The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ―Edmund Burke
Well: we’ll see if Funny is kaput in the land of the flying computers… AUGH. It looks like my desktop is offline altogether, and the laptop is sorta offline…maybe kaput, maybe not kaput.
😮
To perfect that predicament, somehow I spavined a hip joint and now can BARELY limp up the hallway.
Hmmm… does that mean My hip is offline, too??? 😀
Whatever it means, it sure as hell hurts!
Okay…
….TESTING….
Godlmighty, am I ever sick & tired of password hoop-jumps set up for you to navigate at every goddamn website. Yeah: Including the ones you own.
FaM used to recognize my computer when I surfaced over here No more! Now I’ve got to look up a stupid password and type it in — carefully — to access my own damn website.
Yeah, I know: all for my protection. Right. A sappy little-old-lady’s blog must be protected from the Forces of Evil. Mmm hmmm….
Seems like every site you go to these days demands that you enter a damn password. And it can’t be just one stupid password. Every site demands something different — some unique combination of characters.
Maybe it’s time for me to find some new pastime: one that doesn’t entail getting online.
I suppose what I’m getting tired of is the world of humanity as it has evolved. And yeah: it does seem to get more and more tiresome with each passing year. And yeah: if I could go out on the desert, set up camp in a cave, and live out the rest of my life there, I’d probably do exactly that. But I can’t…I’d need a password to get into the cave!
But close. Very close.
Why?
Well…where on earth to start?
Let’s start in the neighborhood computer store.
My laptop crapped out; needed the attention of a computer tech.
My son has my car, so I can’t drive the computer across the city to the Best Buy, where I have a warranty that covers it.
Shee-ut. So I pick up the gadget and hike the six blocks to the neighborhood computer store, down at the corner of Main Drag South and Conduit of Blight. Haul it in. Explain the problem. “Oh…” says the ninny at the service desk, “We don’t fix that issue.”
Wonnerful. I do have a warranty at Best Buy. But taking the machine to that august computer dealer entails a half-hour or forty-minute drive through nauseating traffic, plus a good 15 or 20 minutes of standing in line. “Know anyone nearby who can work on it?”
She sends me across the street to the electronics store over there.
Hike across six lanes of homicidal traffic. Stand in line stand in line stand in line stand…
“I dunno what the problem might be. You need to take it down to the Best Buy.”
Yeah: the one I just passed over because I didn’t want to make the half-hour drive in each direction.
Hike back into the parking lot, mightily pi$$ed. A military jet ROARS over, emitting a terrifying racket.
Reminds me of how much I hated living in Sun City, just down the road from Luke Air Force Base, which sent its ROARING jets over our homes every morning starting at about 6 a.m., and serenaded us for the rest of the day.
That reminded me of Sun City’s other horrors, not the least of which was its incompetent, misogynistic doctors. The bastards who made my mother’s final suffering ten times worse than it had to be.
Or maybe a hundred times worse. When does stupidity morph into outright evil, anyway?
By now, as you may have intuited, I was having a just LOVELY day.
Circled back to the Funny Farm.
Here at the house, I stumbled across an ancient computer power cord. And LO! The damn thing fits in the laptop’s plugs!!!
We’re now attached to an outlet, and it looks like the critter is going to keep on working. Apparently the problem, such as it was, had to do with the present power cord, which must have broken or worn out.
Do miracles ever stop?
* The palms of the hands are still buzzing.
* The upper gums over the front teeth: still buzzing.
* The soles of the feet: still buzzing.
* The ears whistling at high volume, nonstop.
Somehow, none o’ that seems to matter much.
* Computer breakdown
* Idiots in computer store
* Roaring jet
* Sun City memories & horrors
* Persistent peripheral neuropathy
WHAT a wonnerful day!!!!
In a moment of misguided chumminess, I lent my laptop to a business acquaintance. This is a guy I’ve known for years, outwardly very professional, a successful chiropractor by trade.
Bad move! Among other antics, he contrived to break the computer, rendering it nonfunctional. My son has taken it to a computer store, in hopes of getting it fixed…but that hope ain’t one I hold out.
Can’t afford to buy another one. That unit was tax-deductible, purchased when I used it mostly for the editorial business. Now that I’ve pretty much retired from that gig and from teaching, I get no break on its cost. And my son is more than ever convinced that I’m crazy, largely because of long-standing friendship with Mr. Computer Vandal.
Meanwhile, a few weeks ago my car was trashed, when I rear-ended some woman on a dark, wet, rainy road.
Now I’m banned from driving (by the Kid) and so have to walk to the stores. I do still have a driver’s license…but no vehicle! He has glommed it and stashed it at his house…rather too far to reach without a car.
Luckily, the ‘Hood is richly endowed with neighborhood stores and chains: Sprouts, Albertson’s, Fry’s, Walgreen’s, Bookman’s, and a cute little liquor store in which to feel righteous by “buying local” when scoring a bottle of wine.
Dunno which way to jump just now. I could sneak around and rent a car. But frankly, that seems like more trouble than it’s worth. In the first place, I don’t want to go behind M’hijto’s back, no matter how unreasonable I think his driving ban is. Plus…about three houses down the street, a neighbor has gone into the Uber business. If I would get off my duff long enough to contact him, I could probably get him or one of his colleagues to drive me just about everywhere I need to go.
One damnfool thing after another, eh?
Yet to decide whether to pursue the scheme to convert the garage, now empty, into an art studio. Probably not: sounds like more trouble than it’s worth. Still…hmmmmm…. I do like it as an idea.
Well, our wonderful Grayson, the guy who keeps this site online and functioning, got me back in after I forgot (lost??) the password.
God bless him!!
Geez. I must be Alzheimering out. The more I fool with computer hoo-hah, the more opaque it gets to me.
Even when I print out this kind of ditz and tape it to the computer monitor’s frame, I still cannot get reliably in to this website, that website, or the other.
{sigh} I’m awfully afraid this is part of memory loss associated with aging. As the days go by, I recall less and less. Eighty-seven gerjillion passwords? F’geddaboudit. Due dates for bills? Gimme a break. Who borrowed my laptop? I dunno.… Nothing is distracting me. I’m not sick. With no job, I’m never harried by work tasks, office politics, and general b.s. It looks alarmingly like the brain is simply wearing out.
Then we have mundane questions like…oh, say…what time is it?
Figure out that it’s quarter after 9:00. Reset clocks, changing battery in one of ’em.
Cute li’l clock…wonder where I got it? Oh well. If only it didn’t have to be reloaded with batteries and dorked with to show what is apparently the current time.
Seriously: I can NOT keep track of all this ditz, much less make sense of six conflicting blobs of data.
Please, dear God: next time you bring me back to this planet, would you drop me on a desert island? One with no clocks? No computers? Maybe even no other humans???
But coffee, Sire. Plenty of coffee. Pleeze…..
It
Just
NEVER
Freakin’
STOPS!
Now Google won’t let me into my G-mail account. And NO, I didn’t change a password. NO, I didn’t do anything weird.
So presumably that account has been hacked. Ducky.
Dammit. Now, come ten o’clock this morning, I’ve got to schlep across the city to the computer store and beg them to try to get me back into my email.
Either that or…what? Create a whole new G-mail account?
Uh huh…and how do I go about informing all the people and companies that have my current G-mail address?
Well. I guess this is a whop upside the head with a bit of (OBVIOUS!) practical advice: Keep a list of every email address for folks you do business with and folks you socialize with. PRINT IT OUT. Keep burning paper and ink every three or four weeks to print out new updates.
Gaaawwwd how sick AM i of life in the glorious new 21st Century?