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Thursday, September 20, 2007

It really should be easier. . .

I have a confession to make. I'm a computer moron. I'm married to a man who is a computer whiz, and who expects me to understand everything through some sort of osmosis. You'd think, after all these years, he'd realize that wasn't going to happen. However, I digress. . .

All I wanted to do this morning was come over here and blog; I have this site bookmarked, I had an idea of what I wanted to talk about, and I knew I wanted to upload a picture of my new cover. It should be a fairly simple process, shouldn't it? (note the key words there - *should be*) It wasn't. It took me the better part of an hour just to get here, and not because the Blogger site was giving me problems, but because everything else seemed to be working against me.

My laptop (God bless it) is not the quickest horse in the race. On a good day, it takes almost two minutes for Internet Explorer to finally load in the morning, but I chalk that up to the fact that the poor computer has not had coffee, and it's feeling a little arthritic, so while it's warming up and loading, I reorganize my pens into colour (again), rearrange my bulletin board of faces, and scribble down my list of to-do's before I forget all of it. Once I get the internet up, I need to hook onto Sirius country radio (channel 61) - there's another couple minutes. It was all going pretty well so far. Then I went directly to my Tote Bags bookmark and tried to sign in.

Now I ask you - how is a computer moron supposed to have any idea what the heck cookies and caches are? In my world, cookies are made by Mr. Christie and cash is something there is never enough of. Yet somehow, these things are blocking me from signing in. Very dutifully, I follow the helpful links that try to explain how to clear the cache and/or the cookies from my computer. And in case you're wondering, yes, I tipped my laptop to the side to shake out any cookie crumbs that may have been the problem to start with. :)

I should probably mention here, that this laptop does not like it when I try to open more than one internet window at a time. In fact, it has a bit of a hissy if I have Word and the internet opened at the same time. It's an excruciatingly painful experience. But there I was this morning with (count 'em) THREE internet windows open so I could go from one to the other while reading instructions and trying to empty things I had no idea even existed. It worked, apparently I've bleached Mr. Christie out of my system, and we're good to go again.

With Clint Black singing me through it, I log in and click on the little doo-dicker thing to upload my new cover. Wait wait wait wait. 84 seconds later (I kid you not!), the little window thing opens. I go through the process of trying to load the cover from the files on my computer, only to have it come out almost black in the preview. This struck me as particularly creepy because the book is called The Devil's Daughter, and while the paranormal/devil element is very light in the book, it's still about the devil, and its cover was coming out black. You have to agree - that's a little creepy. But I would not be put off. Somewhere I had an account with one of those online photo places, and I knew there was a perfectly good version of the cover there. But what the heck was the name of the website?

I won't bore you with all the details, but suffice it to say, it took several more minutes (and I mean SEVERAL) to discover it was PhotoBucket, and of course I did not remember my password, so it was yet more minutes to go through the retrieval process so I could sign in. Finally, the planets aligned, Tim McGraw finished singing about refried dreams and there was my cover.



Isn't it lovely? The Devil's Daughter will be released in April, so I'm hip-deep in copy edits right now, and using this picture as inspiration to work through them.

I have completely forgotten what I originally set out to blog about this morning, so I will leave you with these questions. Are any of you closet computer morons too? Is there anything about your computer you absolutely love? Or anything you can't stand? Do you and your computer have a love/hate relationship as I do with mine? And do you have a routine you go through with your computer (like waiting for Sirius to load)? Please tell me I'm not the only computer moron out there. . . .

13 comments:

Lois said...

Well, I'm the computer department in the house, so I'm not, but my Mom is. LOL Which is usually fine, but gets annoying when she wakes me up because of a problem (or lack thereof). :) I mostly love everything about my computer, but then it's still fairly new. ;) The desktop is older, and yep, you have some waiting to do on things. . . and that one you might have to wait for it to come on after restarting itself whether you're turning it on or turning it off. . . stuff like that. LOL

Lois

felinewyvern said...

I am a self confessed computer moron too :D I have a love/hate relationship with my computer. I love using it to read up on new books and other stuff - it hates me and tries to shut down windows etc. and since I got a laptop for my (early) 30th anniversary present from Pirate the new relationship is going the same way :S

Laura Drewry said...

So I guess that means,Lois, when you see the word cookies, you don't immediately think "mmmmm, yeah, are there any Fudgeos left?" LOL

Laura Drewry said...

Thank you, Ilona! There should be a support group for us, shouldn't there? We are not alone! LOL Hope the new laptop gets straightened out. :)

Cherie J said...

I can totally sympathize because my hubby is a computer programmer. He uses terminology I don't understand sometimes and I find the changes in computer technology too confusing to keep up with. I guess that makes me a computer moron as well. I think we should form a club. :-)

Karen H said...

I've always been of the opinion that there should be a seperate help spot to help us understand what help is telling us to do. Is there a 'Help for Dummies'?

Laura K said...

I need, need, need to take a course to understand and work my computer better. I do know how to surf, but things like excel, spreadsheets, etc. throw me off.

Lois said...

Well, if you promise not to tell anyone, when I see the word cookie. . . yep, I do. ;) But I go with chocolate chip or some sort of double chocolate or the like. :) It's a much better cookie than computer cookies. :)

Lois

Laura Drewry said...

Okay, so it looks likes Lois is our resident computer geek here. LOL Good to know her brain is still programmed to think "chocolate" when cookies are mentioned. LOL

Happy computing, everyone!!

Lily said...

I totally have a love/hate or hate/hate relationaship with my computer... it is so OLD and freezes all the time :(

Nathalie said...

I usually wait five minutes just for Norton antivirus to load and I keep praying my computer will not crash!

Michele L. said...

Oh you guys all have computer woes too? Boy am I glad! Well, maybe not glad that you have them, but that we share them! :-D

My computer is old and I have to wait, wait, wait for things to load. I am constantly having my computer time out on me so I can't go into something. I need a new computer!

Oh don't feel bad Laura, I am not always blessed with the ability to fix things on my computer also! I do know some stuff but the big things I leave to my internet provider. They have a computer service there and they will work on my computer or talk me through it over the phone. Bless them!

Good luck Laura with your computer and have a super week!

Michele

Tam G. said...

I don't know too much about the computer either. My husband does all the computer fixing and upgrading that needs to be done. I've even called him at work when I've ran into a problem I wasn't sure about. That was pretty sad.