noted when exits changed, occasionally found a better way around towns.  I was my own GPS.

When real GPS systems came along, I didn’t fall for it.  I road with friends who were always fiddling with theirs, then trying some road or another, saying their TomTom needed recalibrated because the route number had changed, things like that.  When Carol and I went to Pittsburgh last summer, fortunately she knew where we were because her GPS didn’t have a clue, going or coming. 

GPS just frustrate me; they don't even sound like someone riding shotgun and saying turn right up there where the red car just turned.  The last time TomTom rode in the car with me we circled a new doctor's office for half an hour.  I finally pulled into some parking lot and called.  "Oh, yes" said the nice receptionist.  "GPS puts you on the wrong side of the over pass.  You can see us from where you are.  Come on over."

MapQuest and I get along famously.  They even write out the instructions just like I used to put them on the envelope.  I should be collecting a royalty.

Great technology

I’m working my way through dad’s slides, scanning them.  I’ve accumulated small expertise in scanners  the last couple of years I’ve used them.  No depth of understanding, only a trial and error accumulation of what mouse clicks perform which part of the job.  For manipulating scans I had Photoshop on my last computer, version 2000.  As in eleven years ago.  I gave Picasa a go when I got the new computer, and quickly declared it way over my head.  I ended up with Windows live photo gallery.  The logo looks like an askew marigold. As my mother said about so many things, it’s built for comfort, not for speed.  Even does things my eleven year old Photoshop couldn’t envision.  I like it.

Two hundred of the four hundred odd slides I selected are scanned and edited.  I continue to admire my dad’s camera skills.  He encountered pictures in the army; he spliced together aerial photos to make reconnaissance maps.  This was the 1920’s; I’m sure the maps all were of Georgia.  He acquired cameras I saw him use when I was a child.  There were a couple of large format cameras, some bellows Kodak’s.  A tripod.  Light meters, of course.  In 1953, just before he went on an assignment to England, he bought a Kodak 35mm camera that he used for the next twenty odd years.  He only used color positive film—slides—and his choice was Kodachrome 24 or 48 ASA.  Forty and fifty years later the slides look like the first day out of the box.

I think how impressed my dad would be with the scanner, and even more with the editing tools.  He didn’t leave me any red eye to deal with, but there are many pictures I know he’s pleased I have cropped to feature his subject.  And I’m happy I didn’t give up on the scanner I thought was about ten inches square, but arrived in a small suitcase with the usual absent instruction manual.  I don’t do well with on-line, I need to keep my finger under the line of instruction I am following until it’s in my head.  Oh, well.  I’ve got it down now.

Here is the oldest slide in the box, my sister Janice in 1954.

And here is a slide from 1968, my Aunt Ruth and her Aunt Eva.  Aunt Ruth is dad’s next to youngest sister and Aunt Eva is Eveline Cecelia Hogue, a younger sister of dad’s mother.  I got rid of a lot of the laundry, dad, but I’m not good enough to turn the remaining sheets into something else.

One last confession.  I bought a new camera last year.  It only takes eight pictures, which really irritates me, but I’ve worked around it in the little bit I’ve used the camera since I bought it.  I’m going to Wisconsin next week and want to take the camera so I decided to spring for a bigger memory card than the original equipment.  I found a person at Office Max who knew which card would fit into my little Kodak, and even upgraded myself from the 4GB she recommended to 8GB, only ten dollars more.  “Would you like me to put it in for you?”  “That would be so nice!  Wait a minute, there’s a card in there, though,” as she was sliding the new card into the slot.  “No there’s not.  It’s empty.”  An ahha moment—no wonder the screen says internal memory full after eight pictures.  Can you believe I can actually scan and crop slides.

Why the subwoofer is wasted on me

You remember Linda.

The one with attitude.

I  have less attitude only because I’m shorter.

We’re good friends for a lot of reasons, not the least of which, we have stood together in the aisle of a show and said “May God strike me dead if I ever do this show again.”  That was twenty-five years ago at a show in Harrisburg that will remain nameless.  I may have to write about standing in the same aisle at the same show one other time, ten years later, with Linda, and saying the same thing.

Linda sends me emails about events I should never forget.  As if.  But I see she has no intention of ever starting a blog of her own so I’m happy to tell on us.  She called about something last night that ended in a friendly argument about SPAC.  Of course I was right; my memory is infallible.  I had to send some follow up information by email attachment, so all I put in the header was Ray Charles.  Shorthand for “I’m still right.  Take that!”

I came home from a hard and stressful morning at work (no possibility), and found a return email with a newspaper attached! Header:   James Brown.

