Reckon it’s just because I’m Old, but…. Gosh, does it not seem to you, as it does to me, that all our miraculous computer technology and gadgets serve as much to complicate our lives as to bring nifty new stuff to us?
Godlmighty, but I’m sick of computer hassles.
This morning I went to sign in to FaM’s dashboard, and LO!! Was confronted with one of those annoying, time-wasting picture rebuses, where you’re supposed to identify every image that has a (fill in the blank: boat, cat, car, lightbulb, whatEVER). This is an annoying runaround, and one mistake tosses you out and forces you to start over.
I.
just.
HATE.
that.
How can I count the ways I hate the endless, annoying, frustrating, aggravating computer password runarounds?!???
Today I need to get into the credit union account — online, of course — and pay this month’s AMEX bill. That will entail yet another aggravating runaround. The prospect makes me crings.
So much so, in fact, that I think I may resort to a primitive strategy, developed shortly after the first cave man learned to start a fire with a pair of sticks: send them a check.
Yes. Remember those? I still do have a couple boxes of paper checks. It may be easier to simply write a check, stuff it in an envelope, and drop it in a mailbox.
A Best Buy dude is coming over today to work on the laptop. I need to get it backed up to an external hard drive, but I will be damned if I can figure out how to set up the hard drive, to say nothing of making it work.
And he’ll have an additional task he didn’t know about: yesterday somehow I screwed up the toolbars at the top of the screen. The one I use most has disappeared. sorta…it flickers back if the cursor lands…somewhere. But where, I cannot figure out. I want that fixed…got ENOUGH dorking around to have to fiddle with every effing day without having to dink and plink and dork to get the toolbar showing the open pages and the date & time to come up.
****
Ohhh HOOOORAAAYYY!!!
The Best Buy guy isn’t scheduled til tomorrow!
Hallelujah, brothers & sisters: I can go back to bed!
😀
That also provides some time to write up some of the things that need to be fixed. Not just the weird toolbar thing….but the newest quirk: hit a double quotation mark or a single quotation, and you get the symbol with an underscore beneath it. Then hit the space bar or a character, and the underscore disappears. Yesterday the disappearing act was not in force. You just got a strange symbol.
And there’s one keyboard combo that produces an umlaut. Whaaaaa? In Word, Hit Caps Lock + a character, and you get an umlaut: Ä
Kewl, eh?
Well…it would be, if that were what you wanted it to do.
It’s been in the back of my mind for years that it was easier to write checks, put them in envelopes, and drop them off at the post office. When you pay electronically, the payment gets there faster, but… it can be aggravating to go through so many steps/hoops/whatever. Not all websites are user friendly enough for me. *sigh* But what are you going to do when some organization/business doesn’t accept checks? That’s modern life.
Eventually, no doubt few or no businesses will accept checks. In that case: yeah: either pay with a debit card or pay with a credit card.
One of our correspondents — on the East Coast, alas — is able to pay for utilities with a credit card. Here, none of the suppliers will accept them. The City (water) seems to think it’s a hilarious idea. The power companies: no, just nooooo.
Everybody has different pet peeves.
After being in business for 33 years and forced to keep all records & supporting documents for the IRS, I wish to have as little paperwork as possible.
I only want to do automatic payments or an online payment. I resent having to send them a check by mail.
Years ago, my bank called to say I would be getting a returned check for a large amount. It took over a week to get to me by mail and my business was in the same city as my bank.
So, I can imagine paying late fees mailing payments now, given the current state of USPS delivery.
That surely does make sense! And I can remember how tickled I was, after years of sending checks, to be able to pay a bill with a click of a button!
Most of my bills are autopaid, EXCEPT for the credit-cards. Too easy to steal your card — or even just your account number — and rack up some phenomenal charge. You don’t find out about it until after the bank has disbursed the funds, and you are ge-screwed. To my mind, it’s seemed like less hassle to get the printed AMEX bills, so that I can go over them and check all the charges before paying.