The Perils of Updating

It was time for the 6-year-old MacBook to die. It was still living in El Capitan, back in 2015. In the Mac world (where they give their operating systems cute names), I was years behind. Eons and mountains and deserts behind.

Websites were starting to remind me I was out of date, if not forbidding me entrance. Some browsers didn’t even want to know me anymore.

So I decided to update my system. Maybe travel as far as Big Sur or … Monterey! But then an alert popped up: my Microsoft Office 2011 wouldn’t work anymore if I updated my computer. I’d have to update to Microsoft 365.

Aiiiieeee! All this updating! They’re talking to a person who has had the same hairstyle for thirty years, who doesn’t ever rearrange furniture, who kept her beloved Subaru for 20 years and only heartbreakingly replaced it.

I took the plunge. It helped that my sister’s office was burglarized and she had to replace her computer, so some of the replacement research was done. (Sorry, Allison.) Both of us are now proud owners of MacBook Airs.

I can say “proud” because I’m just now recovering from hysteria. The Geniuses at the Genius Bar at the Apple Store must see me and run for the back rooms. Five visits in four days. And that’s not even counting the at-home computer consultant and the chats and phone calls with Apple Support. I’ve been a one-woman disturbance in the cloud universe.

The Cloud! The misty, obscure, and unknowable Cloud. Because I decided I’d have to backup to The Cloud in case (as happened with poor Allison) my laptop was stolen or destroyed. (Allison was wisely backed up.)

First, we had to empty the brains of my old laptop into the new brain. That was a couple of visits which involved the horrors of where did my neat little highly-organized folders go? Then there was the problem of where did my photos go?

And did I even talk about passwords? I could do an entire sitcom on passwords.

That’s when Nancy the Computer Whiz entered my home. She sat down at my computer and explained how to back up to The Cloud, and she made it happen. She explained how to do the password thing, the photo thing. But poor Nancy had me as a client.

So Nancy had to put up with many hysterical emails. Tim had to put up with hysteria in person. The Geniuses don’t know how close they were to having a crazy woman run amok in the Fifth Avenue Mall.

Because everything had disappeared from my computer. It was all in The Cloud, so what if I didn’t have Internet, did I have NOTHING?!?

I find it amazing – if not reassuring – that when I have a problem and ask Google, as I’m typing it out, Google auto completes my query. It means that other people have the same problem. I type in “document not…” and Google comes up with “not loading on my Mac,” “not updating,” “not in my backup,” etc etc. I type in “photos not…” and I get the catalog of everyone else’s problems with photos.

I type in “how to calm” and it’s amazing how many people need to calm down, calm anxiety, calm a hysterical person, calm a panic attack.

Eight emails and Nancy could not reassure me. “It’s all in The Cloud! It’s gone from my computer! Gone!!” Finally, she told me to disconnect from wifi. I did. My things were still there! They weren’t stuck in The Cloud, they’d just changed locations, rearranged the furniture.

My heart rate is slowing down. I can function again. I’d started out writing about things that merely confuse me before I was distracted by things that traumatize me. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get back to mere confusion.

Barbara vs. the Machines (Round 3)

Victory!

Victory over technology! I fought the scanner and I won! (It just took a few rounds, but I’m back.)

There are three things that can cause stress and anxiety in my life, and the last two weeks have been the perfect storm of all three:

• Logistics (as in flight arrangements, tickets, and lodging)
• Income Taxes and other Bureaucratic Forms
• Inexplicable Technological Failures

All three conspired to make blogging difficult, but it was the last that made it impossible. The first made me a basket case, the second amplified the hysteria, and the last left me vibrating.

The Logistics Nightmare
       I scored Hamilton tickets on Broadway. Through an elaborate process of being designated a Ticketmaster “verified fan” (meaning I don’t scalp tickets), receiving a secret code at 4 a.m. Alaska time, and getting online with a bazillion others; I scored Hamilton tickets. I was going to take another month in Manhattan.

Which, of course, meant Logistics. I began with Airbnb, which meant hours of looking at other people’s apartments. I had never used Airbnb before and I was haunted by things like this:

Less than three days’ notice! Yikes, yikes, yikes! So after I found a lovely spot, I emailed back and forth with the host, seeking reassurance that she’d never do anything like that. She promised.