SPAC is the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga, New York.  They have an annual jazz festival.  There also was, but no longer may be, The Art Show at the jazz festival, a show produced by Vermont Craftproducers and Charley Dooley.  A great venue of shows in southern Vermont and parts of upstate.  I exhibited at the Hildene shows, and at the SPAC jazz festival and others.

The SPAC festival was totally unlike any other show I did.  The grounds were packed with music lovers from the start to the end of the festival.  It was its own little community.  Do not be in the path when the gates opened; you’d be bowled over.  People attending had their own plan for securing prime real estate for the day, which involved sending the fastest runner in first with a blanket or a chest or a chair to stake the claim.  The rest followed in a wave and the temporary housing set up for the day ranged from a blanket on the ground to dining tents with fairy lights and recliners.

Between sets the Art Tent would be busy; when a headliner performed we had lulls to breathe.  We could not begin loading out until the last performance began on Sunday night, generally after 10:00 pm.  And, quietly, quietly, no disruption to the listening audience. 

Linda is a music lover, I guess.  She goes to operas.  She goes to concerts.  She plays the piano.  She likes me in spite of my tin ear and the bucket I can’t carry a tune in.  The waste of all that SPAC jazz on me did bother her no end, though.  She never exhibited at this show, but one year she volunteered to be the roadie so someone could appreciate the venue.  And, I don’t think she believed me about being run down by jazz lovers. But from her side of the tree she took a picture of me on my side of the tree.  We did not get back to the art tent soon enough and the gates had been opened.

We worked two long hot days at the show, and Linda heard and saw jazz musicians everywhere.  In the big arena, on big screens overhead, break out sessions on wooden platforms all around the grounds.  I think she was in jazz heaven.  It got to be Sunday night, and the headliner started around 10 pm, just as the art show organizers came around and told us to begin quietly packing up to leave.  I was my usual hot, tired, hungry and ready to start the two hour load out.  The headliner was on the big screens and singing away.  I could hear him and if I looked up, see him.  I kept on packing and toting. 

Poor Linda.  “I’ll never see him live and in concert again!”  “But we can hear him!”  “No, it’s not the same.”  I kept on packing and toting.  Now she tells the story of the night I wouldn’t let her see James Brown.  “No, Linda, it was Ray Charles.”

On the phone last night she said I needed to write about the James Brown night.  “No, Linda, it was Ray Charles.”  Just to rub it in, I put Ray Charles in my subject line when I forwarded whatever she wanted. 

Here’s the newspaper she sent me.  Ray Charles performed on Saturday.  James Brown on Sunday.

Here’s a You Tube tribute to the Godfather of Rock and Roll she sent me. 

Linda, you can leave any comment you want, you earned it.  You worked on this one as hard as those fans charging through the gate.  At least I know who Ray Charles is!

Subwoofer

The twenty years I was a weaver I lost track of the world of computers.  I bought a new computer in the late 1980’s, about the time Bill Gates was taking over operating systems and my world of DOS was being edged out by icons.  Not today’s icons; those icons were identical and only identified by the title printed under them.  It was maddening, frustrating, stupid, I didn’t have time in my life for icons.  I made my son-in-law put my brand new computer in DOS mode.  I had my accounting program, I had Lotus©, I had weaving draw down software, I was happy.  I skipped Windows 96 and 98.  Then Y2K was upon us.

To fall for it or not.  The accounting program people assured me their software would not be affected.  Good.  On the other hand, the computer was more than ten years old and showing its age.  The dial up internet access was not always reliable, due, according to the very young techs I spoke with, to the age of my operating system.  A new computer it would be.  But what.  How to figure it out.

 I turned to the younger generation.  This time to my other daughter’s fiancée.  Bill, I need a new computer.  Get on the Dell website and pick it out for me.  I watched over his shoulder as he put everything I would need in a shopping cart, whatever that was.  OK.  OK.  OK. 

The new computer arrived in a lot of big boxes.  Another young friend came and unpacked it.  Then she plugged a cable from the old one to the new one and slid all our brains right down the line.  Magic.  Bill and Beth were around from time to time and I’d get one or the other to tweak things about Windows 2000, but on the whole is wasn’t too bad.

One day Beth looked up.  “What’s up on that shelf, Ma?”  “Don’t know,” I replied.  “It came with the computer.  Bill put it up there.”

“Why does my mother have a subwoofer?”

I have upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP to Windows 7.  I still have my subwoofer.  The young techs who work on my computer now are amused. Every mother-in-law should have a subwoofer.  Every mother, too, I imagine.  If I used my speakers I’d probably know what it does.  Beth and Bill gave me the cat to sit on it.