Any of us who work with computers, or use them strictly for recreational use, know what a great thing that can be.....when they work. We also know what frustration can result when they don't.
Since hubby and I have entered our "premature retirement", we have continued to do a daily 30-minute podcast for all the former radio fans who love the Big Band music he used to play. The free service we use is a "real time" format, so it takes us about 30 minutes per day to play/record the music with our jokes and comments recorded in between. We did the entire show this morning, did our sign-off......and when hubby started to click us off, the entire show was gone. It showed that we still had a few minutes left, but everything recorded to that point was gone. Enter frustration.
We'd already had internet connectivity issues before starting the recording and ended up hard-booting our wireless receiver to settle that problem. So, our frustration level was possibly a bit higher than normal ("our" being hubby.....I was doing housework while he set things up). Even once we'd reconnected, hubby couldn't get on his own blog site on his computer. But, since I could get there, we were okay for reading his show features off my screen. We finally just walked away from the computer for a few minutes, then decided to try it again. That time everything went like clockwork. We were both happy when hubby posted the podcast and there was 30 (or nearly so) minutes of recording!!
I learned to type as a high school sophomore on an old Royal manual typewriter. Baby, have we come a long way since then! The ones I admire are the generation above me who have braved learning the computer. My 88-year-old mother-in-law and 91-year-old father-in-law are both crackerjack computer users. Caroline uses her computer to do Facebook, email, write stories of former days for her creative writing memoir class. Barden also uses it for many things, including writing articles for the newsletter their retirement community publishes. My own mom......whose age will remain a mystery, since she checks this blog!......learned to use her laptop and enjoys it. She does email, Facebook, utilizes a daily online crossword puzzle, jigsaw puzzle, and plays countless games of Free Cell. She's figured out how to access the area funeral home sites to see who is among the dearly departed, and can do a few other search activities. One thing I learned in computer class that I passed on to her when she was in the learning phase was to not be intimidated by the computer. It's not often I get a phone call, and I can usually talk her through the issue on the phone.
Technology has certainly changed the world. I think I realized how much about ten years ago when my son was in the southern part of Germany for about three weeks with National Guard. I knew he had computer access and sent him an email - and immediately received his reply. We chatted back and forth for a few minutes......mid to late morning here, he was getting ready to go have his supper.
It's a wonderful thing.....when it works!!!
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