And then she did it. After I’d already matched my flights to her dates.

Okay, that’s worth some tension. That’s worth about five more hours on the Internet and more emails with prospective hosts, seeking reassurance (in a situation that offers no reassurance). The most I could achieve – until I show up in Manhattan and get a key for an actual apartment – is temporary relief. So we move on to:

Income Taxes and other Bureaucratic Forms (such as Medicare enrollment)
       I went to an information session, I ordered explanatory booklets, I talked to friends. I was ready. I signed up.

And then the bill came: $402 dollars when everyone else is only paying $134! $402 a month is $4,824 a year. That is more than I’ve ever paid for health care. My budget is blown!

I phone friends, I Google things. I freak out (because, of course, I’m already in the midst of the Logistics Nightmare). Only much later do I see that the bill is quarterly.

But then assorted IRS documents show up in the mail. In my efforts to declutter financial accounts, I now have to research things like “basis” and “automatic reinvestment” and the inches-thick file I have on an account I’ve had since I was 23.

I haven’t even faced this problem. At this point, I’m so notched up – didn’t I just return from vacation?!? – that it’s even interfering with my ability to avoid, to zone out with Netflix.

Inexplicable Technological Failures
       But our Internet has suddenly become so slow that a single Netflix show is buffered 17 times. Watch for a minute, wait for a minute. Watch for a minute, wait for a minute. The Internet Service Provider says nothing has changed; they continue to deny reality. They change our password.

Now the HP printer-scanner won’t scan. It needs the new password, but it tells me:

What does that mean?!? I turn to the HP Support Forums … again. If I were to make my contribution to the world, I would re-do Support Forums. This is how they work: random person has a problem, random person poses a question, not-so-random people pose solutions. Many, many people have my same problem, and they all post the question so there are zillions of the identical question. The not-so-random people who answer only answer the one they see, so you end up with zillions of potential solutions which are hidden like needles in a haystack.

Let’s say my problem shows up 57 times. Answerer #28 answers Questioner #47 and Questioner #47 says it works. Hooray! Except that Answerer #28’s answer is buried underneath Problems #1-57, and those other Answerers were wrong, communicated in Klingon, or missed the point. But you have to look at ALL of them, try ALL of them until you happen to stumble upon Questioner #47. Where you discover that you must have been given a WPA2 security protocol with a WPA2 password … and your printer-scanner was manufactured before they invented WPA2! The Internet guy says, “Whoa, your scanner is OLD!”

No, it’s just in its Third Third.

LOTS of food for thought

When my daughter started school and when she went to college, there was always just one thing I was watching out for: was her curiosity still intact? Was she still finding the world interesting and was that interest still motivating?

I ask the same of myself, but especially now in my Third Third. The idea of stagnation is anathema to me, and now it’s compounded by believing that curiosity fights off cognitive decline (and seeing my mother in New York leaves me especially worried about that).

Mostly, I’ve always been curious. My brain is like a garbage disposal that can’t turn off. With no food in it, it just whirls and grinds away relentlessly but pointlessly. But with food – and New York City provides SO MUCH food – it’s useful and productive. It processes.

Here are some of the things I’m wondering about now. I haven’t been able to sleep until I Google some of them, but I’ll probably need to check some books out of the library.

• In the Hayden Planetarium show “Dark Universe,” Neil deGrasse Tyson (one of my heroes), said that when things move away from us, their light waves “redshift,” that from our position in the universe, everything is moving away from us. He distinctly said that from ANY point in the universe, everything is moving away from it. How can that be? Something has to be in front of something. In fact, one of the panels mentioned the galaxy “in the foreground,” so wouldn’t it be chased by the galaxies in the background? This bothers me.

   
• During World War II, book publishers turned out 123 MILLION Armed Services Editions of little, skinny (but complete) versions of titles so soldiers could fit them in their pockets. The author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn received 10,000 letters from grateful GIs (according to the New York Public Library program by the author of When Books Went to War). I want to find a skinny book!

