Ms. Tech-Challenged has a dream (and more tech fun) :)

There I stood, remote control in hand, trying to turn off a television.

I pressed one button, then a second one, then a third, then a fourth.

Gornisht (nothing).

Finally, I walked over to the television and pressed the On/Off/Power button.

Naturally, the TV shut down immediately.  :)

Only a technology-challenged person could have a dream like this.  :)

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Speaking of televisions, they used to be a lot easier to hold onto.

Big, old-fashioned TVs--the kind that were much bigger from front to back than from side to side--could be forced to behave (more or less) by an equally old-fashioned method--all one had to do was to place one's hands on both sides and give the TV a good whack.  My sister and I, having taken an ancient family TV to New York City with us for the short time that we were living together, managed to keep that old thing running--more or less--for about 16 years before we finally declared it officially and permanently broken.

Good luck trying that on a wide-screen digital television.

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Why is it that one can buy a good old-fashioned landline telephone and have it for ages, but a smartphone has to be replaced roughly every two years?  Our son tells us that technological devices must be replaced more often because technology keeps improving.  Our budget could use a short delay in technological progress, thank you.

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Last, but not least, is my pet technology peeve.  Once upon a time, we paid probably not more than $200 for a manual, or even an electric, typewriter, and when it broke, we simply had to pack it up in its carrying case and take it to a repair shop, where the employees repaired it for us and handed it back, in exchange for a fee, completely repaired.

Now, we pay from several hundred to over a thousand dollars for a computer, and, when it breaks, we have to spend literally hours on the phone while the technical support/Help Desk staff talks us through the process of repairing the darned thing ourselves!  Exactly how is that fair?

Ms. Tech-Challenged makes a fool of herself, again :)

On Thu, Feb 7, 2019 at 4:55 PM Real Name < e-mail > wrote:

Some of us who are too tech-challenged to figure out how to download podcasts onto our smartphones (or who fall asleep on the subway when listening to lectures :) ) have a real problem trying to listen to recordings on the Hadar website--the recordings have no "time-elapsed bar," or whatever that's called.  Instead, we have to work with the "round timer" (for lack of a better description) the way a blind person works using an analog clock as a model--just as one can tell a blind person that the fork is located on the table in front of her "at 7 o'clock,"  so, too, I'm trying to remember that I paused Rabbi Tucker's "Sharing Burdens Equally in a World without Adjuncts" at about "5 o'clock." Is there any way that you (or perhaps another technology expert at Hadar) can replace all of those impossible-to-work-with "donut timers" with real "time-elapsed bars, instead, so that we low-tech Hadar enthusiasts can stop playing guessing games regarding how far we're gotten in a recording?  It would be so much easier to know that I can re-start a recording at, for example, the 1 hour and 12 minute mark.  Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Feb 10, 2019, 12:56 PM

In case my description, "time-elapsed bar," wasn't clear enough, just click on Adon Olam to see what I mean, and enjoy!

In case you're curious to see and/or hear what I was writing about, here's the lecture in question.

It wasn't until almost a week later that it dawned on me what my real problem was:  No one listens to podcasts directly from the original website--those who can't, or don't want to, download podcasts to their smartphones simply download them to their computers, instead!  (Duh!)  So I downloaded the podcast to my computer--and couldn't find it.  "Check your Downloads folder," said our son.  (Double Duh!  Feel free to insert a "roll-eyes" emoticon here :) .)  I opened my Downloads folder and tried to save the file.  Um, where was I going to put it?  The only place I could think of was my Desktop, so I moved it there, clicked--and got a Groove Music pop-up "window," (or whatever that is) that showed just about every CD from my personal collection that I'd ever copied to my computer.  The lecture, however, was not anywhere where I could find it.

Take 2:  I created a new folder named "Lectures, etc (non-music audio & video files)," and moved Rabbi Tucker's lecture into that folder.  Finally, I could find it!  But when I clicked on it, I just got that darned Groove Music window again!

Take 3:  I right-clicked on Rav Tucker's lecture, clicked on "Play with Windows Media Player," and voila--there was Rav Tucker's voice, and the lecture came complete with the requested "time-elapsed" bar!

Try not to laugh too hard.

See also my Looking in through the candy-store window: A technology-challenged person speaks out.

Looking in through the candy-store window: A technology-challenged person speaks out

This is how it feels:

[From an e-mail]
“The phone-book file is a story in itself. When we first got a computer, [our son] was around 6 and I was at home with him, so, while he was in school, I took some time every day to enter my handwritten phone book into the computer. After about a month and a half, I had the whole thing entered, and was feeling quite proud of myself. Unfortunately, when I mentioned my accomplishment to a more tech-savvy friend of ours, he looked at me as if I had two heads. Apparently, there was this thing called a database application . . . *Now* you tell me?! I didn't even know how to set up a table--I'd alphabetized the whole phone book manually, the old-fashioned way! To this day, I've never had the koach to re-do the thing. So my phone book went from Multimate to WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS to Word for Windows, and there it sits, to this day.”

[From an e-mail]
“ I've always said of computers that my generation is like a generation of immigrant parents--just as immigrant children teach their parents the language of their new country, so my generation's children are way ahead of many of us older parents in figuring out how to use computers and other modern technological marvels (digital cameras, DVRs, etc.)."

True, that’s what I’ve always said, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that “it ain’t necessarily so.” Half of my friends—people of roughly my age—are more adept at using computers and modern technology than I am. It’s not my age group—it’s me.


