Look, up in the sky! It’s not a bird, it’s not a plane, it’s not even Superman. What you are possibly looking at is a large very dark cloud and you might think that a heavy rainfall is due. That no longer is the case. That large dark cloud now contains all of my contacts, emails, images, and just about everything else in my computer and iPhone. I’m not really sure how all this stuff gets into that cloud but I know that it does.
The problem, of course, is when you want to get something out of the cloud. Does this mean that I must wait for the next rainfall and try and decipher from the drops of water what is actually coming out of that dark mass in the sky?
Honestly, folks, at one time people used to call me for advice on their computers. I actually was able to communicate with people using Prodigy, assuming they also had Prodigy, and it was great fun. I also was able to spend many hours creating my own website. Boy was that exciting especially when I finally was able to upload a caricature image of myself. I went tearing into my wife’s television room to show her what I had accomplished. Her reply: “That’s wonderful; now let me watch my show.”
I took great pride in being the one that other people came to for technical support. Now, frankly, I have fallen into an abyss. The people at Apple, Microsoft, and whoever, have made it their goal to demean and frustrate me.
Example: I attempted to do a very simple thing with my latest iPhone which is one generation beyond my former iPhone. I simply wanted to add my own ring-tone, something I have done many many times in the past. I simply couldn’t do it. I spent days on my computer trying to solve the problem and finally gave up and went to stand in line at the nearby Apple store.
When I finally got someone to offer assistance, all he was able to do was give me a phone number at Apple where I could call for help. I did this and after several agonizing hours with a terribly frustrated technician working from her home she advised me that this was a known issue with Apple and that they would probably be issuing a new operating system for my phone, which would solve the problem. At this point I got a bit stubborn and she sensed my frustration so we spent another hour and, believe it or not, we were actually able to use my ring tone.
I already have said that I was pretty swift at creating websites for me and others. I recently tried to do a very simple thing, upload a few pictures to a website that I already have. It wouldn’t work. I spent perhaps an hour waiting on hold to finally reach a technician who gave me some advice that proved worthless. I kept working at it on my own and was finally able to upload some images but not exactly the way I planned to do it.
Some of these online support agents perhaps should be flipping burgers someplace and not trying to help poor old computer geeks like me. Why do they insist on changing things that have worked fine for years?
I for one used to love windows XP until I was warned that Microsoft would no longer support this, and being the adventurous person that I am I decided to go right to Windows 8 as that was the latest thing at the time. Of course a few weeks later Windows 8.1 came out and totally messed up everything that I thought I had accomplished. I am told that there are beta versions of Windows 10 just waiting to be sprung on a poor unsuspecting public.
I have an idea that would save all of these computer companies a lot of money. Fire all the engineers that are developing these super new programs and allow us out in consumer-land a chance to adapt to what they have already produced. Wouldn’t you like that?
Go to the nearest dump and look at the pile of computers, printers, monitors, etc., etc., that are lying there waiting for the dumpster.
Most of these can’t be more than a few years old and apparently are absolutely useless to their previous owners. Somehow this appears as waste. We worry about recycling, the shortage of water or the dangers of too much water, too many or too few trees, too much gluten, and all that other stuff, but no one seems to care about this valuable resource that is being disposed of simply because we are forced to constantly install new software and hardware. In case you haven’t already learned it, almost everything that you now own will probably not work with Windows 8.1.
Some of my friends have advised me to switch to Apple. Well my phones are Apple and I have yet to figure out why in my contacts list every name is repeated 8 to 10 times with various forms of information underneath. The advice I was given was to go to “The Cloud.” There I found endless lists of names, phone numbers, email addresses, all for the same person repeated over and over again. The advice to me was to manually delete all of them and hopefully they would no longer appear on my phone. It remains to be seen.
So remember, the next time you see that big dark cloud in the sky, think of all my stuff up there and pray for rain.
Contact Ernie at community@sochin.com. Visit his website at www.sochin.com.
