Yeah, I know that some of my friends call me Gadget Boy because I like techno toys. But at the same time I hate technology. Okay, let me restate that, I hate technology when it doesn’t work. And it seems like around me, anything more than a flashlight is too technical and is going to fail sooner or later. Usually sooner.
I use a small Acer netbook to run my Silverleaf engine monitoring software. The battery is only good for about three hours, so we keep it plugged into an AC outlet powered by our inverter so we’ll have power even when we’re on the road. Still, it seems like every second or third trip the battery fails to charge and the computer goes dead. Not always, just often enough to be irritating. The last time this happened was on our trip here from Tucson. My pal Barb Westerfield suggested it might be the power cord and she loaned me a Targus Universal Power adapter
Yesterday Barbara and hubby Tom came over to visit and she managed to work her magic on my Droid Razr Maxx and got it working close to normal again. Hey, a win for the home team! Thanks for all of your help, Barbara.
But don’t get too excited, later in the evening I hooked my iPod to the computer to move a couple of new songs from iTunes to the iPod and discovered that at least two of the USB ports on my iMac have stopped working again. This is part of the many ongoing problems with this computer, sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, and repeated trips to Apple stores for repairs have not resolved my issues.
When I finally found the one working USB port, instead of charging, my iPod’s screen barely lit up and I got a message that it needed to be restored to factory defaults. Which meant I will lose a lot of our music, of which we have a huge amount (almost 45 GB) on the iPod. Some of it is backed up, but some was lost in the most recent computer crash. (Greg White is reading this and saying “I told you so!”) Yes, Greg, I know, iMacs DO crash and lose data. The error message would not go away, so I unhooked the iPod and let it sit, and after about two hours it seemed to come back to life. Doing some Google research, it looks like the problem might be related to a recent iTunes upgrade that does not recognize older iPods like mine.
We had a wonderful visit with Tom and Barbara, and while they were here our friend Dan Sheppard stopped in to say hello. The last time we saw Dan was when he and his pretty wife Jenny were parked near us at the Thousand Trails resort in Seaside, Oregon back in mid-September. We hope to connect with Dan and Jenny again while we’re here.
Of course, not everything about technology is bad. Like blogs. Blogs let me keep up with some of my RVing friends and allow me to show up on your computer and bother you every day. And my friend author Sherrie Giddens’ just featured us on a blog post titled Homeschooling with the Gypsy Journal.
Technology also brought us e-books and audiobooks, which allows me to offer our weekly Free Drawing. This time around, we’re giving away an audiobook of Big Lake, my first novel and the first book in my Big Lake mystery series, which made the New York Times Kindle Bestseller list in December, 2011. All you have to do is click on the Free Drawing link and enter your name in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.
Okay, I guess technology can be pretty cool sometimes. But I still hate it just as often as I love it!
Thought For The Day – I’m honestly convinced some women don’t fart. They just hold it in and it comes out as drama.
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Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
Before your iPod dies completely, I have had good success using Senuti to get all music off of an iPhone and 2 iPods. https://www.fadingred.com/senuti/ Since my music was irretrievable any other way it was worth the $18.99 price tag to me (you can try it on a few songs for free). It was quick and painless.
Nick,
I’m sorry you have had so much trouble with your iMac. After the first time or two, I think I would have been knocking on the President’s door. I have a MacBook Pro laptop that I have had absolutely no problems with for over 4 years now. I even upgraded the operating system with no trouble. I know there is always a bad one, and it’s unfortunate that you got it!! The other thing I have is a LaCie Rugged Triple USB 3.0 Hard Disk for backing up everything (including software) in case of computer crash. I’m sure there are lots of other brands, but this one you can drop on the floor and it still works. From my 500 GB ($119) to 1.7 TB, it works great for my computer backup system and is about the size of my wallet. Maybe Santa will drop one down your dryer vent this Christmas along with a new iPod!!
Love you guys …. Nancy
To quote Rita Rudner…”Why do women bitch? Well, they don’t fart, they don’t swear, they don’t belch…if they didn’t bitch, they’d explode!”
Nancy’s set up is a great way to go. That’s how we travel. Atlso,we have an iMac and an iPad and iPod and they share the same cloud . We never lose anything. When the iMac crashed it all came back from the cloud in the reinstall. Mary