IT - the bane of my life

I used to laugh at my mum when I was younger - you may know what I mean; video players were new, cable and satellite TV were years away and VHS had just started replacing BETA Max players.

It's not that they scared your mum but more that they were electronic and that tended to be the husbands domain.  Unless it meant putting a video on to just to play a film mum was stuck as she needed my dad to put the timer on to record anything.  No matter how many times he showed her how to set the timer she couldn't or didn't care to remember.  Looking back on it now maybe she preferred to leave it to my dad as it reinforced how much he cared for her.

Now I look back and think I should never have laughed at my mum. Although I can set a planner quite happily that is about it. In today's world of sky and cable planners there is no need to set the TV timer to record programmes. I'm not much use if something goes wrong with them though which explains why I make a monthly payment to have the satellite company come out and fix it if it isn't easily fixable over the telephone line and some simple instructions!

However, when it comes to computers they are the bane of my life!  Both at work and home so that doesn't make for a lot of stress.......

I have the added problems of having to use voice activated equipment of which I need to spend some serious time getting familiar with the majority of its added features yet the word 'macros' sends fear through my bones. 

I can find my way around MS products quite well though should be able to utilise Excel formulas much better than I do seen as I am an accountant but that is unlikely now that medical advice is that I can't use a keyboard and mouse most of the time if I don't want the pain from RSI and the bulging disc to march on at a pace quicker than a greyhound chases a pretend rabbit!

The worst of it is when PC's and laptops go wrong or the Internet drops.  Having a PC, 2 laptops, an iPad and 2 iPhones in the house everyone looks to me when something goes wrong which is laughable because the first thing I want to do is drop to my knees, pull my hair out and force cocktail sticks under my fingernails!

If the Internet drops Hubby has got used to calling the broadband supplier for me as it is the only thing that will take me from peace and tranquility to tears and desperation in a matter of minutes.  Luckily Hubby knows this and my guess is that he would avoid my tears like his life depended on it. So he sorts it out for me and I am eternally grateful for his patience and understanding. 

When it comes to PC's no such luck.  I am the one to try and get them running faster or decide when it's time to find the money to buy a new one - or should I say wish for a new one.  Luckily Beautiful B now being of working age, and having the majority of her wage available because I was daft enough not to charge her the going rate for board, bought herself a new Apple laptop and is a gift from the gods if she is to be believed.

Hubby's laptop is annoying for him in that the battery no longer holds its charge but he never has it unplugged and only uses it to keep on top of sports results or to play online golf so....meh.  

I use the home PC to do accounts for 2 clubs as well as play the computer games that take my attention away from those accounts. It has been running slow for ages; Beautiful B moaned to me when Zoo Tycoon 2 wouldn't play. Since she installed that the PC has all but gone on strike. Having got to the stage that it takes 10 minutes to wake up, decide intermittently if it wants to shut down the Excel spreadsheet I'm working on, and insist on only allowing me to one one application at a time I decided it needed a vacation to the PC hospital before I lost my last nerve. 

All good you think. No.  Although I have it back cleaned up the hospital could not locate the MS Office key that I should know as Dell installed it for me when I bought it. Problem is I am going to have to locate the receipt and other documents to see if it is listed on there as I certainly wasn't provided with a disc. 

Now is the time to be grateful that my dad always told me to keep documents for 7 years. I knew there was a reason I have 3 or 4 box files of paper in the storage space under my bed.  Matter of haste required as I have accounts to do. If it is lost I can see where some of Beautiful B's board is going to this month!

What I need is one of these: 

To top it all for the past week I have been at my brothers who left me a brand new laptop to play with while he was on holiday. Awful, awful, awful.  Fast I admit but whether it is windows 7 or 8 I hate it. The sidebars are so annoying, popping up whenever they feel like it. When using blogger the zoom decides it wants to move up or down at will. I did wonder whether my belly was getting in the way of something  on the keyboard or maybe messing about with the mouse. Luckily not because I may have booked myself in for gastric band surgery at a rate of knots.  

So I'm glad that I didn't take up the PC shops offer to install Windows 7 on my PC for £99.  

If only I could get the iPad version of blogger to allow me to change the font, colour of the text and justify I wouldn't need to tidy my posts up on a laptop or PC. Maybe I should suggest it in the hope that a) lots of people are telling Blogger its needed, b) they are actually taking note of suggestions and c) they care.  

Of course I could move to a blogger site that allows me to do all of this on an iPad but the idea of moving my archives without losing them and working out how to get the dates of the post correct is terrifying.  Any chance you bloggers out there use such a site and can provide instructions on moving archives?