This is how it feels:

“You don’t have to hold down the button while you’re taking videos. Just push it once to start, then push it once to stop. . . . “ “Of course the camera isn’t taking pictures—you still have it on the video setting. Watch your settings. Make sure it’s on the “photo” setting. . . .”Why don’t you use the portrait setting when you’re taking pictures of people?” . . . If you’re going to take a landscape shot, use the landscape setting. Look at the icons—they’re self-explanatory.” (Oh, of course—the icon is a frame around two black arrows standing side by side. They’re supposed to suggest mountains. I knew that. Not.)

Sorry, son, I’m illiterate in icon. We never learned to read icon in elementary school. (Of course, that’s because most icons didn’t exist yet.)

[From an e-mail:]
"[Our son] says the icons on our camera are easy to figure out. Maybe that's because he's studying Japanese. :) "


This is how it feels:

One of my best friends is a computer wiz. She wrote a proposal to the New York State Education Department seeking authorization for the college for which she works to start a new degree-granting program in instructional technology (the use of computers and other technology in education). Her proposal won the state’s approval, and the program is now up and running. She also gets her jollies designing databases with another friend.

I took a full-day crash course in Access. I didn’t understand a thing. So I took a teach-yourself-Access instruction book, went through every exercise and read the entire guide cover to cover. I still don’t understand a thing.


This is how it feels:

I was trying to carry my share of the weight, for once, by installing my own anti-virus software update. The software didn’t work—I couldn’t get the new GoBack installed, despite having uninstalled the old one. So the Punster called Symantec to see what the problem was. It turned out that, by dint of sheer talent, I’d managed not to complete the installation. How, exactly, does one manage to stop an automatic upload??!!


This is how it feels:

"I'm not your tech support anymore. Read the manual, or look it up on the Internet. You have to figure out how to do these things yourself."

I already tried that, remember? I tried to learn Access by reading the book and following the instructions. It didn't help. I tried to install some software from a CD that should have done the whole installation automatically. That didn't work either.

Technology and I just don't get along. Attention Deficit Disorder + instruction manual = inability to focus + information overload = confusion.


This is how it feels:

At 40, I had just gotten my first computer, and was busy figuring out the perfect way—or not—to enter data (see above).

At 39, this other individual has a very nice blog. It’s loaded with photos. It has colored text, and text in italics. It has those wonderful one-word hyperlinks instead of the clunky full URLs that I’m always using. And not only does it have a sidebar, but, to make things even nicer, the blogs listed therein get these neat little “Updated” notations displayed next to their names, probably automatically, whenever they’ve been updated. Cool. :)

It gets better, folks—click on the one-word hyperlink that says here and you’ll go there. His website has more hyperlinks than Wikipedia. And “oh, the places you’ll go”—the links take you to “Bootlegs of live performances!” And “Reviews.” You can even “Watch Movies Here.” After all of which, you can “Click HERE to purchase the album.” But, wait, I haven’t finished yet. You can download mp3’s. (Roughly translated, “mp3” means “music.” :) ) And check out that whatever-it-is called a “radio blog:” Click on a song and it’ll play music for about an hour, on autopilot. Even cooler. :)

[From e-mails]
Yours truly: “Speaking of camcorders, I have to ask you this, because you're the only person I know who's done it! How do you upload videos to the Internet? I have a few that we took in Israel that I would love to send around, but I couldn't even figure out how to send those dance videos, which were probably shorter. What's the method? Do I need a website? Is this going to be a major national project? (And are you gonna shoot me for bein' such a pest? :) "

The Party in Question: “You need to have the capability of transferring video from the camera to the computer. That means either a relatively new camera and a relatively new computer, or a video capture card or box that you can connect to your computer and VCR. Your son will need to help you with this because I don’t think there’s any way I can do this through email.

What I have is a new cannon DVR recorder which has a DVR output. I put a firewire card into the computer I bought in January. Then I bought a special cable to connect the two. Now the video can be uploaded directly into the computer via either native windows xp software or special software that came with the camera. Then you have to compress it to web quality (usually an option when you save the clip) and up load it somewhere. Like a podcast.

Where did I lose you?”

Yours truly: “Er, as long as you asked, you lost me here: "Then you have to compress it to web quality (usually an option when you save the clip) and up load it somewhere. Like a podcast."

I'm afraid I'm still at the "Internet for Dummies" level. Sigh. Between this and Homestar, there are times when I'm not sure we speak the same language. "

The Party in Question: "You gotta get on the stick with the Homestar ;) "


It’s said that almost every word in Hebrew has a shoresh, a three-letter root. Lamed, mem, dalet—L, M, D. Lilmod (to study). L’lamed (to teach). Melamed (a teacher of young students, pupils). Talmid (student).


So is “pod” an English shoresh? Podcast? iPod? What’s a pod? Everybody else knows what a pod is. I don’t.


That’s how it feels.




Friday, Sept. 23, 2005 update:

PsychoToddler said...
Why aren't you using the button bars in the blogger compose post window to do the hyperlinks?
Thu Sep 22, 04:52:12 PM 2005

Experiments with buttons in "compose post" window follow:

"The wonderful world of color"

Red
Green
Orange
Blue

Quote

Unquote (tricky—gotta write the part after the quote first—can't figure out how to turn the "blockquote" feature off.)

And now for the great hyperlink experiment:

Here.

Hey, check out that "Preview" function—I can finally check my posts before I publish them. (Maybe I can catch more mistakes before they get posted worldwide.) You mean that one-word hyperlink that I just attempted to create actually works?! Holy Moses! Thanks, Mark!