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Luddites

Contrary to popular opinion, Grammy has not kicked the bucket.

I have been in IT purgatory for the last few weeks, and I am not completely out of the woods yet. I couldn’t even get back into this account today, because my current, now former, password needed to be changed. ARGGGGG….

About three weeks ago, my Mac screen showed in large letters, “You may have a virus”, and it shut down. Fortunately I had a policy with my store that I only paid for parts. They put in the newest Mac drive, which is a 10.10.

I picked it up a few days later. It didn’t have IPhoto, or scroll bars, and something else I can’t remember. I took it back, and the technician said that there was no longer IPhoto, but my pictures would be in “Pictures”. He also said that they were doing away with scroll bars, but I could move the pages up and down by scrolling with my pad and space bar. He reassured me about my other issues and I brought the Mac home.

About the same time, I dropped my cell phone – hard. When I got it to open the screen, I saw the words RESET. I thought this meant that I could reset my phone and that any damage would be undone. I was totally wrong! RESET means emptying your phone to the state it was in when you first bought it.

I tried to undo this action, but the phone just never recovered. I bought a new phone, and the technican transferred everything to my new phone. Well, some of the things in my old phone did not make it. I had 130 contacts originally and now I have 30. I have been manually trying to enter my contacts a little at a time.

Now I felt that I was on my way to recovery. I needed to install my printer into my new Mac. I spent a total of eight hours with five different representatives to try to reinstall my printer. The last representative had me print out a sheet and we compared stats. She said I was good to go.

She was wrong. My printer would not print. I decided to buy a new printer that was compatible with my updated computer.

So now I need to install the new printer driver into my Mac, and I am dreading it. I have had the box sitting in my study for a week or so. I am going to get up the courage to install the printer this weekend. Wish me luck!

I don’t want to sharpen the nib on a quill pen and write with ink, but this new technology needs to be easier for the average Joe (or Jane) to understand.

If you don’t know the definition of a Luddite, don’t feel bad. I only learned it when my first college aged daughter came home and told me about Luddites.

Luddite:

1. A member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed were threatening their jobs. (1811-1816)

2. A person opposed to increased industrialization or new technology. (That’s me!)