Friday, August 7, 2009

Learning Curve

After a travel-filled June and July, which brings it's own set of fun challenges, I was looking forward to a laid-back, rest-filled August.

So far? Not so much. At least not at work. (Home has been boring if you don't take into account the frenzied energy created from worrying about a sick son in a foreign country. UPDATE: or take into account phone calls like the one I just recieved regarding a hand injury Max had a work; "This is the x-ray technician- He NEEDS to go to the hospital NOW.")

At work, I was given the opportunity to be the person who handles the website updates. I blog, therefore this challenge should have been a no-brainer. But I am 48. And every challenge is a big deal. Or at least, I make it into a big deal. I am The. Aging. Drama. Queen.

What made the training sessions even bumpier than the attitude I brought to the table, was the new computer that was set up on my desk when I got to work this week. How awesome! New equipment! The latest in technology! And I don't know how to get my printer to work. Or make the software I use cooperate. Out of my league I relied on my BFF, Shannon, to sort things out for me.

Shannon was to train me, poor girl.
We sat side by side at my desk, she speaking a language I was unfamiliar with, like Romanian or Klingon, and me struggling to not cry. Sitting there, I was reminded of Sunday nights in 1981 when I would be doing homework for my Economics class the next morning. Oh the tears. Oh the wailing ("I don't UNDERSTAND!), oh the feelings of being a loser. (I ended up getting a B in that course, not because I finally caught on, but because I memorized the textbook.)

At some point in the traning, I decided I didn't have the brain capacity to grasp the reasons WHY it was set up this way. And that new language? html? the language of the devil? I was never going to figure that out. But I could copy what had been done before me, and go from there.

Shannon, the best cheerleader in this and distant galaxies, kept telling me I could do it. And after 3 days of gnashing my capped teeth, and eating unhealthy amounts of chocolate, I am proud to direct you to my work website here, and ask you to check out the three items on the left column of the front page. The first one is simply a link. Yay me. The second one is an ad for an event (yay! Cross-Canada tour!) that has a link to each city we'll be stopping at. And from there, each order box has a map-link and a shopping cart. Oh yeah.

My hand was held every step of the way, and Shannon mostly did it all. But after she leaves for Greece (I know!) for the fall semester, I will be the one mucking around, trying to do updates for awhile.

Other than that? Things are quiet around here. Well, except when someone uses this dinosaur of a desk top... the keyboard stopped working, so we found an old one that no one was using and hooked it up. Many of the keys stick, so POUNDING is the only way to make it work. And our internet? Cuts out continually. Like, as in, always. Or to be more specific... it cuts out whenever it is important for it not to.

I gave mom her laptop back a few days ago. It was possessed. The cursor hops all over the place, regardless of what you're doing. Like, I'll be typing a deep and meaningful blog post where I share the meaning of life, and the cursor refuses to stay one step ahead of my typing. I'll be halfway through a word when it all of a sudden pops itself midway through a word I typed two sentences ago. So if you don't keep an eye on that little blinking line, it's the dickens to figure out why there's a mess of letters on the screen.

So there was that, and then that other thing. It (not the cursor this time, but the entire keyboard) kept assigning different values to the keys that I shifted. For example, whenever I pressed shift and / I was expecting to get a question mark. But instead, I'd get a capital E with an accent behind it. I know, right?

After a weekend of fighting with a machine that hated my guts, I gave it back.

Really? It should not be this hard to blog. It's dogged determination and just plain stubborness that is bringing you a post today. Oh the obstacles I have to overcome in order to whine online.

Three things I'm thankful for:
1. Even though I am POUNDING the crap out of these keys, they are mostly working. And the internet has been on for 7 consecutive minutes. YAY.

2. I did learn something this week. I am thankful to Shannon for her patience and support. I am thankful for the copy and paste functions on all computers.

3. It's Sarah's birthday today!

Shalom,

2 comments:

raych said...

We call that 'Typing in Portuguese' as in 'My computer is typÉng Én Portuguese agaÉn!!' It happens because you accidentally press some combination of something, but we haven't figured THAT part out yet, so we usually just reboot.

Christine Lindsay said...

I prayed for you; sounds like God got you through even if it was a tough trip. One day we'll be sitting in Heaven and we won't care about computers any more. Oh, what a day---they oughtta write a hymn about that.