No more frustrating computer days?
We are going to get a new computer tomorrow. Finally. Our computer is eight years old, which apparently is old for a computer. But then, our tv is sixteen years old and still doing fine, so to me, eight years seems hardly any time at all.
However, our old machine is limping along. Hardly a day goes by without ramming up against its inadequecies. I can’t easily access Moodle. Yesterday I spent an hour on the phone, being walked through the way to get Moodle, and failing, even with a change of password. Finally I had to download another browser than Internet Explorer, which is too lame to do much. I downloaded iCab, which has a little yellow taxi that runs through a snowstorm in the top right-hand corner as the server is working to connect you. It stalled twice on me. Finally, after I’d thanked the IIT girl for her help and decided I just wouldn’t be able to send my essay to my prof, I tried one more time, got Moodle and sent my essay in. But I had wasted an afternoon simply trying to do a simple thing which, if it works, takes all of ten minutes.
I can’t access the blog of Edith, my sister-in-law, which is sad, although I can at least see the photos of her wonderful paintings all over it. There is just a blank where her words should be. I have no idea why, especially since I was able to get it for years. It’s like my not being able to run any more, or dance: it’s just gone.It will be nice to read her words again.
Most websights that involve pictures are also inaccessible. I’m always amazed when I find something I can actually see like other people supposedly can. Sometimes my computer’s age is combined with its being a Mac rather than a PC. And yet we are getting another Mac, an iMac. I guess it’s just like preferring coke over pepsi; you get attached to a brand and feel comfortable with it; in the case of Macs, it’s even part of my identity. “I’m a Mac person,” I like to think. I twitch appreciatively when, in a movie, I see the apple logo on the back of a laptop that the lead character is using. To me, it’s like a masonic handshake; it makes me like that person/character even more. I appreciate the new Mac ads on tv, too, with the Mac person young and artistic and hip and the PC person in a suit, looking suitably out of it. Yup, that’s how I see myself —well, maybe not ‘young’ young, but young of heart, open of mind, of spirit.
