HOW HARD WOULD IT BE?

 OK, I'm a Luddite. We've established that but I do have to use technology in my everyday life. I don't necessarily like it but it's necessary.

Today after sorting out a whole lot of Playstation games to sell on TradeMe I discovered that I had three PC based games among them. I'd long forgotten about these and don't think I ever played them on the computer.

I kept these out of the 'sell' pile and thought I'd give them a go.

Problem.

The desktop Apple Mac in the study doesn't have a built in DVD or CD drive.

I tried my Apple Mac laptop. Same problem. No built-in drive.

I searched in a cupboard that contains a heap of seldom used and now defunct electronic gadgetry - laptops, printers, DVD players, CD players, memory drives, modems etc and found a detachable CD/DVD drive. All good - or so I foolishly thought. 

This sucker will plug into a television, or, I guess the old non digital TV we got rid of but the connections won't attach to either the Apple Mac or the Apple laptop. Bummer.

I set up the ladder and climbed up to the top of the wardrobe in the study and rummaged about in the boxes there. We have boxes for computer and television cables, plugs, attachments, fittings etc. It seems like there are hundreds of the bloody things. I found a half dozen that look like they might connect the external drive to one of the computers.  

No such luck. Either neither end fitted or one did and one didn't. They all have different connections.

I went back up to the boxes and did some more rummaging. Eventually I found one connection wire that fitted the computer and the external drive but ..... the power cord fittings wouldn't connect. Who would have thought that at one end, the little bitty pin plug in thingamajig .....

 

...... can come in several different shapes and sizes? What the fuck for? Why can't they just have one size fits all? I couldn't find one that fits after trying dozens including the ones for the various rechargeable lanterns, electric drills and other bits of crap around the house.

Sheesh!

I give up.

I'd like to line up all the electronic manufacturers and give them a good slap.

I'D RATHER SET UP A LAP DANCE

This lockdown thing normally doesn't bother me as, quite frankly it means that I just carry on doing the lazy things I'm used to.

One annoying thing though is that The Old Girl is working from home. I should say at this point that it's great having her up here and that, as she's the main earner in this household, her still being able to work during the Covid-19 lockdown is a blessing. The problem is though that she takes over the study where I have my computer set up for very important activities (blogging).

I dug out the old laptop the other day and set myself up in the dining area off the lounge. This is fine but the Microsoft programmes on this are out of date since I haven't used the machine for over 5 years.
I recently bought (or subscribed to) a yearly subscription to Microsoft Office 365 which gives access to all of the new programmes like WORD, EXCEL, NOTES, POWERPOINT etc. This should allow up to 6 people to use the programmes on multiple devices as per this promise:

Office 365 Home‪Microsoft Corporation‬

• Share with your entire family – for up to 6 people • For use on multiple PCs/Macs, tablets, and phones (including Windows, iOS, and Android*) • Premium versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, plus Publisher and Access for PC only • 1TB OneDrive cloud storage with advanced security per person • Collaborate on documents with others online • Tech support via chat or phone with Microsoft experts • Annual or monthly subscription. Your subscription will automatically continue. Cancel anytime. *iOS and Android require separate app installation

Do you think  I've been able to successfully download it to the laptop?

Think again

HANDY, MAN

Not bad for a Luddite. I fixed the handles on the F & P twin dishwasher today.

This probably sounds easy to you handymen out there but these sorts of things are always a challenge for me.
I had to get out The Old Girl's tool set - pliers, screwdrivers - you know the drill. No. not the drill as such, I'm not allowed to use her Black & Decker drill. The drill. You know, the drill.

The handles on this model of dishwasher (bought in 2014) come apart after much use.

The plastic handle bracket in the centre detaches from the panel

We had one give way about a year ago and I 'fixed' it with Araldite until it started to come apart again. A couple of months ago the second drawer handle detached so I thought I'd better get them replaced. I managed to buy the parts on-line from a F&P supplier which is pretty good follow up service for something a few years old. You have to buy the entire display panels that have the handle incorporated.  The price wasn't too bad - $140 - compared to the cost of getting a service person around. The panels turned up while I was away so I installed them this morning. As per usual the 'instruction' document included was hopeless so I searched the internet and found an excellent 'how-to' video which I followed.

The procedure was a bit complicated and involved taking off the entire front of each dish-drawer, disconnecting earthing wires and disabling the control panel. The removal and replacement was fiddly given the cramped space I had on one side of the machine and the sequence had to be followed carefully but I managed it with the assistance of the unnamed technician on the video. Thanks mate!

Luckily this didn't happen

In the box that was delivered were several brackets and a letter. The letter said that in order to take the stress off the handles new brackets needed to be fitted. Obviously F & P have become aware of the handle problem and improved the brackets that support each drawer. I looked at these and the hopeless fitting instructions, had a quick think about it and decided that it was too complicated so put them back in the box which will be relegated to the shed later.

There's only so much that a Luddite can do on one day.

I -NFURIATING

I came across a YouTube clip by some tech guys who were banging on about the ways to save battery on the iPhone and the steps you should take to turn off non essential apps and all of the hard to find and hidden functions that serve no purpose except to inform Apple of what you've been up to, where you've been and what you're likely to buy in the future.

