The Trouble With Computers

I recently bought a new computer, got high speed AOL, a whole new welcome page, and have been struggling ever since to find stuff I had with my slow speed AOL 9.0. No-one told me I could still use AOL 9.0 with high speed but my youngest daughter, Shelley, has fixed it all up for me. Now I'm a real happy camper. She also got my camera program into the new computer (something I hadn't been able to do) by going a different route. I barely know one route and certainly have no idea how to even imagine another one.

Now it's such a pleasure to go online and it all looks familiar to me. I need that. Changes throw me for a loop and I have terrible difficulty learning something new on the computer. That's when I realize I both love and hate the damn things. Once I learn the new thing, though, I always wonder what my problem had been because now it has begun to make sense to me.

A while back I was trying to figure out how to put a second picture on my Ebay listing and couldn't understand the directions that Ebay was giving me so I contacted them. They sent me step by step instructions that I'm sure a newborn could have followed...but not me. I raved to anyone within earshot that it shouldn't be this difficult to do something so simple and why couldn't people give plainer instructions, etc., etc., etc., whine, whine, whine!

I sat at the computer one day and decided I wouldn't leave it till I'd mastered adding a second picture to the Ebay listing. I worked dilligently for hours, cursing, crying, and totally frustrated with my inability to understand. Suddenly that proverbial light bulb came on and I understood what they'd all tried to tell me. It was so simple and it had been me being too stubborn to follow the instructions without questioning them. I think the secret to using the computer is to stop using human logic and use mechanical logic instead.

The camera program that Shelley installed is slightly different from the one I've been using so now there'll be a bit more cursing and crying until I get it figured out. I'm just happy to have it, though.

I told Shelley that I'll have to dismantle the whole darned thing when I go to Florida in October because AOL won't let me keep the high speed equipment until I return home in April. I have to mail it all back to AOL or they'll charge me for all the months I'm gone.

She said to let them know what my new plans are for April (going to cable for my internet because I hate the thought of all that dismantling) and they might let me keep their equipment here instead of returning it. Once I return all this *&%$# I will never go back to AOL but, if they're agreeable, I'll stay with them.

The moral here is...be polite but firm. I don't think AOL likes to lose customers but there's no way I want to face the tangle of a hundred wires under my computer twice a year.