• From the American Museum of Natural History “The Secret World Inside You,” I discovered that a baby’s passage through the mother’s birth canal is crucially important to bathe it in valuable bacteria. Doctors are now looking at swabbing babies born through Caesarean section with the bacteria to prevent things like asthma and food allergies. I am SO GLAD I gave my daughter bacteria!


• In the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, I saw Jenny E. Sabin’s gorgeous, knitted pavilion. She made it of solar active yarns so it lights itself up at night. It is truly spectacular and my drawing wouldn’t do it justice so you can click through for more photos here. Just imagine being under it.

• I learned about Voronoi polygons at the Museum of Mathematics on Pi Day (3/14/16). If you have a few points and you divide them up so a region (shaped like a polygon) is closest to one point than any neighboring one, they’re Voronoi polygons. A bazillion kids on a field trip danced on a floor that changed shapes and colors every time a kid moved. John Snow, who identified the water pump that spread cholera in London (another hero of mine), used these to find the pump. He must have plotted all the deaths and saw they were closest to that one pump.

• A Jewish man in Georgia, Leo Frank, was sentenced to death for murdering a young girl. When evidence showed it couldn’t be him, the governor commuted the sentence, but a group kidnapped him from prison and lynched him. The group included the former governor, mayors, and state legislators. They were never punished, and they subsequently revived the KKK. I learned this at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

I realize this is all pretty boring, listed out like this. I learned from brilliantly designed exhibits, with things you could touch and see, bright graphics and clear visuals. My New York experience is mostly real life and real culture, and I pick up most of what I learn through osmosis (although I manage to forget that the D train is an express and I keep ending up on my way to the Bronx with no way to get off).

But these museums, these programs, these institutions are smoldering hubs for curiosity. I am really, really good at unearthing every program, talk, exhibit, tour, or event I can; the table is littered with flyers, newspapers, programs, and handouts.

I am a glutton and curiosity hog, New York is a never empty banquet, and I only have a month to feast.

What do you put on a burn? Whatever you have.

There we were in my Alaska Literacy Program class, going through the workbook, learning the English words for safety and accident prevention. We were also working on the difference between “should” (see a doctor) and “have to” (go to the hospital). We were describing what had happened in this illustration:

“She burned her hand.” “She should use a mitt.” And then, in those moments I love, the conversation took off.

Irma from Guatemala said she should put eggs on her burn. Rebecca from South Sudan agreed, but she would add sugar and milk to the mixture and make a paste to spread on the burn. I’m not exactly sure of the recipe; ingredients were coming fast and furiously, in a mixture of several languages, with energetic hand motions for emphasis. Irma was “stirring” her eggs for me while Rebecca was “applying” her paste.

But Fioly from the Dominican Republic was busy grating potatoes. Her mother had a terrible burn from a pot of boiling water, but applying grated potatoes meant no scar. So Irma showed me where she’d received a bad burn but the eggs had cured it.

Afele from Samoa got in on the action: “Butter,” he said. “No, no, no,” the women chorused, “Never butter.” I explained the little I knew, that butter continues to cook from the heat of the burn, making a burn worse.

Sandra is from Colombia and found the whole thing hilarious. She said she puts ham and cheese and bread on her arm and then mimed eating her arm. I didn’t think Sandra understood. I thought she wasn’t following the conversation, that she thought it was about eating. It took me a while, but then I got it: she was making a joke. It really seemed like we were putting meals on our burns.

So, of course, I had to get in on the action. I told them what everyone should do when they get a bad burn in Alaska: cover it with snow. I knew that the temperature had to be lowered quickly, and I’d heard stories of miraculous rescues by throwing fire victims in snow banks. But then the women all shouted, “No, not water. No water at all.” They were adamant.

So I came home and Googled “burn remedies.” Well, the first thing that pops up is “No ice.” Ice can damage tissue. Cool water is the top recommendation, but then there’s a whole batch of things: vanilla extract; cold, wet tea bags; milk; oats; raw potato; onion juice; vinegar; and honey (although there’s some debate as to whether it’s only special honey). Some say eggs, some say egg whites. And, after all this food, what else? Mint toothpaste.

Not to be outdone, the National Mustard Museum touts the yellow mustard burn remedy, and the People’s Pharmacy says, “Some people have wondered if brown mustard or fancy Dijon mustard will work as well. From what we hear from readers, cheap yellow mustard works best.”

