Tag Archives: technology

Technology Troubles

Two in one day – I am spoiling you.

I see there’s a button on the bar above my writing which promises “Distraction-free Writing Mode”. I just pressed it but the kids next door are still shouting so it is obviously another WP lie. I was hoping for a flash of lightning followed by silence.

Looking at the row of buttons, I’ve just realised I don’t know what most of them do. Even worse, from the point of view of the perpetually curious child that used to live in my head, I don’t care. I have more technology than I need. This is a sad day for me.

However, having realised this, I think I may stop writing and do some cookery. Pasta bake beckons. It’s nutritious, easy, cheap and can contain both salmon (which I have) and cheese (which I like). Actually, I will reheat the salmon fillet and let Julia have it all. I will stick to pasta bake without salmon. it’s not unselfish of me, I just don’t like salmon that much and would rather have vegetables. On the other hand, it’s been there a few days now and if it poisons her I will look bad. I might have to share it just to give myself an alibi. Life is full of difficult choices.

Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

I’ve actually been looking at the idea of taking Omega 3 pills. It’s the option for man who wants Omega 3 but doesn’t really like fish. But, I ask myself, do I want Omega 3 so much that I’m willing to buy pills. Probably not.

Anyway, I have enough pill problems at the moment. My INR shot up according to my latest result and I’ve been told to miss a day before starting Warfarin again. This will be the effect of the steroid I have been taking, which is very annoying. Having to make a choice between breathing or bleeding is very difficult.

My phone just stopped working. It happened yesterday but I didn’t realise, just switched to using the shop landline and assumed it was a temporary glitch. Today it still wouldn’t connect, and we now have no landline.Yes, it was time for our old friend “switch it off then switch it back on again”. I never had to do that with my old Nokia. Bloody technology!

Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

Monday Miscellany

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Julia as Lifeguard – Britannia Pier, Great Yarmouth

I knew I had some photos of Julia sticking her head through the hole of a “stick your head through a hole in a board with a humorous design” board. I’m sure they have a slightly crisper name but I can’t think of it.

We have some with the board she designed herself – the farmer from Quercus Community, but I can find them at the moment.

And another one.

I managed to finish my paper flag display and it looked quite reasonable. Unfortunately the speaker had brought so much stuff, in an attempt to sell his book and postcard stock, that there wasn’t much room for member displays. I had several people look, and at the end a couple asked if I could bring it back next time, as there had been so much to see this time that they hadn’t been able to have a good look.

And again . . .

The talk was quite interesting, being a “Then and Now” look at various sites round Nottingham, comparing the modern view with the Edwardian view. Some of the “Now” photos were cunningly shot and it had clearly taken a lot of effort to track down some of the views. My particular favourites were two pubs by the riverside. In Edwardian times they ran ferries and all the Edwardian photographer did was to take the ferry across, take the shot and take the ferry back. Using public footpaths, the modern journey to the correct viewpoint was a lot more onerous in 2022. One railway station, long closed and demolished, remains as a piece of waste ground. It is only accessible these days by taking a train and photographing on the move.

Southwold Pier

The main talking point of the evening will be the breakdown of technology. The flat screen we use wouldn’t take the presentation. We suspect it cannot cope with all the images. It would show one or two then close down and restart. Forrtunately, the speaker had seven copies of the book with him so we sat round in small huddles looking at the pictures in the books as he talked us through it.

Sometimes you don’t need all that technology.

Pictures are of Julia, as mentioned. Apart from the poppy brooch. And the stomp. The brooch is made from safety pins and beads.

Poppy Brooch – beads and safety pins

My New Phone (I Hate Technology)

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Yes, I got a new phone. The old one was going wrong after many years of faithful service so I contacted Tesco, asked about a free upgrade and spent forty minutes on the phone typing a conversation that would have been a lot easier, and quicker, if we’d spoken. Having badly underestimated the time needed to do this I had to hand the conversation over to Julia because I was due at the doctor. Having allowed 15-20 minutes, I ws surprised it took over 40 minutes just to arrange an upgrade.

It arrived a day later, which was brilliant service. I opened it, and that was where everything went wrong.

Bee on Red Valerian

I couldn’t get the card out of my old phone. I couldn’t find any way to get the back off so I resorted to the internet. There were several You Tube videos about it, but none of them were quite right. Finally I found a video from seven years ago and that told me. It involves a great deal of brute force. And that was just the start . . .

