Computer problems

No, we didn't win the lottery.

That business being over, I find myself once again stymied by computer problems.  I am admittedly a Luddite, confused as anyone by the modern age.  What computer jockeys think is intuitive is anything but to me.  How I'm supposed to know that if one just pushes this button or slides the cursor over this icon and all my problems will be solved is seriously bereft of common sense.  How, absent any instruction whatsoever, is someone supposed to know that by moving a cursor over a particular icon that it's going to solve all one's problems?  That would be akin to expecting someone to know the intricacies of a foreign language simply because we all speak.

Today's problem is another of those interstitial problems in which I seem to specialize.  Yesterday I worked on certain things on Word.  I saved my work and did nothing to install or uninstall any programs related to Word.  When I left the office my computer was functioning fine.

I'm quite certain no one else has been in the office since yesterday.  Yet today when I came in, I'm no longer a part of the shared directory.  Why this should happen is beyond me, other than the fact that computer gremlins who delight in bedeviling me returned for their irregular visit.  I'm left in the office without anyway to save documents to a directory and no one with any computer savvy to know how to return me to the main directory of shared documents.

I'm often confronted with computer problems that stump the so-called experts.  I will hit three keys with my finger and either my screen goes blank, the formatting changes so that I neither know what happened or how to undo it or I've replaced what I was doing with something I deleted hours before. When I call in someone who professes to understand these machines, I get the dismissive head-shaking that usually parents use with an infant who doesn't know how to use a sippy cup. Computers are not sippy cups, people!  And nine times out of ten, the person who thinks my problem is a quick fix spends upwards of a half hour, at least, trying to figure out what I've done and undo it.  Sure, I'm usually vindicated, but they never admit that I incomprehensibly get myself into computer problems that are not run-of-the-mill.

Why the computer would remove me from the shared directory overnight is confusing to me.  When the computer guys delve into this and fix it, I'm sure they'll come up with a vague explanation for how it happened and how it can be prevented from happening again in the future.  None of this helps me understand these machines any better and does nothing to lessen my frustration with them.  After all, technology generally and computers specifically were supposed to make our lives easier.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles