Happy Monday! With the new theme up, and things running sort-of-smoothly (after a lot of trial and error), this post from last year caught my eye. Hope it gives you a good laugh. I’m keeping all of the original marvy comments, too. Take heart, O Tech-Challenged Ones!
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My blog has been requiring me to stumble around in a lot of tech-y stuff lately. Not that stumbling around is anything new, unfortunately. Permalinks, Widgets, RSS, POP3 Access…wow, are you kidding me? Every time I learn something new, ten more new things pop up. It’s like trying to cut the head off the Hydra.
Here’s an idea of the depths of my ignorance. Laird Sapir, web designer, writer, and helpful web friend extraordinaire, was helping me customize a couple of pages on this blog. (Check the Gardening page to see the end result. Yay, I didn’t blow up anything!) After a couple of back-and-forth emails to clarify whether I had an FTP (the meaning of which was only recently made known to me), my theme, and so on, she wrote a template for me and sent it with specific instructions. Good so far. I love this gal; she’s keeping it nice and basic.
So I sit down to try it. Hubby, my usual “help desk” computer oracle, is working late. But, hey, I can handle transferring a little code, right? That’s what FileZilla is for. I opened the zip file Laird sent me, located the php file (another thing I don’t know the meaning of), and opened FileZilla. I was so proud of myself: I found “wp-content” and “theme” all by myself.
Pause. Now what? I tried to “drag and drop” the file I was seeing, and get it over to the right place. Nothing. I checked the drop-down menus, and saw “Import,” “Export,” and a lot of other perplexing things – mostly dealing with wizards and trees. Where am I, Middle Earth?
Prithee, good sir, where is the path out of this shire?
Instead of the “One Ring,” I wanted the “one file.” LOL.
After an hour of head-desk, keyboard-pounding angst, my knight-in-shining-tech-splendor hubby arrived home. I had the good grace to let him eat a late dinner first before pouncing on him.
ME: I don’t get this. Why can’t I drag this over?
HUBS (inching closer with the caution born of experience): What’s the problem?
ME: I can’t get this file that Laird sent me over into this folder.
HUBS: Show me.
ME: I want to move THIS over to THERE.
HUBS: Ooh-kayy, did you extract the file?
ME (imagining my worst tooth extraction): Huh? Sounds painful. She sent it by email and I opened it. There it is.
HUBS: Well, it’s not really there. You have to extract it first.
ME: But I’m looking right at it!
HUBS (sighing): Just right-click on it.
ME (right-clicking): Oh! Extract is one of the choices! Now I remember: I had to do this when Jenny Hansen sent me stuff for the cowbell timeline guest post I was writing!
HUBS (trying not to roll eyes, wondering when I’ll ever retain this stuff): Uh-huh.
…after that, it was smooth-sailing.
For those of you who are like me, or typically help someone like me, this “Medieval Help Desk” video is for you! (Especially for Laird and Paul – thanks for your coaching this week!). Enjoy!
What do you find challenging about the “modern” world? I’d love to hear from you!
Have a great weekend,
Kathy
Love the video! Your site is looking fantastic Kathy, glad you figured it out 🙂
Gee, thanks, Gene!
Ha! That video is great – thanks for the laugh this morning! I’m glad you defeated Filezilla and that the gardening page worked! 🙂
Thanks, Laird! One head chopped, but more are growing in! I’m sure to have more questions for you, LOL.
Great video, Kathy. I think it’s in Dutch? Makes it even better. I generally depend on the rule that if I don’t know Anyang about it, I don’t touch it. I especially hate working on my site, knowing hat I’m working on the one and only live version.
Cheers!
I loved that video, so I’m glad you enjoyed it, too! But we have to venture outside our comfort zones, right?
Hilarious, Kathy. I am also perturbed that there are new terms cropping up all the time. I’m at the point now, however, that I often just get my tween or teenager in here and they start punching things and saying, “Oh, it’s like this, Mom. You have to do this thing here.” Some years back, I learned to use my cell phone by handing it to a teenager and having them show me what to do. It’s a lot faster than calling for Tech Support! LOL.
