SIMPLE BLOGGER, WHERE ART THOU?

Blogger problems – As computers morph and change into monsters more amazing than my mind can handle, and as sites change to adapt to the smart phone applications and not as easily used on the big screen desk top stuff, folks upgrade and add more and more clever add-ons… and dinosaurs like me get left in the dust. Several of my favorite blogs are no longer totally available to me. Or, perhaps I should say are only partially available as they have gotten so loaded with stuff my computer just refuses to open them. One friend usually loads bunches of pictures on her blog, as do I, but I never get to see more than 1 or 2 of them or only the top of a picture, the rest simply will not open. Not even the pictures that are part of the heading on their blog or the blog’s name. This is also a blog that will now ask me to identify myself repeatedly when I try to comment until I give up and just hit the little X at the top and call it quits.

I remember when several bloggers tried to add music to their blogs. It slowed them down terribly and some blogs would not open beyond a couple notes of music every 15 seconds. Fortunately, thise couple bloggers gave up on adding music to the cleverness of their blogs and now they can be viewed in their entirety and within a reasonable time frame. If anyone still has music on their blogs, I don’t know about it. It doesn’t open.

As someone still with dial-up and who will hopefully never have to have a “smart” phone, and who can’t see anything on those dumb little tablets, I realize I am being left in the dust of modern technology. I have adapted to much of it. I open your blog and go do the dishes. (No, I don’t have a dishwasher, either, beyond the 2 hands I was born with.) When the dishes are done, your blog is up, I sit and read it, and all is well… except for a few people’s blogs. I can go cut the grass or drive to the Post Office and still only 1 and a half pictures are up and never any heading.

So if you are not hearing from me, well, maybe you have grown beyond my ability to see what you fixed for dinner last night, or what birds are at your feeder… I won’t get to see where you went on your latest journey or how much the grandkids have grown. Sorry about that. Just want you to know I am not intentionally ignoring you…

For those dear, dear friends who are of the less techy variety, bless you my children… I still love reading your blogs and seeing your pictures. And I try my best to get blogger to let me comment. Just sometimes blogger seems to be having a worse day than I am having. That takes some doing.

I have been accused of being a Luddite, and there is a grain of truth in that. but I have no need to show the world my great computer purchases and upgrades… in fact I just bought a new laptop and it is at the computer place being DOWNGRADED – getting rid of Windows 8. Imagine that! Yep, I even bought a Windows 8 for Dummies book and still could not figure it out – so Marvin is reprogramming it to Windows 7 which I can manage on a limited scale. LOL! Shoot, I had to call him up to figure out how to turn the damned thing off! The controls are hidden… well, never mind. You will eventually find this out for yourselves. But I have yet to hear anything good about W8.

Anyway, the point is, if you have moved into a different level of cleverness, I am not there, and I really don’t want to be there… Just like I don’t want to own a dishwasher or a microwave, an X box or a Wii. If you have outgrown me, well, sorry. It was fun while it lasted. I will miss you. But, I will still be here, plodding along with no clever add-ons if you want to see what is happening in this little corner of the world.

