MY TECHNO TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS CONTINUE

ACCEPT ALL COOKIES

Isn’t technology amazing! You can listen to music, learn a language, learn how to cook, google information on practically anyone and anything, but my favourite is the flick and the click onto – wait for it. Drumroll please, Maestro. Yes, the flick and the click onto ‘Accept all Cookies’ box because I’m in too much of a hurry to check my options. Flick. Click. I’m still waiting. Not a choc-chip in sight.

No matter how often I try, my laptop will not spit out even one crumb. I cusor-ed cautiously towards the help button. My cursor is sensitive and must be treated with respect. BUT IT DOESN’T RESPECT ME!! It deliberately races around the screen and I can’t pin it down. AAAAAH!

Don’t you just hate that jumping cursor. It’s like a cockroach waiting to shift and hi-jack my precious script. It deletes. It crawls on my page causing mayhem dare I let my concentration waver, or any of my fingers quiver. Perhaps I should resort to using a mouse again. And before any animal rights campaigners complain, I do not mean the four-legged kind.

Touch screens are far too sensitive. Not that I care about their feelings specially as they don’t respect mine. No, I’m not off my trolley. You know you also personalize inanimate stuff. Admit it. You talk to your car, don’t you? I bet it has a name. You talk to yourself when the blender won’t work, won’t spin, or pulverize, just nada. Try plugging it in. Gotcha!

THE POP-UP WORLD

How many pop-up adverts can my brain cope with? How do I become immune to the endless pop-ups demanding my attention when all I want to do is finish reading an informative article? My husband has recommended anger management and persists in telling me that it’s not the computer’s fault. Really, Richard. You believe that! Huh. Try walking in my shoes, or more appropriately my fingers. And I always get caught, fall for the gimmicky gossipy nonsense. ‘Ooh, that looks interesting.’ Click. Click.

I read. NEXT zooms up on the screen. I click. I read. NEXT zooms up again. I read wondering when the article will inform me of something relevant. NEXT! NEXT! NEXT! It’s screaming at me. I panic and press the return key repeatedly. NEXT! NEXT! NEXT! I spot the tiniest arrow on the left-hand corner. I click on it – once, twice, three times a lady.

Well, perhaps my swearing negates that title. I close my eyes and just manically tap everything on the keyboard. Phew! It seems to have worked. SECURITY ALERT! SECURITY ALERT! Yikes! Blue lights are flashing through my window. Not the real window – the computer windows. ‘Cyber-attack. Worm crawl. Shut down. Shut down all systems now!’ Oh, sod it, I’m reverting to paper and pen.

EMOJIIS

My 5-year-old granddaughter in Cape Town recently left me a voice message sending her love. Then she said – ‘There’s a sad emoji because I miss you.’ This was followed by a vast array of emojis, lots of little yellow faces with kisses, hearts of every colour and an apple at the end. I assume the apple refers to her favourite phrase when she says: ‘You’re the apple of my eye.

She’s years ahead of me with her knowledge of emojis. I’m fairly confident with 3 or 4, but occasionally my fingers slip and I send some random yellow or gross pink or scarlet weirdly shaped images that are probably insulting.

I wonder if that’s why Terry Crews didn’t respond to my WhatsApp message. Just sharing my crush on the muscle man himself. How did I get his number? Not telling. My next visit to Cape Town, post COVID-19, will entail intensive tutoring from my grandchildren on The Meaning of the Emoji.

NOW I SEE YOU – NOW I DON’T

This is where the world in general gets confused using a mixture of American and British spellings. The Spell Chick employed online is also confused and her suggestions are often inexplicable. Can’t be female. We’re too polished and pernickety with stuff like that. Gotta be a male Spell Chick.

Do you know how many times sentences and even whole paragraphs have disappeared before my eyes since I started this blog in 2015? That’s why it’s taken so long. I squint once and it’s gone. Recently my beloved showed me the twisty arrow at the very top. One click and hey presto! Like magic my words re-appeared. How come I didn’t know about that.

Why didn’t ‘he who knows all techno stuff’ tell me sooner. I suspect my outbreaks of vitriol at the computer are a cheap form of entertainment for him. He insists that he’s running a laughing club, but I know he’s laughing at me. Should I trade him in? Terry Crews are you free?

MY MISSING VOWELS

Ouch! Extracted by force? Stolen by the vowel fairy? Bounced off into the ether, away above the clouds? Don’t mention Cloud, one of many remote servers all over the world. Perhaps they have stolen my vowels. The most important vowels, the ones I use the most – A and E. ‘Ystrdy I bkd a ck. It ws etn immditly bcus it tstd lik hvn on plt.’ S wht I mn. I mean, see what I mean. Could be text spk.

And as for tech talk that is totally meaningless to be, like WEBINAR, he would walks in my shadow is a aficionado in all things Techno, but WEB whatever I don’t get it. Put your ear to the wall with a glass (modern bugging system) and listen, Then you’ll understand.

‘I have a Webinar later, darling.’

‘Richard, whaddaya say? You know I can’t hear you if you’re in another room.’

He comes into the sitting room and is busy plugging in yet some other gadget. I hear some form of mumbling and I catch the word ‘Web’.

‘No can do. I’m too short to reach it.’

‘No!’ he enunciated slowly ‘WEB IN AIR.’ I hope he’s joking.

‘No way! I don’t like spiders. Besides, it’s not a man’s right to tell his wife what to do. You are treading on thin ice here, matey. Females can tell you lot to do, how to do it and when, but that does not apply to you males.’

He interrupts before a storm descends. Looking at me so I can see his lips move, he speaks clearly, spelling each letter, accompanied with hand actions. ‘I have a Webinar later.’ How was I to know that? Give me a break. I shoved the huge duster into his hand and pointing at each corner of the ceiling, I spelt out C O B W E B S in the A I R. I spoke slowly. No Malware or Norton, this is a Real not Virtual battle between you and real-life cobwebs. So, get dusting! Blog revenge is sweet.

IN MY DAY

I learned how to type on a manual typewriter. Does anyone out there remember those machines or am I alone in admitting knowledge of QWERTY. Tap tap tap. Ouch! Your fingers get caught between the keys. Mine did repeatedly. Unlike the ‘enter’ or ‘return’ key on computers one had the satisfaction of whacking the return carriage every time you reached the end of a line. I kid you not.

Predictive text meant the farmer in Donegal who could predict the Irish weather. Actually, he still does. (It’s his fault we didn’t have a white Xmas). Predictive text messes with your head as well as your words. It can get you into serious trouble and make enemies of your friends. Unless you’re a sly witch who uses it to stir the cauldron of words into demonic insults – all unintended. Blame the computer. Large companies have been doing it for years.

Enough already. I’m goi shups 2 boy pence and park. Ca no linger stomp misps. I no liiter. Hasta la vista baby, or as my 2-year-old grandson says – ‘Ice Ice Baby’.

Read my Blog – MY TECHNO LOVE AFFAIR !