Julie, you and Renee are lucky to have “home-grown” tech support; my teens aren’t as savvy, although they sure know more than I do! It’s the hubster who helps me a lot at this end, when I can’t pester you WANAs. 🙂
I don’t call my son “Tech Support” for nothing. He seems to understand everything intuitively. Me? Um, you lost me at php. Wasn’t that a drug? Oh wait, no. That was PCP. Maybe I’d do better with the tech stuff if I were baked. Like you, I just can’t retain it. It’s awful. And I was considered tech savvy in college! hahaha! I could never work in the computer lab now!
That’s because the technology grew faster than we could keep up. Maybe that’s nature’s way of telling us to have kids, so they can figure it out for us, haha. 🙂
Ah. *Sigh of relief*
I just entered my comfort zone, where others look at the why-are-they-speaking-klingon-? options and hear the blog death knell when faced with doing something I don’t know . Like…
Just about everything.
I wiped out my first blog post when I published my second. It’s gone. Forever. That’s why my blog is still a G-L-O-B. I’ll sleep better tonight knowing I’m not alone. Thanks, Kathy!
LOL, Gloria! Your blog looks fine to me! You and I prove, though, that a little knowledge really is a dangerous thing, haha. Just when we think we know what we’re doing…WHAMMO!
He, he, he Kathy! I feel your techie pain girl! Extraction? That even sounds painful! I love Laird Sapir! She is a wordpress theme guru! And I love what she did to my site! Just having the little changes really make you feel like you have a custom site. Yours looks awesome Kathy! But I do understand that the language of the technical world is one of its own. You need someone to translate! Enjoy your holiday weekend with your family Kathy! 🙂
Isn’t she something? We sure do need folks like that to help the rest of us figure out this strange world we find ourselves in! 😀
You are the cutest, Kathy! I love your story on “extracting” – but I still love your history of the cowbell most of all. 🙂
Thanks, Jenny! You’ll notice I linked back to it, just as you always advise me to do! Hope you’re feeling better!
Loved the video. Love. Love. Love the extractions and The One File. LOL! Oh, yes, I have felt your pain!
Hahaha, thanks, Lynette! It certainly is an adventure…
Every week I face some kind of new challenge! At least I am not afraid that I am going to blow up my computer. Back in the DOS days, we really had that ability!
Great post!
Oh, wow, yes I remember DOS…now THAT was confusing! IDK, Susie, I think we can generate some serious damage around here these days, too, LOL.
Hilarious video! It’s actually Danish, not Dutch. I even understood a little since Danish is similar to Swedish.
And I’m glad to hear you got everything sorted out for the blog. Having someone to help you out is a huge thing. The Gardening category looks really good.
How fun! You understood some of it? I love having an international audience. It’s so enlightening! Thanks, Reetta! 😀
OMG just about died at the video and your convo with hubby!! LOL!! Me and hubby have VERY similar conversations ALL the time Kathy and they usually include my “sighing” on his part. LOL!! I hear ya. The site is looking great and you are definitely mastering this “tech thing” one bit at a time – woot woot!
Glad I’m not the only one who goes through that with hubs! And thanks for the compliment, Natalie! 🙂
The video is hysterical! I bet I sound that dumb to the tech-savvy (like my hubby), Waaa, I can’t open it. What the hell do you mean, I have to extract it? My brother, who used to teach computer electronics, once commented that, if God had given Noah new carpentry tools to learn how to use at the rate technology changes, he would still be building the Ark!
I’m still confused but thanks for helping – I think.
Less is more in my opinion. I want to know less and do more. How can I make that happen?
Patricia Rickrode
w/a Jansen Schmidt
LOL, Patricia! When you have that figured out, you’ll make a fortune! Glad you stopped by for a re-visit!
Love the video. What a hoot!
I once called my hubby at work, panicked. I had to get some legal work done, and when I turned on the computer, there were no icons showing. The computer was broken! Once he realized what I was describing, he directed me to a little button in the lower corner of the screen and told me to click. I did. The icons appeared. He had minimized them. I didn’t even know that was possible.
Still laughing. We could be twins! I got an Apple Air for Christmas and I”m an Apple virgin–er no reference to Eve–really. Anyway, my son is the guru in our family. He said he never heard me curse so much in his life. The air was purple. 🙂 I left the usual — “oh, fudge” way behind. I can never remember how many fingers I should use on the mouse pad to do what. I finally plugged in a wireless mouse and now I’m half-way happy. I still curse a lot when I can’t find a file or figure out how to execute a command that was so easy in MS Office. The good news is that this little Air fits in my purse and goes everyplace. This alone saved it’s life.