I’d better tell Sandra her ham and cheese sandwich needs mustard, too.

If most burns in the home happen in the kitchen, I can guess why all these food remedies have emerged: everyone grabs whatever they can find. The mustard solution was only discovered after someone realized soy sauce didn’t work. Soy sauce?

And afterwards, wrap the burn in aluminum foil because the foil delivers “restorative minerals as foil contains aluminum and other regenerative minerals.”

I’d better tell Sandra to wrap her sandwich in aluminum foil.

Okay, after migrating through all these assorted food remedies and Google sites, I finally found something reputable (I think): cool water and aloe vera. So I keep an aloe vera plant in the kitchen. I might try a couple of tea bags because I’ve already been told to keep some of them in the freezer for mosquito bites.

But I still don’t know about snow. Was that just an urban legend I’d picked up? Burns happen all over the world and all over the world, people pick what’s handy in their attempts to treat it. My snow may just be Alaska’s answer to Irma’s eggs and Fioly’s potatoes.

Gasp. Choke. Unwelcome adventures.

Oh, yikes, the wrong people have found me on the Internet. I am beyond upset. I am vibrating with agitation.

I was looking through my blog analytics, and I noticed that two of the blog visits had an extra bunch of letters in the URL. So I clicked on it.

It went to a fake version of my blog: no header, no right-hand side, just the words and drawings. I totally panicked: my computer must be crashing, I’d ruined its brains, my blog was disintegrating. So then I Googled just the extra letters, and it turned out to be on lots of other websites. Just inserted into them.

I asked Google, “What is XXXX?” but all I got was a homepage, written in Asian characters. The Chinese must be violating international copyright laws with my blog; I was a victim of cyber crime! I was also clearly out of my depth.

So then I had to figure out how to ask Blogger my questions, how to get on the “Forum.” Other people put their questions there, but I don’t even know the process.

Brief interlude for hysterical outburst:

I AM a tech dinosaur! There, I said it! I can’t get an answer to a question without negotiating another completely separate hurdle: I have to ask questions about how to post a question. And don’t even get me started on how am I supposed to receive the answers. Why does everything seem to lead to an endless trip down a technological rabbit hole?!?

Deep breath, deep breath. Remember: every hurdle is just another boost to maintain my cognitive abilities.

I figured out how to ask, and I asked. This morning, a very nice guy responded, and his little button said he was a “Google Expert.” Hooray! He said he couldn’t duplicate the result, could I tell him how I found the bad blog.

So I did my Google thing, and they were gone! Everything with that bunch of letters in it was gone except for the home page. So I checked my analytics again, and there was a third person going to that bad site! From Google! Oh, yikes, this was a mess. (Afterwards, I did figure out that was my Expert looking it up, but by this point, I was so freaked out, I felt like every incident was a cyber threat.)

I explained everything to my Google Expert, and he said “It looks like that site is taking content and hosting it on their server. You might want to contact the website owner to remove your content from their servers.”

Cyber thieves taking my stories and pictures! I was furious, but I worried that contacting them was like trying to unsubscribe from spam, that it confirmed to the bad guys that you were alive and then you’d never get rid of them. Not to mention that everything was in Asian characters. But my Expert told me to, so I went to their home page and clicked “Translate.”

Gasp. I’m even afraid to tell you what I found, that it will add me to their list again. Can I say they called themselves “erotic images” without the word “erotic” showing up in Google searches? (Too late.) And they’re sending people to a fake version of my blog! (Deep breath, deep breath.) I even feel icky touching my keyboard.

Immediately, I thought of the butt lineup from Costco, but that was a while ago. Why would I first hit their radar now? Oh, no! It must have been my butt peeing outside, hiding from the bus. Look here: is that an erotic image to you?

So I quickly replied to my Google Expert, asking him what I should do now, but he’s not responding! Maybe he’s checking my blog and Google will remove me! Already, “3rd Thirds” is only yielding searches about Third Graders. Here I am, in my Third Third, and I’m a Japanese porn attraction.

