Confounded - again!

Well, this is very exciting!  Every time I turn my back on Google, they go and change things.  Are they changes for the good?  I don't think I'm in a position to comment, clinging as I do, to the outmoded pen and paper as my preferred method of communication.

This is my third encounter today; my first was with e-bluey.  I have a nephew in Afghanistan, and I got up the courage to join e-bluey so I could bombard him with my thoughts on the world via protected e-mail (as if the poor boy isn't suffering enough).  That was relatively easy.

My second was with my bank, who have initiated a new internet log-in system which involves a further piece of equipment on my desk, a little gadget called 'pinsentry'.  Instead of a simple log-in number and away you go, I now need to remember where I put the pinsentry, find my debit card, and locate my glasses, which are needed to read the faint log-in number on the aforementioned gadget.  By the time that was done, I'd forgotten why I logged in.

And dear Google is my third encounter.  I was here in March, and was fully up to date in the latest technology at that time.  It is now May, and the whole place has gone to pot!  Just finding how to write a new blog used up eight precious minutes, and worrying that my words of wisdom might get lost in the general ether is consuming my thoughts right now.

This was supposed to be a blog about words, about books and about the beauty of the pen.  It seems to be turning into a rant against the march of technology, but by the time you read this, technology will have moved on, and I won't be able to find this post again to see if you liked it at all.

With apologies to my friend from Athens - it's all Greek to me!

Time flies....

Well, no-one can say I trouble you with my thoughts, can they?  It's over a year since I last posted, but this is almost entirely down to Google, who first changed everything, and then confused this bird of little brain with an endless stream of questions to verify I am who I say I am.  The result is I am not sure who, exactly, I am.  It seems I have two names - Deppfest and Lexx.  It also seems that these two guys have totally different personalities, Deppfest being a gentle soul who would rather not give offence, and Lexx who is loud, brash and quite frankly, my dear, couldn't give a damn.

I wonder which of these guys will be credited with the above post?

Change afoot

My daughter is getting broody.  After years of protesting that a child is not in her future, her remaining eggs started calling to her to get a move on.  Today we borrowed a friend's baby.  He is six months old, and utterly charming.  Hell, if I wasn't nearly 56, I'd try for another one myself based on this angelic boy.  We walked him along the seafront, showed him the waves and the sea birds, and he did what babies do - he slept.  Arriving home, we fed him and changed him and played with him, a mother and daughter playing dolls together, but with a living, breathing doll of a baby.  He laughed at all my jokes; he listened intently when I explained that he was only on loan to us, and smiled when we couldn't work out how to disassemble the pushchair. 

He's gone home now, and the house seems strangely quiet, just after a couple of hours.  Broody?  Me?  Could be.

Techo Confusion - Part 2

The I-pad was abandoned - too cumbersome, too difficult to send e-mails and write reports, and yet....  I saw the look in his eye as he was steered towards a 'sensible' netbook.  The head may have beaten the heart into submission this time, but the longing for the smart gadget is still there.  The netbook is being used grudgingly - it's too small, the mouse is too sensitive, the print not big enough.  And yet this morning I received my first e-mail from him, via a wi-fi hotspot.  You could almost hear the pride in his achievement coming off the screen.  There's life in the old technophobe yet.

Technological confusion

After years of being on the outside of the technological revolution, the man I love has his heart set on an I-Pad.  He has no idea what he will do with it - I'm pretty sure he doesn't even know what it is.  But the longing is there, and I suppose it's a wee bit cheaper than a sports car.  Got to love the male menopause.

500 pages

500 pages.  500 pages and the hope that it will all get better, that the author really does know what he is doing and that when the last line is read, the reader will say "ah! I understand it now!"  But it is not to be.  Just another ten hours of my life that I won't get back.  Ten hours I could have been walking along the beach, or chatting with friends.  Ten hours inhabiting someone else's idea of a great novel.

Trust me - it wasn't.