My phone seems to have gone wrong because the maker withdrew support from it, which explains my trouble with texts. On a planet full of electronic waste, they are selling phones and then deciding when it will become obsolete . Without the intervention of Motorola, it would have lasted for years..

Then I found I needed to be linked to the internet to do anything, and needed a Google account and a Microsoft subscription.

Marmalade Hoverfly

It’s like a tightening net. You pay for a phone, but someone else switches it off. You just want to make calls but you have to sell your soul to corporate America and tether your life to the Internet by a data umbilical. So far I have resisted but it comes at a cost of multiple messages about finishing setting the phone up. I’m also having to enter all my phone numbers manually. I am not going to live my life as an appendage of the internet just because everyone else does. One day I’m sure I’ll wake up and find that most of the rest of the world has been taken over by zombified users of so-called smart phones.

Julia, Sutton-on-Sea

And just about finally, I rang Julia this afternoon. I didn’t get hr but a message came up on my phone screen about signing up for video calling. It must be the worse thing in the world. I don’t want people ringing and having a look at the clothes I wear when relaxing at home, or the woeful state of the housework. Anyway, I still hold my phone to the side of my head, all the caller will see is a section of moving beard. Or my ear. Neither is a great view.

My new phone case arrives tomorrow. I’ve been walking round all day with it wrapped in bubble wrap as it is big delicate screen. You never had any fear of breakage with a Nokia.

And did I mention it took me over 24 hours to even find the clock?

Pictures are selected because they cheer me up.

Seal at Donna Nook.

The Case of the Missing Parcel

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You can’t, so the saying goes, prove a negative. This is in the context of proving that we didn’t receive the disputed parcel. You can “prove” that we did receive it, because the Royal Mail has a record of it, but we can’t prove we didn’t. because we weren’t asked to sign for not receiving it. Such a thing is not possible.

This is in a philosophical sense, of course, as you can prove a negative in other ways. However,think of a small teapot orbiting the sun . . .

Anyway, back from theory and philosophy, and into the territory of sensible real life. (Though with the proviso that some scientists need to lighten up when discussing teapots in space).

The first thing we had to deal with was an email from the customer with a picture of his proof of posting and a demand to know why we weren’t refunding his money as he had proof we had received the parcel.

This revealed a new problem – the customer had not returned the parcel by Guaranteed Delivery but had used a cheaper, less secure method, His method does not require a signature and only insures the parcel for £100 instead of the necessary £500. In saving a few pounds he caused this entire problem.

We, in turn, contacted eBay, who have given us another seven days to make our case for not refunding the customer, with his use of a sub-standard postal service working in our favour.

We then spoke to the postman, who told us, amongst other things, that he had checked for us and the mobile technology used by the Royal Mail showed that the delivery had taken place at the specified time and in the vicinity of the shop. Without needing a signature, they cannot be sure exactly what “the vicinity” is. It now seems that it is our job to knock on all local doors asking if anyone has our parcel.

This is where we had a little luck, realising that the CCTV could help us. We checked it, and sure enough, it shows that the postal delivery employee walks down the road, pauses outside our shop, shuffles through some letters then walks off without delivering anything.

That, to me, is proof that the parcel was not delivered to the premises at the stated time. I’m not going to speculate further, as it may yet develop into a serious legal argument.

W are still going to end up losing money, and wasting time sorting it out, but it’s unlikely to be the £500 we originally feared.

I will let you know what happens when it is sorted.

The next post will be more cheerful. Probably.

The featured image is a propaganda Iron Cross from 1914 – they were made in various places in Britain and sold to raise money for Belgian refugees. I use it because it was the subject of a claim by a customer who said he hadn’t received it. That was easy to sort out – we had a signature from the delivery, which was to his place of work. He recognised the signature, checked it out and found the package was waiting for him in the post room – he just hadn’t bothered to check.

Day 198

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It was quiet this morning as I dropped Julia off. The final roundabout of the journey is usually quite busy and can have a queue stretching back up to 400 yards. On average it is probably about 200 yards. With cars taking up about 6 yards that’s 30 cars. I really must try to count them one morning. Today, however, there were four. It wasn’t really a queue at all.

