Technology and I do not make good bedfellows. In fact, technology and I do not make nice, well, ever. I understand the ATM, and have learned to make that work for me, but computers leave me baffled, particularly when Microsoft updates its software and quietly dispenses with rival software on my system, insensitively dispensing with the software I like and *know* how to use.
I know I live in Microsoftland and appreciate that many of my friends and their husbands are gainfully employed by Microsoft, but Microsoft doesn’t seem to remember that there are people like me out there, people who can barely remember their user id and password, much less anything connected to the systems.
Systems, indeed. My systems are pen and paper and a stack of good books. Which actually don’t help me much when I’m trying to answer email, update the JaneBlog, or place an international phone call from my newly purchased international SIM phone.
Which brings me back to the present. I’m now in Sydney, having enjoyed a most chilly wet day in non warm, non-winter clothes and having spent the last hour trying to get my new Blackberry-like phone (purchased just for this trip so I wouldn’t have to search for internet cafes) to let me do what I want to do.
Problem is, my new Blackberry-like phone, called cheerfully a Pocket PC, seems to have lost its light, or I’ve turned it off and now I can’t even read the screen. Books never have this problem.
Worse, my computer minutes are ticking away and I’ve all these little gadgets spread out on the internet cafe’s desk and I can’t concentrate, not with the hem on my jeans plastered wetly to the back of my legs.
You’d think that living in Seattle I would know what a) winter feels like, and b) what rain does to a sweatshirt. But nope, I didn’t pack one waterproof anything (weather report said Sydney was sunny) and now our clothes are spread out over our room trying to dry before I cram them back into the suitcase for our jaunt north to Cairns.
Cairns I trust will be warmer and dryer.
Cairns will also need to have an internet cafe since I don’t know why the hell I bought a new Pocket PC when I can’t even use my full size PC in Bellevue.
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