Let me make it clear from the outset…I am possessed (allegedly) of an IQ that would permit me to talk sensibly about the Higgs Boson particle …given freedom to explore the Rosetta Stone, its hieroglyphics would cause me little obstacle in plundering its secrets…rather selfishly I suppose, I chose not to pursue a career in international high-level diplomacy, although that avenue would have caused me not one stir of concern…Why then is it, I constantly ask myself, that my little grey cells come to an abrupt and ignominious full crunching halt when faced with anything, and I mean truly anything to do with computer gadgetry?…Am I alone in this universe of people trying to scrape a volume or three of manuscript (or should that be computuscript?) in being utterly bamboozled with the intricacies relating to the science of Cut and Paste or heaven forfend, Copy, Cut, and Paste?…even more angst raises its ugly head when trying to open more than one screen page of stored material at the same time…somehow, I’m baffled by the juggling act that sees a page career off into a corner of the screen, never to be easily retraced, while its brother and sister files whip up and down and across the place like whirling dervishes…it’s the stuff of nightmares…the Freddy Krugers of LaptopLand…countless are the numbers of times that Her Indoors has retrieved erasure disaster by the simple finger-flipping combination of ‘Command/Z’, which apparently my brain is incapable of remembering … exhortations to repeat the ‘Command/Save’ function are lost on me…it’s like something out of Computer Hell for Dummies…then we have the daddy of them all—when to use the left hand side versus the right hand side of the MOUSE…that innocent little clickey thing-y that contains all the elements for full-scale Armageddon…tap it the wrong way, and your whole life can pass before your eyes in a nano-second…so, perhaps when the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it event finally comes along, and civilisation reverts to stone tablets and charcoal scratchings on papyrus, one ol’ Scotsman may well be found snuggling down in his cave with a smile on his face and a salvaged Webster’s Dictionary in his fist…if you’re still around then too, come and join me, we can do spellings and other good writer-y stuff…now where’s my medication, Matron,…I’ve gotta sleep this away…sleep this away…this away………away……..
…Of Mouses and Men…(…with a grateful nod to Master Steinbeck…)…
Filed under Blether, Scribbling & Stuff
Great post! Computer technology reduces some who are otherwise brilliant to wailing, shriveling masses of jelly. Ask me how I know? Your post hits home – even though I call myself “computer literate” it only goes so far. Anything major and I am lost, calling a tech to come and bail me out. I, too, loved the good old days of typewriters and dictionaries!
Spellers of the World unite !!!
:)
A wonderful truism if ever I have read one….. I am offering copy/paste classes from 9 am-10 am on all days of the week that contain a ‘v’! Sign up today!
I’m in. Put me down for movday and Vursday
:)
Perhaps…perhaps idiot savant inverted?
‘idiot’ I can run with .. but savant…??????
you’re not familiar with the term?
not suave, now, but savant
Entirely familiar with it, but it suggests intelligence, and that’s not a phrase that nudges close to my name too often ..
:)
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The computer wins a lot of arguments around here too. However, one late night when I was struggling to load a set of pages to my website, the IT guy said “Maybe you need a more straightforward program to work with.”
Infuriated, I stuck to it until I successfully loaded the updates, without his sighs of exasperation. So, the moral of the story is to stick with it, drink if that doesn’t work and blame microsoft.
Yeah.. Microsoft.. I can use that as my get out ! yippee >:):) and the chocolate IS a great fallback ..
I’m a self taught computer literate. Most everything I know has come from trial and error. I’m not missing the old typewriters (learned on an old IBM Selectric and have typed on manual typewriters before) but I do miss how the next generation has gotten so lazy and doesn’t even know how to look things up in the dictionary or how to use a thesaurus. They are so dependent on their games and toys and gadgetry that it totally blows my mind. Grant it, there are some places that technology is a godsend but there are times when good ol’ fashioned page turning will lead to discoverie beyond your wildest imagination. Good posting and hang in there as we will all win the battle against the machine one of these days. – E
Elysabeth Eldering
Author of FINALLY HOME, a middle grade/YA mystery
http://elysabethsstories.blogspot.com
http://eeldering.weebly.com
I’m a self taught computer literate. Most everything I know has come from trial and error. I’m not missing the old typewriters (learned on an old IBM Selectric and have typed on manual typewriters before) but I do miss how the next generation has gotten so lazy and doesn’t even know how to look things up in the dictionary or how to use a thesaurus. They are so dependent on their games and toys and gadgetry that it totally blows my mind. Grant it, there are some places that technology is a godsend but there are times when good ol’ fashioned page turning will lead to discoverie beyond your wildest imagination. Good posting and hang in there as we will all win the battle against the machine one of these days. – E
Elysabeth Eldering
Author of FINALLY HOME, a middle grade/YA mystery
LUV IT, Elizabeth.. and the uncanny act of a shop assistant using a calculator to figure out how much change is needed from twenty for a bill of ten !! .. BTW, clicked on to follow your blog by email now .. cheers m’Lady ..:):)
Well, I LOVE the whole word-processor world. Find and replace is my best friend, cut and paste my mistress. It’s the whole phone thing that I’ve never been able to figure out. I don’t suppose that would have anything to do with the Army or Jimi Hendrix or Steppenwolf. Of course not.
…of COURSE not … sheesh … what would people be thinkin’ …
:)
Or, add to it this, Master Seumas: Why, when you’ve read a comment to your post and agreed to your own satisfaction that it is not spam and will in no way destroy the reputation you’ve spent so long to develop … you push the “approve” button only to see it change to “unapprove”??? Does this niggle anyone else’s sense of order and rectitude?
Another humorous, but pertinent, post!
Jay
I s’pose it’s part of getting from ‘Jurassic’ to ‘Switched On’ in a million easy steps , Jay !
:)
I nearly made it as a digital native as I was allowed to touch a computer as a teenager but not allowed to really use it as the teacher was afraid it might lead to the outbreak of war…but I am now a total geek courtesy of Apple. After years of threatening to take an ice pick to my pc I moved over to Mac and the risk of computacide has receded. It is much better for us artistic types as it knows we’re too busy being creative to be able to remember ‘stuff’ so it does lots of it for you. Am I rambling? That’s because my Mac lets me without asking if I’m really sure every two key strokes…
..so there’s hope yet, even for this old Jurassic ! Yeehaw !
:) Cheers , Bev 