Technology Rant of the Day

I don’t think I’m technologically illiterate, but there are times I’m ready to give up and go back to the days of the rotary dial telephone and snail mail communication.

Like today, for instance.

My iPhone instructed me that I had a software update to install and, like a good little techno-geek, I pressed the Settings tab to comply. Except that my iPhone got snippy with me and told me I didn’t have enough storage to complete the task.

The last time my iPhone got snippy with me, I took it to the Apple store and traded it in. 

Take that, iPhone 4!

Sure, it was an expensive alternative to actually deleting stuff off my phone, but, hey, I was ready for a new one anyway.

This time, unfortunately, my phone isn’t eligible for an upgrade and I refuse to pay $600 for a new one. So I figured I’d better investigate the source of the clog.

Turns out that the bajillion photos I’ve taken on my iPhone are taking up the lion’s share of the storage. This was not surprising since I had no less than fifty-seven photos of our friends’ twins messily playing with smash cakes on their first birthday a couple months ago. Fifty-seven!

Lots of photos, yeah, but they sure are cute!

And this was only a small portion of the photos I took that day.

You thought I was kidding?!

And why I haven’t deleted the two dozen photos my niece recently took of the inside of her mouth in order to count the number of teeth she has, I do not know.  Perhaps I was thinking I could someday embarrass her with them or something.  Hee hee. Evil Aunt Jane, I know.

Anyway, I spent half the day trying to figure out how to get the photos off the phone and onto the external hard drive I purchased for this very purpose.

And, while I somehow managed to get eight hundred seventy-two photos onto the hard drive, there were many, many more photos than that on my phone. Which doesn’t compute.

Kidding. I don't have a great aunt Myrtle.

In frustration, I tried simply trashing all the photos on the phone.  I figured I’d risk deleting that last photo of great aunt Myrtle celebrating her 100^th birthday because somehow, somewhere I have stuff stored on the “Cloud” and surely that photo must already be saved. Right?

Yeah, right.  I pretend like I know what the Cloud is all about, but in truth, I have no real freaking clue. Like…where do I find stuff that is stored on this mystical Cloud? 

Got me.

I tried Googling instructions on the photo transfer process, but got frustrated and had to step away from the computer, lest I do something drastic and toss the thing out the window.  Instead, I did Saturday chores like watering the plants, washing the darks and scrubbing the toilets. Believe me, I had to be extremely frustrated with my online search to have preferred scrubbing toilets over deciphering Google instructions.

Eventually, I wandered back to the computer and tried again. I read something about how photo albums added using iTunes cannot be deleted from the iPhone unless one accesses iTunes and makes the change there.

Great.  I no longer have iTunes loaded on any computers we own because I exceeded the number of computers I had loaded it on.  And, while I thought I had followed instructions and “unauthorized” old computers that had iTunes on them before recycling the machines, evidently I didn’t.

Sigh.

 

In the end, I manually deleted enough photos to give me adequate storage to allow the Software update.  

It doesn’t make me any more informed about the correct process, but at least I got the job done.

Until the next update, anyway.

And I'm really hoping that by then I’ll be eligible for a phone upgrade and I can tell snippy iPhone 5 where he can stick it when he tells me I don't have enough storage for the update.

Okay, technology rant over. For today.

The Help Desk

Back in the day when I worked at a big company, we had actual departments filled with people who fixed things like our computers. For some reason, we called that whole department the “Help Desk.” (Hey, don’t blame me; I wasn’t in charge of naming departments.) But I loved the Help Desk. They were my favorite people in the whole company. Well, right after the Paycheck Lady who came around every Friday and handed me money.

But whenever our computers messed up, we’d blame little gremlins. The Help Desk would tell us to do a basic analysis, which meant we were supposed to turn off the computer and then turn it back on.

If that didn’t work and the gremlins were still at work preventing our computers from functioning, we simply called the Help Desk back and they’d come to our rescue and would solve the problem. Those guys could fix anything. On the rare occasion when the gremlins got the best of them, the Help Desk guys would take our computer away and then bring us a new one that worked perfectly.

Did I mention that I loved the Help Desk?

Nowadays I work at a small company and we don’t have “departments” let alone a department called the Help Desk. We don’t even have a Help Person. Instead, we have a graphics guy. He’s our resident computer expert and that is only because he can go at least one step beyond turning-the-computer-off-and-back-on.

I miss the Help Desk.

So our Internet was down at work the other morning. Crack computer expert that I am, I knew that it wasn’t a problem with my computer specifically because nobody else in our office could access the Internet either.

But that was as far as I got. Eventually, I learned that the German Village area was having slow or no Internet connectivity.

So that meant that all morning I was at a loss. I’d start to check to see the last time a customer ordered – but then realized I couldn’t access the program since it’s online. Or I’d remember I needed to send an email to my coworkers about something – only I couldn’t send emails. Telling four people individually the news I wanted to share seemed monumentally tedious and repetitious.

Oh how we have changed in our communication delivery methods. Communicating face-to-face? Pshaw. Who does that anymore? (Thanks, Steve Jobs.)

Not only was the Internet down at work, but the night before we were again having computer problems at home. Darn gremlins. I had a photo I wanted to print, but couldn’t access my email to download it. I went upstairs to my computer and it was somehow connected to the Internet, but I don’t have a printer upstairs and I’m not connected to the printer downstairs. And, no, I don’t have any idea how to connect to the printer downstairs – don’t even get me started on that!

I’m really starting to re-think my degree in marketing communications and PR. Probably I should’ve gotten a degree in Help Desk. Maybe then I wouldn’t be so frustrated whenever we have Internet and/or computer problems at home. Because my first inclination is to assume the hardware is broken and needs to be replaced. Usually I’m wrong. (Wait. Did I just say that?!)

Nevertheless, it was a lesson in frustration the other night. Vince kept running upstairs to fiddle with the little black boxes and getting more and more frazzled when he couldn’t get the Internet up and running on his computer. Meanwhile, I stayed out of his way and didn’t voice a single complaint. But not being able to check Facebook before heading to bed was a real hardship. What can I say? I’m addicted. (Thanks, Mark Zuckerberg.)

Vince wondered if somehow the cats were playing with the computer wires. Or possibly they heard the word “mouse” and became intrigued and curious? Who knows? But When Vince came downstairs the next morning, he said his mouse and keyboard were on the floor. Twinklebelle was curled up on the couch looking all guileless and innocent. And Jinx was squeaking and standing at attention by her food bowl. Both cats looked at Vince as if they couldn’t imagine how that mouse and keyboard ended up on the floor.

Gremlins, indeed. I think our gremlins might also be known as Twinks and Jinx. And our problems might be solved once we figure out how to keep our computer-related paraphernalia out of reach of little paws. But still. I sure wish I could call the Help Desk.