&%&^*^@# Tech

 

Daniel, the nice tech man, bearing bad news for the Love TV programs. 

Please enjoy the flowers today.  

Their beauty has calmed my nerves and brought joy to my life several times this week.  

So have my kids. 

All that said, I suggested to Bill this morning that maybe it is time for us to find that cabin in the woods with no connections to the outside world.  

Life could possibly be much easier and simpler. 

Our worldly connections have gone through several chapters of turmoil this week. 

Let's start with one of the more important moments in parenthood. 

Our son is receiving an honorary degree from a prestigious liberal arts college in Iowa, and he's going to give a speech. 

Two minutes after the beautiful outdoor ceremony begins our computer screens go blank. 

Must have pushed the wrong button or something, I'm thinking.  A minute or so later, we are fully aware, both upstairs and downstairs, that we have no Internet. 

Without a lot of details, I'll just hint that a meltdown ensued---some tears, some bad words, all the stuff you do when facing the biggest disappointment imaginable.  

Everyone else who cares is getting to watch our son but not his parents. 

Eventually, my brain cleared out and began to work again.  I remembered that, in the past when we don't have Wi-fi, I can still connect with the outside world with my phone while sitting in my car. 

I go to the car, click the link and the Grinnell Commencement magically appears on the cell phone screen.  

I go to the house, summon Bill, and he comes out.  We sit in the front seat, no longer spewing tears of frustration but enjoying gentle tears of joy as we watch him receive his doctorate and deliver a wonderful upbeat speech. 

Our Internet returns a couple of hours later. 

I've also mentioned that we have also called for a tech to come and tell us why our TV reception for satellite channels has gone bonkers dozens of times a day for the past couple of weeks. 

Bill's a forester.  He has a suspicion. 

When Daniel, the tech, showed up yesterday to help us out, he confirmed Bill's suspicion. 

One and maybe two big trees south of the house will need to be removed if we want bonker-city TV reception to stop. 

Daniel was so nice that it was hard to be mad in front of him, although he could sense that this was not the best news to deliver.  

During his visit, I learned that Daniel's mother is a farrier in Spirit Lake and that he is starting a new business.  

So, let's have some good come out of his visit, and if you need any of the help listed below, there's your information.  

To top off a week where the same technology that can be so helpful can also drive you to the looney bin, I accidentally opened an email which I thought had come from my brother. 

In a phone conversation, he had promised to send me a video with Willie's speech which he had edited.

So, the yesterday when I saw his name on the email, I opened.  

Damn Spammer/Hackers! 

I had received similar emails  supposedly from him over the past few months but had learned after opening the original message, way back when, that it was a hack. 

So, I changed my email password and watched out for them afterward. 

But yesterday, I was, indeed, expecting a message from him.  Only problem was he didn't send that message. 

Once again, I wasted no time changing my email password. All seemed fine until I discovered this morning that no messages were going out of my email account on my phone.  I was receiving but could not send. 

Eventually, after some tinkering which must have been magical, the cell phone email account started working again. 

This week has certainly involved an overload on reasons to take a hammer to anything related to tech.  Happily, problem-solving skills have kicked in along with the potential for some chainsaw action in the near future, so we'll hang in there. 

Still, one is tempted to follow Thoreau's wise words and Simplify!  Simplify!

Happy Friday.  

With luck, I'll get this post published.