I muddle along through life, doing the best I can and occasionally jotting my thoughts down here.  I don’t see anything extraordinary in that?

But then I come across something like this –

GET YOUR FOLKS ONLINE

Are your folks missing out because they’re not online?
Have you ever tried to help?
We know how difficult it can be!

Aha!  So that’s where I have been going wrong?  It explains one hell of a lot.  I shouldn’t be messing around here on the Interweb at all.  I have to wait until the daughter shows me how.

I will look forward to that.

So apparently she is going to teach me about “Using the mouse”?  That’s wrong for a start.  I don’t want to use the little fucker – I just want to kill it.  It has been shitting all over the place and resolutely ignoring all the traps.

Then there is “Sending an email”.  Again, that’s wrong.  I want to know how to send thousands of emails with one press of a key.  Those Viagra won’t sell themselves.

And “Shopping online”?   No, no, no!  That won’t do.  I need a course on “Stopping shopping online”.  Maybe then I could teach it to Herself.  Badly needed.  Just ask the poor postman.

Delving onto the site, I found a links page with all the links that any old fart would need.  There is a section there called “Blogs written by Older People”.  That’ll be interesting, I thought.  And what do I find in there?  Me.  Me and Grannymar.  The only two they could find?  And we are not even related?  Fuck!

So I am being held up as a beacon of light to the Old Folk of Ireland?  If that old fart can do it, then anyone can?  Hah!

In the meantime, I had better let the daughter know about this site so she can start teaching me.

Now, if only I knew how to use email………………

Some I can tolerate but others really boil my piss.

LOL and OMG are probably the worst and whenever I see them I have to skin a puppy or set a kitten on fire.  I fucking HATE them with a vengeance.  You have been warned.

One that confused me for a while was one I would see before a link to a page, picture or video – NSEW.

What the fuck have the four cardinal points of the compass go to do with anything, except maybe giving directions?  Even then, it is unusual to send someone North and South simultaneously, not to mention East and West. Was the page, picture of video showing someone being quartered?

Some time later I discovered it wasn’t NSEW, but NSFW [or else there were a lot of ham fisted typists around].

Now NSFW is a different kettle of muskrats altogether.  That obviously stands for Not Safe For Work, whatever that means.

This Not Safe For Work thing always puts me in mind of some unfortunate worker whose computer screen is repeated on a massive plasma screen for all the office to see.  He or she also has 300W quadrophonic speakers so that the slightest beep on the computer will make the windows rattle.  It was never like that in my place of work – I could put whatever I liked on my screen [and frequently did] and no one would be any the wiser.

If there is someone out there whose screen is five foot wide for the world to see, then I dedicate this video to you.

Just make sure you give those 300W speakers full welly.

Me: Windows.  I had better make sure it’s still working.

Computer: Are you sure?  You know what Doc said about your blood pressure?

Me: Go on.  Windows.  It can’t be as bad as I remember.

Computer: OK.  You have been warned.  Here goes………..

Two minutes later…

Computer: Please wait while updates are applied.  Don’t switch me off………….

Eight minutes later…

Computer: Password please.

Me: There ya go.

Computer:  Ta.  Hold on………….

Two minutes later…

Me: Can I start now?

Computer:  Hang on.  Just rewriting all the desktop icons.

A minute later…

Me: Now?

Computer: Don’t be so impatient!  I’m downloading the latest virus definitions.

A minute later…

Me: Now?

Computer:  Nearly there.  I have just discovered 47 vital new updates.  Be with you in a minute………..

Nine minutes later…

Computer: You have to reboot me now.

Me: *sigh*  OK.  There you go.

Computer:  Ta.  Just installing new updates.  Be with you in a short moment.

Ten minutes later…

Computer:  I’m ready now.

Me: Fuck that.  Reboot into Linux.

Ninety seconds later…

Computer: Ready when you are……..

Last night I found a document on the Interweb that I wanted to print off.  No problem, you say.  Fucking wrong, I say.

The Other Fella reinstalled this Linux thing the other day, and the twat forgot to connect to the printer.  I have picked up a couple of tips over the years so I decided to connect to the printer myself.

Fucking laptop couldn’t find the fucking printer.

I went to the room where the printer is and checked it.  It was switched on all right but the settings were all wrong.  I pulled up a chair and typed in the settings.  Of course, being modern technology they make that as difficult as possible.  It has a sort of mobile phone keyboard so typing any text means endless tapping of keys.  And of course as I cycled through the letters, it always went too fast and I would miss the letter I wanted and would have to start again.

I could not get the fucking thing to work.  After a couple of hours I gave up.

This morning I gritted my teeth and asked the Other Fella for a drop of help.  The wanker got the fucking printer connected in one minute flat.  I hate that!  He checked and the laptop can see the printer and its status is fine.

He fucked off to the shops, and I settled into printing my document.

The fucking yoke still doesn’t work.

It can tell me all I want to know about the printer, even down to the levels of ink in it.  But will it print my document?  Hah!

I’ll just have to wait ‘til Yer Man gets back.  Doubtless he’ll press one button and everything will work properly.

There are times when technology really pisses me off.

I was quietly sitting here minding my own business, listening to the radio and half dozing when Plop.

Yes, Plop.

The dreaded sound of a sudden powercut.

When power is restored, there is usually a cacophony of whirrs, clicks and buzzes and all the technology comes back to live, but the act of dying merely produces a Plop.