We were short handed in the shop because one of us had been visiting his mother and the trains weren’t running back to Nottingham. My observation that when I have car trouble I get a taxi, didn’t go down well. Anyway, at 1am we went home. We had packed 14 parcels, had no customers and had not even had a phone call. it’s like the whole world has gone into hibernation.

Tonight, as I struggled with telephone banking again, I had a text telling me not to go in tomorrow unless we find ourselves flooded with orders. due to eBay’s new policy of wanting to use One Time Passcodes I now find I can’t log in to the work system. That’s the beauty of modern technology – always altering to make life more difficult.

When I rang the bank tonight I couldn’t complete the security protocol because I couldn’t remember my “significant date”. I haven’t a clue what I chose 25 years ago. I t wouldn’t be my birthday because that would be too simple. It wouldn’t be my wedding anniversary because I have never been able to remember it.

There are other questions that they could have asked, but I had to be transferred to someone else to “be taken through security another way”. Sounds ominous, doesn’t it?

It consisted of asking me how much money I had in my account, what I bought when I last used my debit card (it was eight days ago – I couldn’t remember) and various other tricky questions . . .

I have to go now. As I type, I’m listening to two poets talking about poetry and I am losing the will to live.

Close to the Edge…

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I did some of my WP stuff on Julia’s netbook last night. For those of you too young to remember them netbooks were low in power and small in size. You could use them to access the internet and nobody has produced them since 2013. I’m pretty sure the average modern phone is more powerful than a netbook and think they have been replaced by tablets. The sad thing is that my computer seems to be even less powerful than the netbook – the netbook, for instance, can show the pictures on my blog posts, but the computer cannot. It occasionally showsd one, just to tempt me into thinking everything is working, but next time it is back to a blank space and frustration.

Yesterday after noon I accomplished about 15% of what I meant to do, which was annoying, so today I have set myself a target of 100%. In addition, I want to attend to the blog and check emails.

It has just taken me eight attempts to access the emails. Why? I don’t know.Probably just that technology hates me and is trying to drive me over the edge. It is getting close to success.

I’m trying to check on an email I sent a few weeks ago, and not succeeding. I’m just getting a rotating circle and and no action. I have logged out and am now preparing to struggle to get back in.

Still waiting…

I may do something else.

Still circling…

There must be something wrong at their end. I will close down in a moment and try to log in afresh.

Ah! Action!

It’s decided to tell me it can’t perform the action I requested. I requested it to open a file to check on a sent email. You’d think I’d asked for the secret of life judging by the time it’s taking and the secrecy surrounding it.

Believe it or not, since BT launched their “new and improved” email service it hasn’t been as good or reliable as it used to be. A suspicious man may try to link the two things.

I once had my car serviced. Next day I drove about sixty miles down the motorway and sixty miles back up (I have found this is generally a good way of getting home). On the way back.we stopped at a service area for toilets then drove the remaining 20 miles home. On the ring road we noticed a peculiar smell, and when we stopped at lights we found ourselves surrounded by a cloud of white smoke. The brakes were seized on and were smoking.

On Monday I went to the garage and explained what had happened.

“Ah yes,” said the man, “when people have trouble with cars just after servicing they often blame it on us.”

I wonder why…

I’m putting a picture on, but without enthusiasm. What’s the point when I can’t see it? It’s not even the picture I wanted, because the screen moved after I pressed the button. You will have to imagine me rolling my eyes and emitting a great “tut!”

Later addition – I just went back to try the email again. There’s a great red stripe on the page now, announcing they have a problem and are working on it. I’d guessed.

Rejection!

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The title isn’t quite accurate, but headlines often aren’t. However, there is an element of truth in it, as you will see if you persist.

Despite me rushing to finish last night’s post by midnight, my days don’t really run from midnight to midnight and I often work an hour or so into the night while it is quiet. This is particularly the case at weekends when I can get up later to compensate.

As an example, I did some decluttering this morning then set my alarm to give myself just over an hour at the computer before warming up the soup for lunch. Julia decided this would be a good time to start work on reorganising the kitchen so my writing efforts are now accompanied by the clatter of various kitchen implements (mainly noisy ones) as she composes a symphony for baking trays and raised voices.

I did think of inserting a witty quote on marriage here, but couldn’t find one. I suspect all the wittiest quotes are written by people who aren’t married. The ones who are married just nod and keep their heads down, which is why they are still married.

I’m playing WP Roulette here – if she reads this I’m in trouble. If not I will live to moan another day.