(sob)

Subscribe instructions ... simplified

Nothing like a technological glitch to send you down the rabbit hole of Google-land. And nothing like the rabbit hole of Google and Google Help Groups to leave you feeling incompetent, confused, and defeated. Depressingly, there’s a whole gang of us down there, shouting into the ether.

How this all started was because of the number of requests I get about how to subscribe to my posts. I point out the little box in the upper right that said “Follow by Email,” thinking that would be sufficient. BUT, I discovered the little box doesn’t appear if you’re viewing this on a smart phone. You have to go to the website.

I know it’s a little confusing because there’s another box underneath it that says Subscribe, but it has little boxes for “Posts” and “All Comments.” What are they for? Those are for RSS Feeds, the source of my journey into Google-land today. We’ll come back to them.

As I looked around on other blogs, I realized that a lot of them use the word “Follow” when they’re talking about Twitter. I am not on Twitter and don’t follow anybody on Twitter. And if you’re just looking to get my posts in your inbox, having the word “Follow by Email” on the subscriber box could get intimidating: will it sign you up for Twitter? As of right now, I changed it to say, “Sign up here to receive Our Third Thirds by email.” Does that work better?

After you type your email in the blank, click on “Submit,” and convince the computer you’re not a robot; it sends an email to you, asking you to verify that you really want to subscribe to my posts. Another batch of folks get derailed here. Sometimes it’s because there’s a typo in their email address, sometimes it just must get lost. But you can always try again.

So I wanted to learn a little bit more about RSS Feeds. I visited Robin, who reads my blog that way, on a service called NetVibes. She puts the things she likes to read on her NetVibes account, and when new stuff is published, it goes to her in one big package of “things to read.” Up pops my blog. For Robin, that works as a way of putting those “things to read” in one spot.

While in Google-land, an article described all the terrific things I could learn about my blog and its readers. The author praised the nifty pie chart that shows how readers were accessing his blog – email, on the web, NetVibes or some other feed service. I’ve looked all over, but my pie chart is nowhere to be found. My data shows my NetVibes is “invalid,” even though Robin is looking right at it.

So that became another question for the Google Help Forum. I didn’t want to miss the answer, so I checked the box to receive notifications. Uh, oh! I hope this means I only get answers to my question, not everyone else’s. See, this is why the word “follow” can get intimidating. If you get swamped, there’s no “unsubscribe.” Then you have to Google to learn how to stop notifications….

One response said the answer was described perfectly here … but the link didn’t work. I tried reaching a real human being to ask my questions, but that required joining Google+. Uh, oh, that sounds like following, like more notifications, like Twitter.

Precious daylight hours went into this trip down the rabbit hole. I found too many things I can neither explain nor understand and too many contacts and sources that have expired, were dead-ends, or look defunct. Maybe it proved too much for them, too.

I have that spacy, brain-dead, exasperated feeling that comes from too much machine and not enough humanity. Tomorrow will be a better day; I’m going to clean my bathrooms.

Technology vs. the Blog

Inexplicably, the printer stopped scanning my illustrations or even printing. I tried turning it off and on. I tried lots of things on my computer, but it was just “looking for printer.” I turned the computer off and on. Then I went back to the printer and played with its little buttons for a while. That’s a more complicated endeavor, but I actually re-confirmed the wireless connection and it said, “The printer is connected to the network.”

The computer didn’t know that. It was still looking.

Tim’s printer printed. Mine was “not found.”

You know what this means, don’t you? This means I have to enter Google-land and hunt for solutions. First, I have to figure out how to describe the problem. I have to decide which to type in first, the computer (Mac) or the printer (HP), because that determines which junk I will have to wade through to find the problem they both share. But they think the problem is the other guy’s fault so there are all sorts of blind alleys and dead ends.

This is all very depressing because basically you’re sifting through old posts, records of other people’s technical nightmares. They all ask panicky questions and get incomprehensible answers. Some of them are in such a state of crisis your own heart starts pounding.

If I finally end up with an HP printer not working on a Mac, then I have to include “suddenly” in my problem description – as in “suddenly can’t find printer” – and that’s where I finally find a solution: I need to delete my printer and then add it back in. Deletion is no problem, but when I try to add it back in, nothing shows up. “There are no printers on your network.”

It’s here, right here! You can see it, right? It's gigantic.

