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Category: technology

All the Fixin’s

All the Fixin’s

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This is not a post about the side dishes that accompany a main course. About a crunchy salad or cornbread hot from the oven. No, this post is about all the fixing happening in my life, a seemingly endless list of to-dos, but two items yesterday worth noting.

My 24-year-old car is back in the shop, another shop this time, with a mechanic who fixed this problem (an errant air bag) long ago and we hope can fix it again.

And yesterday, I dropped off my ancient iPhone for a battery replacement. “Are you sure you don’t want to upgrade?” I was asked, several times. I was sure. And now my phone (still usable in most other ways) no longer erratically drops from 90 percent to 8 percent charge.

We live in a disposable age, not a fix-it culture. Collars are no longer turned, shoes no longer mended. Making do is a vanishing art. I’m keeping my hand in it a little while longer.

Gutenberg’s Bible

Gutenberg’s Bible

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The Writer’s Almanac informs me that on this day in the year 1452 Johannes Gutenberg finished printing the first section of his revolutionary bible.  More than a decade earlier, he had begun isolating the elements of each letter and punctuation mark (300 shapes in all) to create movable type. 

It’s a technology that had begun in China centuries earlier, using porcelain. Gutenberg’s type pieces were made of an alloy of lead, tin and antimony — a compound that remained in use for the next 550 years. 

Gutenberg printed around 180 bibles of which less than 50 remain, only 21 of them complete. But his printing press forever changed our technology and our culture. 

“What the world is today, good and bad, it owes to Gutenberg,” Mark Twain wrote in 1900. Perhaps a little less true today, but still a statement you can hang your hat on. 

(Illustration and facts from Wikipedia, additional material from The Writer’s Almanac)

Of Egrets and Storage

Of Egrets and Storage

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It’s a new month and I’m starting it off by cleaning up my i-Phone. This is seldom a task I enter into willingly. Usually a storage crisis sends me into a tailspin and forces me to delete large attachments (often photos I already have but had sent others) or uninstall apps. 

A painful process, indeed. But I remind myself that it’s no more than editing: what I’ve done throughout my career — removing the extraneous. 

But deciding what’s extraneous … ah, that’s the rub! 

(What does an egret have to do with i-Phone storage? Not much. It just reminds me of elegant simplicity, something I strive for in my data storage!)

The DNA of Shopping

The DNA of Shopping

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My Christmas list has morphed from one that was always on paper, even just a few years ago, to one that’s mostly in the notes section of my phone. 

This parallels my shopping, which has evolved from mostly brick-and-mortar to well over half online. 

I still scrawl gift ideas on slips of paper which I then tuck into my purse. And I still like to go shopping, to physically enter a store, even if I have to wait a few minutes in line or spend more time than I’d like looking for a price tag.

It’s part of the eternal give-and-take of hunting and gathering, a proclivity that I’m convinced is buried deep somewhere in our DNA.

(Not a shopping list, but a shopping district … this one in Lexington, Kentucky.)

Weightless

Weightless

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I knew that the last day of full-time employment would be a humdinger because it was the one that required technical tasks — and in that I was not mistaken. But as is so often true in life, it unfolded in a way I didn’t expect.

It wasn’t the “wiping” of the computer, the backup and removal of files, that had me flummoxed. I had been going about that fairly steadily for days. What held me hostage almost to the end was … the cloud: disentangling my work machine from iMessage and iPhoto and iTunes and all the other i’s that seek to unify our lives and terrorize us in the process. Because don’t you know that if you remove photos when you are signed into iCloud you will delete them from “all your devices.” And when you have more than 17,000 images (yes, dear reader, I am embarrassed to admit that is how many I have), which include the precious first photographs of your sweet grandchildren, even the thought of removal is enough to paralyze one for hours. 

Only I didn’t have hours — I had minutes, which were quickly ticking away. Luckily, an Apple Support person talked me down from the ledge, and after 30 minutes on the phone with her, and an hour of two of agony before and after, I was ready for the drive to Crystal City. 

