Technology Frustration

I am afflicted with a self-diagnosed condition, Technology Frustration (TF). The symptoms of TF are many and varied, but a wide range of component configurations housed in various sizes of hard plastic cases cause this condition. The symptoms of my condition were exacerbated during the past week, thanks to two of these component-housing devices. One is referred to as a laptop, and the other as a cell.

Laptop dependent might describe me. The first thing every morning I check MSN News, Email, my brother’s blog, and Facebook. Since I still have a land-line, cell phone dependency is not a serious problem for me, but when I travel or shop, my cell is a constant companion.

Thanks to the trusty anti-virus program on my laptop, my condition worsened about six days ago. That was when Anti-virus started posting a series of messages on the screen. None made sense to me, so I closed all of them. Then one morning as my Email downloaded to the inbox, helpful Anti-virus informed me of a malfunction in the program and instructed me to click on “Fix Now.” I fixed it, all right. After the computer rebooted, all of the Email that had downloaded to the “Inbox” was gone, and spam messages were located in the “Business” folder.

Logic might say that the vanishing Email would be in the trash. Not so! It was gone, totally wiped out. I hope nothing of great importance was there like, maybe, a message telling me I had won a million dollars and needed to contact someone within twenty-four hours. Email marked as spam continues to go the Business folder, but I’m not taking any chances by entering the world of anti-virus settings and attempting to fix that.

I was still recovering from the laptop incident when we renewed our cell phone contract. That meant a new type of phone since the old model is no longer carried or supported by the company. Getting the new phone was not a problem. Using the new phone was a problem. The features on my new phone are not even distantly related to the features on my old phone.

While learning to use my phone, I sent my daughter-in-law a text that had “G” as the message. Fortunately, I have daughters-in-law who don’t question my motivation, though they may, at times, question my sanity.

The camera feature should have been easy for me to figure out. Right? Wrong! I soon discovered that my right eye is very big, much bluer than I had previously thought, and that I should maybe be using anti-aging eye cream.

Those of you who still have children at home probably don’t suffer from Technology Frustration. You can just ask your fifth-grader (or kindergartener) to fix things for you. But the only person who lives with me requests my help when he has problems with his technology devices. Unfortunately, no techies live in my household.

For a short period of time I considered becoming one of the world’s unwired citizens. That was before I started thinking about the friends I like to hear from, the pictures I receive from family, the digital photos I upload, and my editor, who has gone paperless.

So, I’m still here and probably won’t be going away soon unless my anti-virus friend decides to take care of my dependency. Putting my frustration with technology into perspective, though, the problems I have in the digital world pale in comparison to opening one of those rigid plastic clamshell packages. At least I can solve my laptop and cell phone problems without a pair of pliers and a knife.