This was about three hours one night and then the printer printed a test page. Yay…. Short-lived. That was just a fluke in the universe. By now, I’d joined the HP Support Forum so I could ask my own question and not just pore through everyone else’s disasters.

Five hours the next night, and then I tried turning the router on and off. Victory!

I remember reading an essay once about a man trying to get his elderly mother to use a computer. Whenever it crashed, he knew to just turn it off and then on again, but this seemed so … wrong to his mother. She just couldn’t trust a machine or a problem that needed to be jiggled as a solution.

Why should turning things off and then on again work? Why is that even useful? Does it take those 30 seconds to heal? To calm down, take a breather? This is advanced technology – do heart machines need to be turned off and on, too? If there’s some sort of glitch that gets cleared, does that mean glitches are ever-present but just some of them erupt?

So now I have my printer/scanner back … but I lost Google. It’s there, and it lets me type in a search, but then it just sits there. Unmoving. So I had to search around – without Google – for a solution. I learned that if my time zone is incorrect on my Mac, Google won’t work. ??? So I made sure it showed I was in Alaska Standard Time, and it came back.

But now it’s gone again. And then it comes back. And then it’s gone.

I am NOT a tech dinosaur, but there is a problem in our Third Thirds: most of us don’t come with IT departments.

I am not a tech dinosaur!

One of the things I dislike about being in this Third Third is the popular perception that we don’t know our way around technology. I have created my own podcasts, mixed my own music on Garage Band, and created lots of iMovies. I use computer short cuts, know how to Skype, and update websites with HTML. But…

The Apple TV Remote Example

This is my Apple TV remote. A skinny silver thing with three buttons.

This is a test: Can you figure out how to watch Netflix with this? What buttons would you press to make it go?

The instruction booklet that came in the box lists six things you can do with your remote. I know about menu, pause, and play. That only went so far. Frustrated, I’d start pressing buttons and every now and then, a good thing would happen on the TV. But I was so busy pressing buttons, I couldn’t remember what did what.

Finally fed up, I Googled “Apple TV Remote,” and all sorts of advice popped up: how to rewind, fast forward, go into slow motion. Things like, “hold this button for 3 seconds while you do that to the other button” and other things happen. Who are these people, these good Samaritans who figure odd stuff out and then tell the rest of us on Google? Are they holding buttons on everything for 3 seconds, testing things?

Is it so hard for a manufacturer to include all this in the instruction booklet?

The Blog Bog

When I started this blog, I started it on Tumblr. I did the first two posts, and then friends tried to “follow” me. Uh, oh. They all wanted a post to go right into their inboxes, but with Tumblr, you have to “join” Tumblr. Then you have to create a screen name. If Tumblr already has someone with your name, they suggest rather bizarre new ones. That’s why I have a follower named pleasanttrashtyphoon and yourwhomeuniverse. She’s named both those things because the whole business was a little confusing. And nothing goes into your inbox; you have to go visit Tumblr and have things “fed” to you. Kind of like going to Facebook and having your friends’ posts in your feed.

But do any of us really need another thing to check? (See future post on wasting time…)

So I switched to Blogger and re-entered my first two posts. Picked out the template with the fonts and design and colors I wanted. But when I previewed it, it wasn’t what I’d picked. So I called Steve, whose What Do I Know? blog has been around for years with all sorts of interesting posts and features. Steve came over and we spent about 4 hours of Steve showing me around, teaching me new doodads. I’d forgotten that cutting-and-pasting usually messes up the HTML by adding all sorts of unwanted things to the template so I had a lot of clean-up. Hooray! My blog mostly looks the way it’s supposed to.

But there are still things I don’t understand. Like,

• why is the title of my post the nice blue I picked but older posts lose the color?
• And how do I exit a bulleted list to go back to my initial format?
• And why now, a few hours later, is the nice blue color now navy blue?

My daughter once showed me a game on her phone. No instructions. “What’s the objective of the game? How do we play? What are the rules?” “No need,” she said. Then she’d click on something, triggering something else happening, and we’d go to a new level. Miraculously! Finally after a couple of hours of this, I said,

 She said, “I was secretly Googling it whenever you were concentrating on the phone.”