I checked a few sockets and found that it was only a fuse that had blown. That happens on a regular basis so it’s no worry. I just bunged in a higher rating fuse. I was out of 30s to I whacked in a 60. That’ll teach it.

After all the whirrs, clicks and buzzes ceased I thought I would check the Interweb.

No fucking Interweb!

For some reason, my little wireless thingy with the little aerials has ceased to function. I couldn’t connect.

I tried running a cable to my laptop, but that didn’t work either.

Fuck!

Then I remembered I had an old one lying around. I don’t know where it came from, but it was there being used as a book stand. I’ll let the Other Fella poke around in the dud one. He actually enjoys that sort of shite.

It works. Not very well, but I suppose it’s better than nothing. After all, you lot would have a fit if I didn’t make an appearance.

Fucking technology!

The only thing that I really know about Jobs is that he had something to do with Apple Computers and that he was one of the pioneers of the computer age.

To watch Twitter and the rest of the Interweb last night you would swear that God had been pronounced dead.  Supposedly normal people were confessing they were crying at the news. For fuck’s sake!

The one thing that Jobs did brilliantly was to cash in on the stupidity and vanity of modern yoof.  His master stroke was to turn computers, phones and things into a fashion statement.  He created the iGeneration.

I have never owned anything made by Apple.  The only experience I have is of the Apple Mac which I was forced to use on a couple of occasions.  I did not like it.

The only technology I have is this laptop which is a Packard Bell.  The only reason I know it’s a Packard Bell is because it is written on it.    I could have bought any one of a load of machines but this one had the little bells and whistles that I wanted.  I have an old Nokia phone which has its build in camera [never used], music player [never used] and a clatter of other gimmicks [never used].  I use it for making phone calls and that’s it.  When I produce my phone in public I couldn’t give a flying shite what other people think, and that’s where I differ from the iGeneration.  They have been conned into believing that they are a nobody if they don’t have the latest flashiest gizmo to show off.

I read an article on a blog during the week about the new iPhone.  One of the most telling criticisms of it was that “It looks the same as the iPhone 4, so people can’t tell it apart at a glance. Let’s face it, that’s what a lot of people want from the iPhone.”  In other words, people are not going to be so keen on it as they won’t be able to flash it around.  Will it make cheaper phone calls?  No.  Will it make phoning people any easier?  No.  So what is the point in buying it?  None, apart from having a yoke that is supposed to make your friends jealous.

I just wonder what the iGeneration are going to do now without their guru?

I checked the display as always and it told me the number was “withheld”.  Those calls always put me on full alert.

Sure enough, it was some Asian fucker inquiring whether I had a computer.

Of course I knew straight away what this was – the scam of talking me through fixing a non-existent problem that sooner or later would either involve hard cash or a compromised computer.

I gave him a bit of a lecture.  I told him that he was exploiting the innocent and that he really shouldn’t do it.  I told him that telling porkies about computers being faulty was only going to worry the old and vulnerable.  I told him that there was nothing wrong with my computer and that his information was in any case incorrect as I was using Linux and that his little “fixes” wouldn’t work.  I told him that he should really mend the errors of his ways and that he should get himself an honest job.

Actually I didn’t say any of that.

I had more than a sneaking suspicion that he has used some kind of callback device and that I was paying for the call.

So I just told him to go fuck himself, before slamming down the phone.

The whole thing collapsed on me.

Lock, stock and fucking barrel.

Apparently the server was suffering from an attack of Global Warming and a nasty dose of second hand cigarette smoke.

*cough*

I fired up my Mail thingy and the last mail that I had downloaded was dated last February.  That indicates reasonably fell my fondness for Windows.

The Other Fella tells me that this is a fairly good laptop.  He says it has a Double Core Processor, which sounds like some kind of kitchen yoke for mashing apples.  He says it has four gagas of memory which is more than I have.  He also said something about sixty four bits, but he didn’t say what they are bits of.  He’s weird. 

Leastwise, it is supposed to be a fast machine.  I wish someone would tell Windows that.  The fucking thing is driving me mad.  It is so fucking slow that I swear I could work things out faster with a pen and bit of paper.  It keeps nagging me about updates for various things and I keep trying to ignore it, but it is so fucking persistent.  It just keeps nagging on and on and on.  It’s worse than Herself, and that is really saying something.

They say that the majority of offices use Windows.  It is no fucking wonder that the world is in a state of chassis.

And the games are fucking crap as well.

Or it could be a stray bolt of lightning.

Or a meteorite.

Or something.

Leastwise, as some wise old sage was once heard to mutter into his cornflakes – “you never know the day nor the hour”.

With that in mind, I started wondering about all my Interweb shit.  Herself wouldn’t be able to access anything that I have done on line.  There is a lot of important shit in there that she would need to access.  There is also a lot of shit in there that I don’t want her to access. *cough*

I did a quick guess as to how many user names and passwords that I had. 

I guessed at twenty, give or take a few.

I was wrong.

One hundred and ninety fucking one accounts.

Holy shit!!!

Where did they all come from?  I haven’t a clue what half them are, but I must have signed in at some stage or other.  Other accounts have several user names, and I don’t know why. 

I have managed to write them all down and will leave her the file in my will……

minus all the sites I don’t want her to know about, of course.

That should bring the figure nearer twenty.

Heh!