Sunday, July 3, 2011

Growing Pains!!!

So I have a new computer.  Yaaaay! Right?  Well kinda.  It's nice to have a new computer that is really really fast, and it's nice to be able to see the letters on the keys (even though I don't look at the keys when I type, honest I don't--Miss Hedrick--my 10th grade typing teacher! :) but I had used my old computer so much that I wore the letters right off the keys!)
Here's the problem with a new computer, my old computer was like an old oversized sweater that you wear on weekends to watch movies and eat popcorn.  It was SOOOOOOO comfortable!  I knew all of its ins and outs, we were a team.  Now here is this newcomer, this stranger, that's like a new pair of four inch heels!!!!  Ouch!  It hurts!!
I had been using Windows XP 2003, (I jumped right over the Vista years, yay!)  Now, all of a sudden I have to deal with Windows 2010!  I also have Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer, and Office 2010 instead of Office 2003!!!  My head hurts!  I feel like I've never touched a computer before!  I'm sitting here thinking that I want my old comfy sweater back, but time marches on, and my old sweater was thread bare and falling apart, time for new.  So I guess I'll just have to grit my teeth and plow through this.
My kids used to tease me because I had a brick of a cell phone that was about 5 years out of date, but I wouldn't get a new one, because I just didn't have the time to learn how to use it!  The learning curve nowadays with all the new technology that is constantly bombarding us, is astounding! We used to have a TV with an on/off switch and a dial to find our choice of about 4 or 5 channels.  Our phone plugged into the wall, and had a rotary dial, and all you did was pick it up to talk and put it down to hang up.  We didn't have computers, cell phones, VCR's, TIVO, or any of these electronic wonders.  It makes my head hurt to think of all the things we have had to figure out how to work over the last 20 years--even my stove and microwave require studying the manual to figure out how to use them.  About the only thing left that doesn't require a Master's Degree in electronics is my freezer.  I love my freezer.  It's easy.
I know, my age is showing.  All of you that are 30 and under take all of this in stride because you've never known anything different.  Those of us that grew up in a simpler time keep trying to adapt, and for the most part, do a pretty good job of it, but boy, something like this really makes my head spin!
So if you don't get a speedy reply to your email in the next couple days, it's probably because I haven't found the "reply" button yet!  Thank goodness we still have the qwerty keyboard!  Brandon tells me that the new MS Word 2010 is going to make me crazy for the first couple weeks till I get used to it.  Oh, I am looking forward to THAT!  I had just finally made friends with 2003, and now I have to change again.  Sigh.

On another note, but also related to technology, I listened to my parents' wedding yesterday morning from 1949!  My father, ever the early adapter that he was, had set up a reel to reel tape recorder in the front of the church to record their wedding ceremony.  Wow.  They were both 19 years old, pink cheeked and wet behind the ears.  I heard my grandpa answer "her mother and I do" when the minister asked who gives this woman.  My dad and my grandfather both passed away in 1982, my mother in 1992.  How precious to hear their voices again--younger, and not what I remembered, but definitely them.  We also had an 8mm movie (in COLOR which was the newest thing in 1949!!) of my parents' wedding.  I haven't seen that in a long time, but it was always the hit of the home movie nights.  The finale was always the wedding movie.  I would love to see that again.  I think my brother has it.  Hopefully he has had it converted to a DVD.

Precious.  These things are so precious.  I guess the bottom line of this post is that you have to keep up with the technology.  Old VCR tapes need to be converted to DVD before all the converters are gone along with the players (how many of you still have a VCR player? Hmmmm?)  And in the future, something will come along to replace the DVD's and we will need to convert our DVD's to the new technology so that we can still use them.  So that hopefully, 62 years from now in 2073, you, or your children, or even your grandchildren, will be able to watch YOUR wedding video and see what you were like so many years ago!

Now, I need to go learn the ABC's of all this new stuff on my computer.  Argh!

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