That’s why I work into the early hours.

And that was why, about half an hour after posting I decided to look at one of the magazines that had some submissions from me five weeks ago. I was surprised, and a little put out, to find that they had published the next issue. I don’t mind rejection too much, because it’s part of writing, but I don’t really like being ignored.

Anyway, it is what it is. I read a few of the haibun and decided to see when the next submission window opened. While I did that I noticed a note saying that if you don’t get an acknowledgement within in two days you should get in touch. It was a lot longer than two days, but I double checked, found I definitely hadn’t had one and decided to take action.

Two Cyclists

As recommended in many articles on writing I dropped the the editor a short polite note to check if they had received anything from me and checking the best way to submit next time round.

The marvels of email and the time difference between the UK and USA meant I had a reply within half an hour. It seems the automated submission form is suspected of discarding a number of submissions and is now out of favour.

Ah well!

When it comes down to it I checked the two pieces I’d submitted and decided they weren’t all that good anyway. Internet oblivion is probably the best place for them. Anyway, even if they had been brilliant you can’t turn back time, despite Cher’s singing and the services of a good plastic surgeon.

As time goes on I’m finding that I have more and more sympathy for editors. It can’t be easy at the best of times, particularly when you see the number of submissions some of them get, and when the technology turns against you it must be hellish.

It’s a big day tomorrow – three submission windows open and I have submissions prepared for each one.

The game’s afoot, as Holmes said, though when I check the quote I find that Henry V said it first. Tricky things, quotes.

A Deep Distrust

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I hate computers.

I’ve been having trouble getting information from Ancestry UK, which is why the Heeley article wasn’t as well researched as it could have been. I had cleared my cache/browsing history as recommended but was putting the other actions off, as messing with computers is always bad news.

Tonight I deactivated my browser extensions. No, I haven’t a clue what they are, why they are necessary or why I ever needed them if I can, it seems, do without them.

Then, as that didn’t work, I downloaded a new version of Chrome. Probably. I’m not sure there is a new version for those of us running XP or Vista.

Anyway, after a wild white-knuckle ride of button pressing and trepidation I still have a functioning computer. I still don’t have a functioning Ancestry site and I’m having to enter passwords every time I visit a site, but it’s mostly working so thank goodness for small mercies. I’ve attempted things with computers that have ended far less well than this.

I always say I’ll make regular back-ups and all that stuff but I never do. It’s a serious worry that all over the world nuclear missiles are being controlled by computers, and computers are in a perpetual state of decay. It starts with a gradual slowing, moves on to shedding various functions, like Ancestry, and ends up launching a missile at someone who retaliates automatically and triggers Armageddon.

grayscale photo of explosion on the beach

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

There is, of course, the possibility that computers hate me, which would explain a lot.

In an alternate universe, where they don’t trust computers they put the nuclear bombs under the care of highly trained teenage soldiers, who are likely to push the red button to see what happens. Or they may let computer geeks look after them. That’s unlikely to end well either.

While I’m here, did you know you can buy glow in the dark coins? I didn’t until someone asked if we wanted to buy one last week. We’ve had ones with copper from HMS Victory, bits of Avro Lancaster bomber and bits of meteorite embedded in them, even ascratch and sniff pizza coin, but never one that glowed in the dark.

They are advertised as “irradiated“, which is not the first word I would choose if I was trying to sell something. It’s close to “bubonic” and “carcinogenic” on the list of words you wouldn’t expect to see in an advert.

In the manner of these things, once I started looking I learned things I hadn’t realised I didn’t know. I had never heard of these, for instance.

Authors, Austen and AI

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I’ve just been reading this. I’m now more convinced than ever that technology is not for me. Having just read an article that tells me future books are going to be written by Artificial Intelligence. This is depressing. However, it isn’t as depressing as reading the AI attempts at classic literature.

Even more depressing, I read that the average reading age in the UK is somewhere between nine and eleven. There are a number of statistics around this, with a variety of measurements and interpretations, but it means that a lot of adults struggle to get by with reading. A significant proportion can’t read simple notes or road signs. I am worried by this for a number of reasons. Not only will these people not be able to enjoy the pleasure of Wordsworth or Wodehouse, but there is a distinct possibility that they are a danger to other road users. That, I suppose, is why so many road signs have pictures on them.

