TechNO

Welcome back to the I-hate-technology venting site. Surely I am not the only one who cannot manage a LinkedIn or WordPress site. Here I am with both of them and be dogged if I can do little things like add clips or samples so prospective clients could see them. It’s worse than frustrating, it’s going to remove any chance I have of actually making some money to live on in my old age.

For the zillions of folks in my age range (born before the computer age began, whenever that was) and not raised on an iPhone, the challenge is greater, obviously. But is it just me who feels personally and paralytically dyslexic when it comes to clicking and dragging and linking and hyperlinking and all that jazz? And where can we go to find out this stuff – and I mean learn it, not just watch a video of someone else doing it – is what I need to know.

Anybody got any bright ideas on this subject? Mind you, I’m venting here, and a vent blog isn’t likely to get readers who don’t have a problem with the issues mentioned. So here we go again. If the only readers are those who identify with the problem, how do I reach the ones who can solve the problem? Wow. Good question. If I can answer it we’re getting somewhere.

First let me say that tutorial videos have so far failed to do the job for me. Now that may not be the case for you, and if it’s not, more power to you. But for me, everything in a video happens too fast, and inevitably whoever is doing the presenting assumes I know a whole lot more about which buttons do what and which icons mean what than I do. It took the sales rep at Sprint to point out the little icon that stands for ‘phone’ – not that it helped much, by the way.

Example: when I asked how to access my voicemail on the new Samsung, this guy pushed a button (didn’t mention anything, just pushed it) and LO, here’s the recording that says “enter your passcode” or whatever it says. So I jumped up and down and said ‘What did you just push?” and he pointed to the digit 1 on the keypad. Right. I was supposed to see the little phone (? who draws these things anyway?) and intuit that it meant I could hit that and get voicemail. Who knew? Not me, for sure, but apparently everybody else he ever dealt with.

So really what I’m doing here is whining pathetically, but I have little pride left when it comes to the failure of my brain to grasp what the younger generation(s) seem to know or pick up easily with just no sweat at all. In comparison I am constantly in a mental lather, and it’s more of a pain than anything worked up by sweating in the gym. Rather than rousing up those helpful endorphins, this lather just makes everything more slippery! Anybody who finds all this amusing can . . . help?!