FRUSTRATIONS

FRUSTRATIONS... oh shame on me for being frustrated with this computer. This will not be much of a post, mostly it will be to see if I have loaded my photo programs right... I gave all my discs to the computer dude down the street - he makes his living doing this stuff, drives a new Mercedes to prove it - but things are still never quite right. None of my photo discs got installed, for example, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. So, to see if things were working, I went out and took a picture of the pot of pansies (aren't they beautiful? Especially to those of you buried up to your knees in snow or ice today?) I got from Bobbie yesterday... and a shot thru the door of the greenhouse with its heating system on - the brooder lamp on a bucket of bricks. Hey! It works! The ordinary incandescent bulb heats up the metal and the bricks - the bricks retain the heat... and it keeps the greenhouse in the 40s or 50s depending on how bad it is outside. Here on the shore, lots of folks keep their pumps from freezing in the winter just with one incandescent bulb. So I figure if it will keep a pump from freezing in a pump-house outside that is as big or bigger than my little greenhouse, well, it ought to keep my geraniums toasty and my impatiens from freezing... and my other plants and cuttings, too.
Did you notice the size of the daffodils next to the pansies? They are up about 8 inches. This may be a year when they bloom in mid-February.
But, back to the shame on me part. Living in this country, we tend to moan and groan over the most trivial things. OK, let me rephrase that - I tend to moan and groan over stuff that is merely inconvenient at the moment, and forget how darn lucky I am. Here I am complaining about having to load a couple photo discs so I can download pictures from either of my Nikons, and for the moment not thinking about the millions of people who still live without electricity, let alone computers and cameras. Yes, it is hard to believe that such people exist, but they do. Believe me, they do. We are so spoiled here. Even the poor in this country somehow manage to have cell phones, and other devices even tho they do not have decent food on their tables. So, I am ashamed of myself for grumbling about having to install a bunch of discs myself. But then, I paid someone else to get this computer back to where it was - minus the virus - and, well, it isn't. Hard to believe that the old computer was 8 years old before it had to get wiped clean and this one was but 8 months old. So much for McAfee.
I know I am going to have to change my ISP, and I so dread that... mostly I dread trying to wade thru the crap on the phone with Verizon. You would think the phone company would have an easier system to access. Oh how I long for the old days when there was an office down on the corner where I could go and pay my bill in person, add a phone, a new phone line, change a listing, put a phone in another house 40 miles from here, and get a nice visit with the real person doing all this for me. Often Progress ain't! Yet, there are those who have to travel over 100 miles to get to a phone or to a service if they have a cell phone. So, here I am grumbling again in a house with so many phones I can't count them. There is usually one in reach wherever you are. Spend some time in a wheelchair or being unable to get up and walk and you will understand.
So I guess I need to do a gratitude list... not just that my brain worked well enuf to install the photo programs... not just that I own a computer that is working (more or less) - and a camera or two... but that I do have electricity, heat, a roof over my head, food in my tummy, managed to get myself dressed, fed the cats, and got outside to take these pictures. Then I must add that I have a wonderful friend that gave me these pansies... and I can go on and on.
Like I said, shame on me for complaining.

COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISORGANIZATION!

OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT... I have not met too many people who enjoy getting broken in by a new computer. Yeah, I know what I said. The DELL desktop from 2004 finally got to the point it was just not doing what it was supposed to do, and one morning it took an hour and a half to open and respond to one email... Sooooo, I had no choice. TA DA! The new one! Yep, that is a big screen - 23 inches. It is also a touch screen - but I don't know if I will ever get used to that. I tried to remove an ant from the screen and the word yahoo no longer even fit on the screen! It took FOREVER to get the screen back to normal size.

However, a few small(!) problems. It won't accept my camera... it tells me my passwords aren't.... and so I have had to dig out the good old laptop that I hate in order to blog and post any pictures. I had promised a friend some pictures of my irises, but nothing happened... the new one sat blank - almost as bad as the old one that I have had fixed, just have not had the energy to try to hook it up. The new DELL is a 64 bit processor - most old ones are 32 bit. Oh, see the tower? No? That is because it is built in behind the screen. See the wires to the key board (a keyboard is on screen, too) NO? wireless keyboard and mouse. Is a mouse still a mouse if it has no tail? Or is this a hamster?

Anyway, here are a few of this year's irises.

And one more shot - a bad one to be sure, but it is the only one I have been able to get - this little Orchard Oriole does not hold still for long.... (this shot did not make it from one computer to the other. Rats!

OK, now lets see if this will publish!
Answer - it did, BUT, I had to go in on the new computer and respace everything. HUGE empty spaces between pictures. sigh. Nuts, weird spacing keeps coming back! Sorry.