Horrors!

As a rat or something was doing Cossack dancing in the ceiling and keeping me awake last night I picked up my iPhone and, following the instructions from the geeks on my iPad set about changing and deleting most of the functions on the phone.

Job done!


Or was it?

Today I discovered that I'd successfully disabled FaceTime which The Old Girl uses to keep an eye on keep in contact with me (she's worse than Apple), lost a lot of phone contacts, changed security settings so that I've been receiving phishing and spam mail and generally buggered up some of the useful functions. I'm going to have to do a reset to get back to where I was before I started the 'improvements'. To add insult to injury somehow the changes ran the battery totally down so that I've had to charge up from zero to discover all of this.

In the old days we just took the bloody phone off the hook.

HOLIDAY SNAPS

I was talking to Mike today. He's off to Wellington soon and will be staying with Chris and Sue.
I believe that Richard and Shelley will be coming around for dinner so he'll be able to hear all about the Italian Campaign.


Richard apparently has threatened promised to put on a slide show of his holiday snaps. kind of like what people did in the 1950s and 60s.

I guess that as Richard's latest photographs are all digital he'll be able to show them on a computer screen. He may of course, since he'll have a captive audience, bring out old slides of his holidays in the 60s and 70s - resplendent in his red corduroy trousers, hippie necklace and vinyl jacket.

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While we were talking, Mike and I reminisced about the photos we took when we were young and it turns out that we both used colour slides. I think that this was because they were much cheaper than having colour prints made. Mike says that he has hundreds of slides from his OE experiences in the 1970s and I have, somewhere hundreds from the 1970s that I took after buying my first decent camera - a Praktica SLR 35mm.

Mike says that he still has a slide projector and is going to get it going and look at his slides.

I don't have one of these and don't know how I'll view my slides if I find them. They are likely to be in a box somewhere that hasn't been opened for 40 years. I'm keen to see them though as no doubt there will be some nice family snaps.

I'm a bit of a Luddite regarding technology but there must be a simple way of transferring the slides to digital. A quick Google search came up with professional companies doing this for $1 a slide. I don't think I'll take up that offer and will look on Trade Me for a machine that can do this.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RICHARD (OF RBB)

SKEET, SORRY, TWEET SHOOTING

As you know I have an aversion to new things particularly when they aren't really necessary and the old things are doing the job fine.

Years ago - in the late 1980s I resisted having a mobile phone as I didn't need one. The desk phone worked perfectly well. I had a few people working for me in brands, sales and distribution roles and made sure that they had the right tools for the job starting with the brick-like Motorola:

and progressively through the smaller ones that could operate 'hands-free' in cars.

I personally had no desire to have one of the stupid things until my senior management made it compulsory and I got a series of Nokias in the early days

I prided myself of hanging on to  a particular out of date Nokia  in the late 1990s and early 2000s even though the IT Department were offering me early versions of smart phones,  because my Nokia had a fold out QWERTY keyboard which was useful for texting.

The chairman of the company was an early adopter (or a poseur). He liked to have the latest models as it was some kind of status symbol or a badge of honour. In those days (90s) every new release was smaller than the last release. This guy ended up getting phones so bloody small that he kept losing them which drove our IT Department and insurers nuts. What an idiot.



In the later 2000s I finally switched to the Apple iPhone and have an iPhone 5 which has served me pretty well since 2014 and I hope I don't have to upgrade (although Apple will no doubt work out a final solution for old machines).

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My career has been in marketing (and sales) and as such I had to keep abreast of what was going on in the computer programming world, business tools and social media but I employed people to action it. On a personal level I never operated a Facebook or Twitter account or a blog until after I'd given up full-time marketing. After I left, good friend Richard told me about his blog Richard's Bass Bag that he was running and how much he enjoyed being in contact with people through it. I remember asking Mike and Tony if they knew about this and the consistent reply was along the lines of ..... "That's just old Richard being silly - sort of like all those letters he used to write to the editor of Salient (the Victoria University of Wellington's student newspaper) under the pseudonym ' President of the White Sport Coat and Pink Carnation Society.  I'd give it a miss if I were you".

Well I remember helping Richard in those letter-writing campaigns (Mike and Tony were sadly missing on the front lines) so this stimulated my interest and I set up some blogs of my own to join in to the exciting world of blogging with its global connectivity and  exciting sharing of ideas.

So. In 2018 we have Richard's (sadly historically depleted) blog with a few limp hangers on and his brother Robert's famous disappearing blog. Sad really.

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And now we get to the reason for this post.

I had some time on my hands today having played tennis in the morning but with the afternoon being quite windy with a threat of rain. I played around with the computer watching Youtube clips of American comedians making fun of that old bloated wowser Donald Trump. I read some of his ridiculous tweets and thought that I could do better than him at that.

I set about starting up a Twitter account. 

For something that most dumb people on the planet have no problem setting up and running with daily inane tweets I found it to be bloody annoying and difficult. For a start I couldn't select a username that hadn't already been used and Twitter recommended one with my name followed by a seven digit number. Fuck! I cancelled out of all the set up after having decided that I didn't need it and certainly the world isn't waiting to hear from me every 5 minutes.