Sunday, December 29, 2013

Tech frustration

Ok, so I know that computers really do make my life easier. My iphone is a part of my daily life on the farm. I take pictures to record planting times, breeding dates, lambing times, and moving goats from one pasture to another. I text myself grocery lists and chat about dinner plans with family. I set phone alarms to check cheeses in progress or dye vats on the stove. And I share all this with friends from around the world via my blog and facebook.
But sometimes...
Yesterday morning, I was trying to pack a few orders before the mail carrier arrived. As I was cleaning off the table to be able to sort and pack orders, I found a package I had put together for a friend. Now, I could drive to her house, but I can't remember her mailing address. So, a few weeks ago I had searched my email for it and still come up dry. So I emailed her and she sent it to me. That email disappeared into cyber space. A few weeks later, I chatted with her and she sent it to me again. Then I got caught up in the holiday rush. So, yesterday, I decided her package had to ship first. I looked in my phone chat, no address there... then google chat and back to my emails. Finally, I remembered that the address was in Facebook messenger. And what is an overabundance of tech to me is middle of the road to many folks.

So, I went to usps.com and after entering all my information, the only shipping options were priority mail. There's no hurry on this package.  So I switched to paypal multiorder shipping and entered it all again. Paypal then informed me that it doesn't support the Chrome browser, which I was using. I decided to ignore that warning, I had entered every thing in twice already! and then it crashed Chrome.

So, I opened Firefox, entered everything again. and reminded my self that all of this had really taken less time than getting dressed, finding which car I could borrow because mine is not running, driving to the post office, standing in line and paying $3.00 more to ship this package. Really...really. I printed the label, put it on the box and looked at the time.

I had to get to the feed store before they closed at noon, so I set that box aside and figured I'll pack and ship the orders tomorrow.

So, this morning, I sit down at the computer, getting ready to ship orders. I thought I'd make edits to my Christmas blog post while I have the computer open and while I drink my morning coffee. I open blogger. No Christmas blog post...

I've started doing many of my blog posts from my phone. It's fairly easy. The pics are all right there and the blogger app is simple. I can't fine tune the posts though, so I usually edit them, write photo captions and fix the spacing next time I'm at my computer. A few times I've found that posts have not published from my phone, but it's not a huge deal, I just go back to the phone, find them there and republish them. It's just a little irritation, really. So, now my Christmas blog post is re-published from my phone and I'm done ranting.

Off to pack orders, dye fiber, do body score checks on the pregnant ewes, weave on a commissioned shawl, was the newly spun skeins of Thyme wool yarn and take a break this afternoon for coffee and kuchen with friends and family. It is really a wonderful, full life.

Have a beautiful day!

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