“A youth in apparel that glitteredWent to walk in a grim forest.
There he met an assassin
Attired all in garb of old days;
He, scowling through the thickets,
And dagger poised quivering,
Rushed upon the youth.
"Sir," said this latter,
"I am enchanted, believe me,
To die, thus,
In this medieval fashion,
According to the best legends;
Ah, what joy!"
Then took he the wound, smiling,
And died, content.”
Stephen Crane
It’s been hot. Too hot to work outdoors. I’ve got bulbs to transplant dammit! Instead, I’ve been trapped inside, engaged in a life and death struggle with Yahoo, trying to figure out how to import an address book from another e-mail application. Combine me, non-intuitive technology, and hot dry weather, and my lack of patience becomes more conspicuous.
Age cannot wither, nor custom stale, my infinite impatience with technology. And yet. The sad truth is that, as rusty as my computer skills are, I am a geek genius compared to the other people in our volunteer group who may want to use this technology. Yesterday, I forced myself to slog through the jungle of unhelpful help screens, the dead ends, and unfamiliar jargon, and returned to base camp empty-handed and cranky.
If I complain too much about how Yahoo managed to turn my grumpy mood into blind rage, I worry that this post might be entered as evidence of my insanity at the coroner’s inquest – where they will try to figure out whether I jumped or was pushed. So, I’ll stop here and make another cup of coffee. Then, I’ll don my glittering apparel and return to the jungle to fight the Yahoo mail gorilla.
5 comments:
Such eloquence in bad temper!
Yahoo messes up my computer. I avoid it.
I notice you have a new (and equally entertaining) explanation of yourself in your blogger's profile.
Good luck with the technology.
Don't over-heat.
(And isn't it a nice feeling - that even when you don't know what to do, you know you know more than others and the little you know is enough to keep you going?)
Lucy
P.S. Esther says hello.
Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've had similar bouts trying to bring addresses over, CSV file or not. Thanks for stopping by my blog to share the rant. It's not difficult to find egregious, Tourettes-inducing gardens. My main objective is to write about it rather than express it vocally whilst driving, thereby preserving my wife's hearing.
Hey: I saw "What's Up Tiger Lily" on your favorite films profile. That's where I stole the fabulous, literary epithet "I'd call you a sadistic, sodomistic necrophile, but that would be whipping a dead horse." Small world. I'm assuming there's a soft spot in your heart for Zappa and the Mothers, too!
I hope your coffee is sufficiently iced and grounds for composting, because (dammit!) we are destined for much more confusion and decomposition in this new jungle.
Sometimes I look back fondly on the days when my big frustration was my fountain pen running out of ink. Technology has complicated our lives in so many ways. I often wonder if we really have saved much of the time that had been so tantalising promised to us before the advent of computers.
What a great photo! That many-armed ferny thing (see what a horticultural dolt I am?) looks like a bad-movie monster waiting to pounce on whoever is dumb enough to sit on the suspiciously innocent-looking bench. Is that in your garden?
My trip to MD took me through PA mountains in full fall color — a really glorious sight. By the time I got back to MI, trees were changing here, too. I'm not ready!
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