TO SOOTHE MY FRAZZLED NERVES
Sooooo, the last time we talked I was waiting for my new
computer to arrive. As you might recall
I was mourning having to lay the old girl to rest and feeling some trepidation
about my future. At the time I
anticipated the transition was going to take place the very next day but it was
a full week later before it arrived and I had the time to make the big change
over. First it didn’t get delivered when
and how I expected, and then I had grandkids here all weekend. I’m a one-thing-at-a-time kind of girl. The ten-year-old grandson sure wanted to get
right down to business and set everything up for me; in retrospect maybe I
should have gone that route.
But, I didn’t. I
waited until Monday morning, and armed with an extra strong mug of coffee, made
my way to my office to do one final check through what I had saved to external
drives to make sure I had everything ready to move over from the old gal to the
shiny new one. It was a ‘go’.
I’m going to take a moment here to speak of my ancestral
heritage. I’m mostly Scottish. The many things that this entails are: I have
fair skin and blue eyes, I’m comfortable in a cooler climate, I love the sound
of bagpipes, and I’m not one to throw my money around willy-nilly. On the one hand, I will buy what I need and
not scrimp on the basics; on the other hand, I’m pretty particulars what these
basics are.
Hence, I purchased only the tower, mouse, and keyboard. I didn’t need a new monitor. My old one was just fine, thank you very
much.
Except, when I hooked the new 2022 computer to the 2010 (or
earlier, who knows?) monitor they would say “hi” to each other and then shut
down. No matter how many times I wiggled
the plugs and double checked the ports it kept happening. Call #1 to someone
who knows more than me resulted in the advice to “go buy a new monitor Jocelyn”. So I did.
You know what? They
really don’t cost that much. Their price
is really minor … and I found out that the new ones are much easier on the
eyes. I wish I would have known that
last year; I could have saved myself some serious eyestrain. Maybe I don’t need new glasses after all.
Home I went with my new piece of the computer puzzle and
hooked it up … to have the same thing happen all over again. The computer and the monitor would
acknowledge each other and shut down.
What did this mean? Was my new
computer a dud? Time to place call #2 to
someone else who knows more than me.
Luckily he was on a day off and happily said “Do you want me to come out
to the farm, Mom?” His father (who knows zero about computers) just laughed when
he saw the car pull into the yard and said “You had to call in the big guns,
eh?” No matter, he works for food.
And he was barely here long enough to rate a plain
hamburger. He took one look at the power
bar, asked me what century it was from, plugged the computer into a different
circuit than the monitor and we were instantly in business. They would actually converse with each other …
but the power bar still seemed to disapprove of what it was being asked to
do. It sounded like there was a switch
that kept trying to flip. I was told “Turn
that sucker off and go get a new one!”
So I did.
I wish I could say that this cured all my woes, but no, it
only solved that problem.
Once I had that new piece of the puzzle installed everything
worked perfectly … until I tried to get my email. The computer struggled to find Sasktel and
dragged its feet to retrieve anything for me.
Of course everything about this computer looks different so I’m not even
sure I’m doing things right. Is it
me? Is it the computer? Or, is it the Internet? Call #3 goes to yet
another person who knows more than me – Sasktel troubleshooting. I feel kind of sheepish about this one. Somewhere in the past I have been given the
same instructions: “Unplug your modem and wait 5 minutes, then plug it back in
again.” He tells me that a person should
do this maybe twice per year … some kind of reset … maybe now that I’ve written
it down I will remember.
So, that’s it, right?
Nothing else can go wrong, right?
Not so fast.
Remember when I said I had everything I wanted saved to
memory sticks? Well, I thought I did. All my pictures are there. Two large single files are there. But, two other multiple files show up as
empty. I need them. I want them on this computer. I know where they are – they are on the old computer. I merely have to unhook the new
computer/mouse/keyboard and hook up the old computer/mouse/keyboard and
retrieve them … and then reverse the hook up again. Minor inconvenience, right? I don’t even have to call anyone, I can do
this on my own.
But, to tell you the truth, I’m feeling a bit stressed. All I want to do is something relaxing. Something that just feels natural to me, so I’m
writing. The keyboard feels different,
the screen is doing strange new things, and I have no idea how I’m going to
save this to copy and paste on my blog page, but that is my next challenge.
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