Spending my time unsubscribing to an avalanche of ads for stuff I’m told I can’t live without has become a full-time job. Every time I hit “unsubscribe,” I’m told they’re sorry to see me go. Then I get five more of their ads every day for months. The cyber-elves hate me, I tell you. My latest bout was with an app. I don’t know exactly what an app is, nor do I want to learn. However, it seems I needed to install an app from our church, which has recently become Divine Mercy Parish instead of St. Cecelia’s parish. So I followed the instructions on how to install the app. Didn’t work. The cyber elves blocked my every attempt. Finally, since I don’t have a six-year-old grandchild in residence who could have installed it in a New York minute (what is a New York minute, by the way?), I took my iPad up to the parish office and had a gracious computer guru there install it for me. When I’ve run into other problems with my computer, I call the ever-so-helpful techies for Algona Municipal Utilities, which provides my internet service. They are polite to a fault, but ask me questions I can’t possibly answer, questions involving words like “modem” and “router” and gigabytes and megabytes and the like. Who do you suppose came up with the word “gigabyte?”
Seriously.
I’ll bet some smart-Alec techies were sitting around their offices one day and decided to come up with the most ridiculous name they could think of to befuddle the rest of the world. “Let’s call them gigabytes,” shouts one techie. “Terrific,” says his cohort. “No one will ever know what we’re talking about and they’ll be too embarrassed to ask.” Then they do a smart-Alec happy dance around the room and gleefully inflict gigabytes on us. If you are reading this, it means I have successfully emailed it to the newspaper. If you’re not reading this, the cyber elves have won once again.
Sigh.
Tomorrow I leave for Sheila’s lake place in Vermont for a week. Margot, I hope you are finally feeling better – what a siege you’ve had!!!
Of my ongoing battle with the wicked cyberspace elves My first experience with computers was in 1984 when I joined the newspaper staff. I had to learn how to type a story on something other than my portable Smith-Corona typewriter that I got in high school. I wish I could say I was a fast learner. I wasn’t. And lo these nearly four decades later, I’m still not. I have a love-hate relationship with everything having to do with computers and cyberspace. I don’t think the problem is with me. I think there are cyberspace elves floating around out there who hate me. They’ll lead me on by letting me email my column to the paper or join our family text “thread” with no problem. Until there is one. Or ten. All of a sudden, my emails don’t show up where they are supposed to or the family thread disappears or I try to unsubscribe to a computer protection company I never subscribed to in the first place. Spending my time unsubscribing to an avalanche of ads for stuff I’m told I can’t live without has become a full-time job. Every time I hit “unsubscribe,” I’m told they’re sorry to see me go. Then I get five more of their ads every day for months. The cyber-elves hate me, I tell you. My latest bout was with an app. I don’t know exactly what an app is, nor do I want to learn. However, it seems I needed to install an app from our church, which has recently become Divine Mercy Parish instead of St. Cecelia’s parish. So I followed the instructions on how to install the app. Didn’t work. The cyber elves blocked my every attempt. Finally, since I don’t have a six-year-old grandchild in residence who could have installed it in a New York minute (what is a New York minute, by the way?), I took my iPad up to the parish office and had a gracious computer guru there install it for me. When I’ve run into other problems with my computer, I call the ever-so-helpful techies for Algona Municipal Utilities, which provides my internet service. They are polite to a fault, but ask me questions I can’t possibly answer, questions involving words like “modem” and “router” and gigabytes and megabytes and the like. Who do you suppose came up with the word “gigabyte?”
Seriously.
I’ll bet some smart-Alec techies were sitting around their offices one day and decided to come up with the most ridiculous name they could think of to befuddle the rest of the world. “Let’s call them gigabytes,” shouts one techie. “Terrific,” says his cohort. “No one will ever know what we’re talking about and they’ll be too embarrassed to ask.” Then they do a smart-Alec happy dance around the room and gleefully inflict gigabytes on us. If you are reading this, it means I have successfully emailed it to the newspaper. If you’re not reading this, the cyber elves have won once again. Sigh.