There was a moment yesterday after I had solved these problems, after I had dropped off my computer, monitor and other work gear in a new and near empty office, when I had started driving home along the river, a drive I hadn’t taken in almost a year, when I felt positively weightless. And that’s what I’ll remember. 

Ash-Free

Ash-Free

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It’s an ash-free Ash Wednesday here. Instead of spiritual reading, I’ve been trying to change a password and perform various other online acrobatics with all the attendant trials of patience that requires. 

Perhaps there is such a thing as a prayer for online patience. There are indeed prayers for calmness in the storm and for patience in times of confusion. I don’t see exactly what I’m looking for, though, something like this:

Oh Lord, I know that in the vastness of your creation there are answers to the technological problems that beset me. Fill me with calmness and understanding as I yet again attempt to _____(change my password/check on my order/request information/insert need here). I know that these bits and bytes are but a small part of the marvelous world we inhabit. Help me to put them in perspective as I live a full and meaningful life in the real world. Amen.

20 Years!

20 Years!

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I learned early this morning that today is the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia. That I learned so early is noteworthy, I think, a sign of how much I rely on something I once thought was faintly ridiculous. 

A crowd-sourced encyclopedia? What of the scholar laboring in his or her attic (and let’s face it, it was usually a “his” back in the day)? What of the World Books lining the shelf? 

Through the years I’ve learned a little about the standards of Wikipedia, which, though odd, can sometimes be rigorous. Let’s just say that if you submit a PR-like entry, they will come after you. 

Plus, I’ve become lazy. I spent many years doing research in libraries, and I love the older style of knowledge acquisition. But I’ll admit, it’s pretty amazing to have such a compendium at my fingertips. 

So happy anniversary, Wikipedia! And thank you for your service!

(Photo: Wikipedia! And that’s another reason I love them. I can use their photos without fear of copyright infringement.)

Zoom Memorial

Zoom Memorial

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Over the weekend a friend and neighbor was memorialized over Zoom. My initial skepticism at this 2020 version of a final send-off melted away in the first few moments when a devoted son — one of five — opened the call, his voice slightly husky from the task at hand. 

There were photo montages of his father as a young man, a proud dad, a world traveler, a loving husband. Each son spoke in his own way, one from his father’s garage. And though each had a different mode of expression, in the end, the portrait became clear. 

Here was a family grieving but also celebrating a life well-lived. Here was as much life and music as could be crammed into 60 minutes of screen time. And in a strange way, the screen amplified the presence, made it at once more intimate and expansive. 

I imagine Zoom memorial services are as many and varied as the people they honor. The fact that this one was so touching may have nothing to do with Zoom and everything to do with the man himself. But I’m not ruling out the nature of the event, the fact it came into our living rooms and kitchens, where, without diluting the enormity of the loss, it softened and transformed the sadness. 

A Day’s Work

A Day’s Work

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Today I’ve spent roughly five hours (and counting) on a call with Apple Support. I have installed and uninstalled, saved and unsaved. I’ve held my phone up to the screen of my computer at the same time that I typed on that computer’s keyboard. 

To do this has required multiple plugs and passwords, a backup disc, three computers and a technician who is as calm as she is smart. “Patience is my middle name,” she said during our third (fourth?) hour together. I’ve gotten so used to her voice in my ear that I’m wondering if I can write a blog post without her. 
This is by no means finished. I imagine we will go on long past 5 p.m. But at the end of this I hope to be able to use my new work computer — and, given how long I’ve spent holding my smart phone up to my computer, be sporting a newly toned set of biceps. 
It’s all in a day’s work for this most un-tech-savvy of writers …
(Using a calm picture to soothe frayed nerves …)
Catching Up

Catching Up

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Saturdays are usually for catching up, for buying groceries and running errands, for cleaning the house and doing the laundry. 

Today I’m posting this blog using a new browser, which is a different kind of catching up, the technological kind, one I’m less familiar with and not very good at. The switch is not altogether by choice. It’s been progressively more difficult to write posts using the previous interface, and an older browser wasn’t helping. 

So now there’s a new browser and a new back end for the posting process and … it’s anybody’s guess what this will look like once I press publish.