|
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
|
|
The Wonders of Modern Technology
|
A Two Part Essay
Part One:
When the phone goes dead and you don't hear a dial tone, what is the first thing you think? Usually it's something like, "Hey, there's no dial tone." Right? Some of us tend to think aloud and so the first thing we say is, "Hey, there's no dial tone."
There are also some who, when his sister is sitting next to him holding the phone and says "Hey, there's no dial tone," take the phone to try it himself. Holding it to his ear and hearing nothing, his response is usually something like, "Huh." Dialing his own cell number, and hence, triggering a ringing in his pocket, he then hands it back to his sister saying, "It works."
Reaching this point in the scenario, you then take from him the phone, hit the "Talk" button and hold it to your ear. The dial tone commences. "Huh." Now happening to have forgotten the number your father told you to call him at, you punch in one that sounds familiar when said aloud. "It's busy."
"That's not the right one," your brother states, still standing next to you.
"What number did I say?" Redialing the new number, you receive the irritating sound resembling an internet connection. Unable to think of something better on such short notice, you tell your brother, "Sounds like someone trying to connect to the internet."
"Try the first number again." What an idea!
A funny little tune plays as you punch in the numbers and the tones sound for each button. "It's ringing."
"Hello?"
"Hey Dad."
"Did you have trouble reaching this number?" What an odd question. How did he know? Maybe it was the period of time between his call from the cell phone telling me to call and the time when he received said call.
"Uh, yeah. Why?"
"Cause I thought I heard you over the P.A. system saying ' Hey, there's no dialtone.' "
I leave you to your laughter as I was left to mine. :)
Part Two:
After such experiences as those chronicled above, one would think I'd be leery of further technological attempts.
Not so.
Hitting the power button on the computer this morning, I waited as the little blue light came on and the little gray box came up telling me some message that I cannot recall, though I have seen it all of the countless times Windows has loaded. Finding the blue triangle on the desktop that represents AOL, and double-clicking on that icon prompted a new little grey box to appear. "Huh," I thought. It was one of those error boxes that says to restart the computer because AOL is having connection problems. Or something like that. I didn't look too close, just closed it and restarted the computer.
There was the familiar little box again. I hit "OK" and then found the AOL icon again.
Small annoyances are of no real consequence. This time I deemed it prudent to read the error box that came up. It seemed there were files missing that were "required the start your AOL connection." Weird. Ok. "Reinstall your AOL software." Oh, your kidding?!
After much ado, and great frustration, I managed to reinstate all the screen names onto the computer. Unfortunately, whatever caused these missing files to go AWOL also caused all the files on everyone's email account to accompany them in their flight.
Hence, I am very glad that Blogger is working anyway. |
posted by cori
2/28/2006 12:07:00 PM
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| The ShugaBowl |
| Sounds like some kind of sports thing, but in reality, the ShugaBowl is just a little hideaway for me, Sugarcube herself, to let loose my thoughts and occasional creativeness. |
|
|
