Wretched Technology Update

Well, here we are, happily sailing through the 21st century and I am still doing battle with post-Industrial Revolution technology.  I wrote a post about this in reference to my husband going out of town and leaving me at the mercy of three remotes and other assorted bits and pieces of technology, all waiting for him to board the plane so that they could then start going berserk.

                                                                                         

 You can read “When Good Technology Happens to Inept People“   to catch up.  Since then, a groundswell of two people have actually asked me how I was doing.  I think they cared less about my welfare than they did wanting a good laugh.  For those two, and for anyone else who needs to feel superior about their own knowledge of whatever, I will bring you up to date.  Oh, one more thing: I already know that you, like my husband, will read/hear this, and you will say “That makes no sense.”  Know that I totally agree with you.  But, like demonic possession and calorie/fat/carb-free pasta, it only makes no sense until you experience it yourself. With that in mind, here are the latest technological events that “make no sense:”

My computer has decided to stop opening attachments of documents.  This coincided exactly with my having to negotiate two contracts on two different properties.  There is absolutely nothing else wrong with the computer.  I get a two second “attempt,” and then it disappears.  I now drive back and forth to the office to retrieve documents.

                                                                                      

My phone decided to go on rotary dial mode.  For those of you born after the era in which people preferred rocks to dogs as pets, rotary dial phones had little horses in them that clomped along until one day someone invented a little car that would fit into the phone and could get the call where it wanted to go without extraneous noises and a lot of wasted time.  I didn’t even think phones could do rotary anymore, even if they wanted to.  Well, my phone, which is only a couple years old, put itself on rotary. 

My computer is now able to play videos on its own.  Several months ago, two friends and I were part of an educational filming for the Smithsonian Institution, commemorating the 1960  Woolworth lunch counter sit in  Greensboro, NC.  The director of the video sent me a copy of the finished product.  I watched it only long enough to determine that my hair, clothing, facial expression, and voice should have been enough to delete me from the filming.  Several hours later, I was on the computer, minding my own business and not opening attachments, and suddenly, the audio from the sit-in tape started.  I closed all windows (in the computer) in an attempt to make it stop.  Nothing was running.  The audio continued.  The only way I could make it stop was to turn off my speaker.  It’s two days later and I’ll bet if I turn my speaker back on, I’ll hear my flat, vaguely Philly-accented voice driveling on about something.

Dan will be back in less than two weeks.  I’m surrendered to whatever happens.  And I know I don’t have to worry about demonic possession because it has nothing to do with technology.  I think.  Sort of.