Smudger Snippets: Priorities
Created | Updated Oct 11, 2009
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
Insignificant Problems
There I was thinking I was coping with this new digital age considering that I am what they call a silver surfer, but recently I ran into a problem. I have two computers: my old desk top that is a few years old now and runs Windows XP, and my lap top that I bought about a year ago, which runs Vista. So far I have managed to work with them both. I have been using Word 2002 for some time now for writing my Snippets and personal letters and such, as well as for creating CD covers that I managed to make using the same program.
I needed the CD covers to hold all the music that I managed to download from the net when I first came on line. The making of those CD covers took me a while to figure out at first, as it meant inserting a picture from my files into a Word document, then text wrapping the song title and singer over the picture, which even though I say it myself, gives it a professional look, especially if you get the picture to fit the front of the plastic CD case itself. I made around a dozen or so of them, so that I now have our whole music collection, which used to be on cassette, onto CD discs.
My wife bought me an external hard drive as a Christmas present, so I thought it would be a good idea to back up our music collection onto it, just in case any of the discs get damaged in the future. While I was doing that I decided to back up all our other documents along with all the Snippets that I have written for The Post over the past few years along with all the photographs that I have taken with my new digital camera.
I felt really good when it was all finished, to know that it was all backed up. So you can imagine how I felt the other day when I discovered that some of the archived Snippets and letters would not open when I clicked on them. It was while I was transferring some recent photos that I had taken of our grandchildren onto the external hard drive, that I decided to open one of the old Snippets, only to discover that it would not open! All I saw was a load of little squares where the letters should have been.
Our lad, one of Mk2s sons, who is a bit of a computer guru, came to have a look and see if he could fix it, but it seems that the copy of Word that I have is out of date, or it was only a trial copy and now they want me to buy it! Not much chance of that as far as I am concerned, so I discovered a program called Open Office.org that was a free download, so I installed it onto my desk top at first, just to see how it worked, and it seemed to be very similar to Word so I think I will be able to use that. The only thing is, I might have to transfer all the archived items over to this new program before I can store them back into the archives, and that is a job that I really want to avoid.
It's funny how things work out: there you are gaining your confidence as you use your computer and think that you are coping very well, then something like this happens and shocks your confidence right to the core. I suppose you can relate that to real life as well, as life in general gives us such tests as we blunder our way through it. I think experience always comes through, as it's difficult to relate some experiences to others in a way they will understand, and it's only people who have gone through such experiences who will understand what your are saying.
Bereavement and divorce are just two subjects that come to mind, as they can leave scars that never leave you. Of course there are many more, but those are the most common. Dramatic events in our lives can also affect us. I have been told by the therapist who I am presently attending for this PTSD they say I have, that I have locked all those events somewhere in my head, yet I still can not bring them to light or talk about them.
Some times we allow little problems, like the one I am having with this Word program, to get totally out of proportion, yet when compared to the serious ones, they are totally insignificant really.
