Category: Computers

This is a short article that was published in the technical section of The Oregonian newspaper. They had asked people to write in with complaints about any gadgets, and just the word “complaint” made me rush to the computer. A photographer came out and took my picture, which was just awful because I was wearing braces on my teeth for a bite problem and couldn’t smile. The photographer coaxed me into smiling anyway and took the most hideous picture ever seen by mankind – and for some odd reason that’s the one the paper published.

Here’s the short story about my awful gadget:

A few years ago I bought a Sony IC recorder and a Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition program to dictate my book.  I thought I could put on the headset while I was doing mundane tasks around the house and dictate the conversations that my characters were always having in my head – Nobel Prize stuff that I never could remember when I got back to my computer.

The quality of the recorder was great, but because it was so compact, Sony had to use small, multi-function buttons and toggle switches with descriptions I could barely see.  I’d have to consult the manual regularly, which was frustrating and stifled my creativity.

Also, I found that those fantastic conversations my characters were having didn’t translate well to dictation.  If I didn’t focus completely on the dictating, my recording sounded like this:  “and, ah, then uh, Sarah said, uh, uh.” I couldn’t make a bed and talk at the same time, apparently.

In addition, the old Dragon Naturally Speaking program had a hard time with my accent.  I was raised in the south, where simple words like “milk” or “bread” are spoken as two syllables:  “Mee-ulk” and “bra-yud.”  Dragon Naturally Speaking translated many perfectly coherent sentences like this: “The end we win end to the store or…” (Then we went to the store.)  They’ve improved the program substantially since then, but not before I gave up.  I typed the book, which took considerably less time and irritation.

I still have the recorder and bring it out occasionally to see if my accent sounds more Oregonian.

I’m getting a little fed up with the bickering between Macs and PCs. I have both, and I spend most of my day doing something on a computer – either playing Wordscraper on Facebook or doing projects with Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator – fantastic programs that let you be really creative once you take a couple of years to figure out how to use them (just kidding – I own stock in Adobe. They make fantastic products that I highly recommend to everyone, even infants).

The thing is, Macs do some things great, and PCs so some things great, and neither of them is great all by themselves. Everyone talks about PCs crashing, but just today I had to restart my Mac twice because I was uploading new photos and when I went to view them in iPhoto, my $2,400 Mac started pixilating – which means the whole screen looked like aliens had scrambled it. This is not the first time it’s happened. And I’ve had to reload my Leopard Operating System once with the reassurance from the guy at the Apple Genius Bar that he’s done his a bunch of times and it doesn’t do any harm. So the Mac is crashing to the point of having to reload the operating system, and Mac uses this as a put down for PCs? Shame on you, Mac!

My PC, on the other hand, sometimes makes me do extra steps, each one starting with, “Are you sure you want to…?” Yes, I’m sure I want to delete those twenty-three lousy shots of a duck. Yes I’m sure I want to close Internet Explorer.

But the Mac can be a real pain in the neck because it’s not happy unless you are dragging something somewhere. A website comes up and it looks like someone has taken an axe to the right side, so you have to drag the bottom corner to make it spread over the screen. If it would just come up like that to begin with, it would save that step. This happens in every program all the time. Even trying to look for a file in Finder you have to drag to see the whole file name, and according to the guy at the Mac genius bar, there’s no fix for that.

And DO NOT get me started on the Adobe programs on the Mac. In my opinion, they work better on a PC. Ouch, I felt that slap from every graphic designer in the universe. But you guys have always used them on a Mac. I started with them on the PC and they are easier there. Wanna know why? Because on the Mac you have to drag everything everywhere, that’s why. You open up Photoshop and you have to drag it to be full sized. In Dreamweaver, a website developing program, you have parts of the program spread all over your monitor that you constantly have to drag out of the way to be able to see. On the PC, the center of the screen is the website you’re working on, and your tools are lined up to the right and down below – and they’re always there. On the Mac, sometimes tools disappear completely and I have to hunt them down and find them in weird places, like in the kitchen pantry.

So in conclusion, Macs are a drag, and PCs are uppity and want to second-guess you all the time. We need a hybrid of these two, and if anyone wants to start a company that will bring the best features of both operating systems to consumers, I’ll buy a little of your stock. In the meantime, you boys doing your name calling in commercials should get your mouths washed out with soap for fibbing. Honestly, someone needs to send you to your rooms until you can learn to be like Thumper, “If you can’t say anything nice, get the heck off my TV screen.”

I was all excited this morning because I’m in a blogging frenzy and wanted to type in another post. I plopped down happily in front of the computer and tried to log in. My username is my email, and I have an assortment of passwords I cycle through to get into everything. I tried all the combinations, finally being allowed to log in when I accidently mistyped my email address. That one little wrong letter let me into my blogger account, but caused me to be greeted with a giant red warning, “Your email address has not been verified.”

“That’s because it’s WRONG!” I hissed back at the computer. “Well,” I said, determined to be in a good mood, “I’ll just fix that puppy and I’ll be off and running.”  But no, just like every freaking other thing having to do with computers, IT WON”T LET ME.

After reading for hours and hours, I find out that the mistake is permanent. Up front they happily volunteer to email me a new username, but the one I gave them is wrong and doesn’t exist, so it’s just going to go to Mercury and back without me ever seeing it.

And how was I able to log in the day before? It doesn’t matter. The computer just does what it wants to do, and you can’t fight it. The most any of us can hope for is to plow through a zillion posts that describe the same problem, and hope some other guy figured out how to fix it, then let him lead you out of your misery one irritating step at a time. I spend most of my life squinting at the screen with my mouth hanging open and a dull headache creeping up my forehead.

To get to the fix, it’s typical to have to elbow your way through lots of pages mostly consisting of capital letters strung together that appear to be common knowledge because they don’t explain them. It would be so much more fun to wade through the Everglades dodging snapping alligators than reading that stuff. By the end of the CMOS’s and RAM’s and CPU’s and ESAD’s, I just want to say, “I’ve got your motherboard right here, you sorry piece of crap!”

It’s late at night now, and I finally got it fixed. Don’t you even think about saying that this time it was my fault and not the computer’s. I might come right through the screen and lunge at your throat like a junkyard dog. If this post isn’t funny, I’m sorry, and if you don’t like it, you can just kiss my FDISK.