The state of the nation’s education system was first revealed to me when I was recruiting school leavers to work on a poultry farm. I told the careers advisor we would need people within reasonable literacy and numeracy skills but after they sent several illiterate candidates (because it was only a poultry farm) we reverted to advertising in the local paper.

I won’t even mention my view of careers advisors because I think we covered that a few days ago, but I was shocked to find that it was possible to pass an entire school career without learning to read and write.

Photo by Janko Ferlic on Pexels.com

So much depends on being able to read. In fact everything depends on it, including your academic results in other subjects, and your success (not necessarily monetary) in life. Yes, you can be successful without being a great reader but it must be harder.

You can either believe me about this or you can search the internet. The only trouble with the internet is that there is so much information, often gathered and interpreted differently, that it’s hard work putting it all together. You read one list of the top ten nations for literacy and then you read another and only a couple of the countries are duplicated. Unfortunately they tend to agree that the UK is about 17th. It’s not a disaster, but it’s not very good either.

One of the sites I read had a question from a user asking if anyone out there had read 100 books. People were generally quite polite, but they did mention that they had read 100 by the time they left school or had read fifty or even a hundred in a year. It all depends on what you call a book. I’ve probably been going through three a week during lockdown, but we’re talking about Golden Age and modern cosy crime books, so they aren’t actually hard.

I really must start a better balanced reading programme, a few more classic novels and some non-fiction. That, however, is a diversion. We’re talking about literacy, not about me squandering my life on whodunnits.

I’ve tried various ways of reading a better selection over the years, but it always degenerates into a discussion of why I hate Don Quixote. I just re-read that post, from 23 April 2016, and found the sentence “I had muesli for breakfast as I wanted something smallish in case I set my socket off.”

No, I haven’t a clue what I meant to write.

I’ve just been reading the local literacy project website, and have decided to start volunteering once lockdown ends. Really, I should have been doing it for years.

The question is whether I volunteer to help adults or children.At least, by telling you all I am making sure I can’t back out.

boy in white and black school uniform reading book

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Real Men don’t use Switches

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My computer has several idiosyncrasies, such as a missing On/Off switch, several pieces of missing software and a habit of randomly refusing to start. The switch was originally faulty rather than missing, but where a faulty switch refuses to start the computer, a missing switch allows me to touch two wires together and get it going.

A faulty switch is a nuisance, but a missing switch is merely a cosmetic issue.

I’m not sure what happened to the software, but several years ago I started getting notices that things weren’t installing themselves on start-up. I tried reinstalling them and I tried letting the computer correct the fault. Neither approach worked. Now I just keep cancelling the attempts to reinstall and after thirty seconds of button pushing everything seems to work and the only fault is with some photo software. As the average computer seems to have several ways of coping with photos, this isn’t a problem.

Which gets us to the real point of this post. The computer refused to start tonight. It sat there on the table when I returned home and whirred into action when I hot-wired it, but there was little action. The green light on the DVD player flashed and the blue light by the main switch (or the space where it used to be) came on. There was even a gentle buzz, but the main flashing blue light and the expected sound of internal arrangements sliding into place were noticeably absent.

I administered a sharp tap to the casing, which always seems like it should work. It didn’t. Then I hit it with a book. Don’t judge me, I grew up when electrical goods were different.

Finally I switched it off and started again. How, you ask, as I have no switch and the computer wasn’t working enough to allow me to close down normally. Well, that’s where the power cord comes in. Or more accurately, gets unplugged.

It’s not quite as sophisticated as a switch, but it does stop the flow of electricity. There is the occasional crackle, suggesting that the power might be about to flow somewhere unwelcome but it hasn’t happened yet and if it does it might solve the atrial fibrillation so it’s not all bad.

When I plugged it back in it started at once and gave me the choice of starting normally or (the recommended method) letting the computer have a shot at fixing itself.

I tried the latter method and you know what? It just kept going and grunting and churning and telling me this could take several minutes and…eventually…repeating itself and not starting.

So I pulled the power cable again, started it up again, told it to start itself normally and a couple of minutes later I was in. That’s why I’m now able to write about the shortcomings of my computer and my troubles with technology.

We never had all these problems when TV was black and white and phones were attached to the wall.

The photo shows what happened in the shop a few weeks ago – leaving us staring at blue screens for ten minutes.

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Life after the Care Farm