Typos and Technophobia

I swear my keyboard has dyslexia. If you could see my posts before I proof them you would swear I was semi- literate. Some of the things I have to take out stagger even me, further lending credence to the notion that It's not me- I'm a grate speller, and I like to use punk-chew-ashun, so therefore it has to be  this darn keyboard.

Confession: I am actually a shocking typist. (are they called key-boardists or something high tech these days?) I'm fast but bad.  In Year 10 "Commercial Studies" back in the dark ages when dinosaurs roamed the earth (typing and shorthand - does anyone use shorthand these days?) I was voted most likely never to be employed as a secretary. Mrs. Hale my Commercial Studies teacher used to despair over my typing accuracy daily and I'm sure it used to keep her awake at nights. Hallelujah for spell check. It's not that my spelling and grammar are so bad , it picks up all my typos. At the moment I am having a high old time substituting this (;) for this (') at every possible opportunity. And sometimes I don't pick it up- which makes me look stupid.  I was so stoked when I recently discovered Blogger has spell check that I threw a party. A spelling party.  So when you see something that doesn't quite make sense here it's not because I'm an ignoramus- or insane - I'm just a really bad typist. Or my keyboard is possessed. Whatever.

These thoughts got me thinking about the place of technology in our lives.And my general stupidity when it comes to being able to use or operate it. I freely admit, I don't control technology-technology controls me.

A couple of weeks ago, I learned how to recharge my mobile phone credit via the Internet.  I still haven't worked out how to do it on my actual phone. It's possible because a little button  on my phone tells me so.  I confess I'm a technological dud  because  apparently I can access the Internet via my mobile phone and in three years I've never worked out how. If I accidentally touch that button and it tries to connect to the Internet I start randomly jabbing keys to make it stop in a panic. It's almost like the Internet button is a "drop saran gas on the world "button such is my terror when I see it trying to connect.   I thought I was hot crap when I worked out how to email stuff from my phone to my home email  about 6 months ago.I still haven't worked out how to email stuff back the other way.  

My technophobia extends to every day house hold appliances including the frypan which never seems to work for me unless it is on "nuke" setting . It is numbered 1-10, but only cooks on 10. It sits inert on numbers 1 through 9.   Apparently it senses when the food needs to be cooked. However  it loses it often - burning the food to a charred crisp. We've just got used to eating everything black on the outside and bleeding in the middle. I just tell everyone it's Cajun.  But, I  hate that my frypan thinks it's smarter than I am.

My stupidity also extends to not being able to be trusted to turn the oven off. My oven decides when the contents have had enough cooking and turns itself off. Usually after 90 minutes. If I believe that something still needs more cooking I have to go and re-program it for additional cooking time. Woe betide I need to cook something for three hours. According to oven law nothing ever needs to be cooked for longer than an hour and a half. The oven must be worried I'm going to burn my house down. Thanks oven for having my back.

I cannot program the DVD. I get Mr. P to do it for me.  We don't have Tivo because I'm not sure I could take the stress. We don't  have cable or satellite TV  because it has wayyyyyy too many channels for my fuzzy little brain. Our flat panel television is worth three times as much as my car.  If the  computer wasn't  so easy to operate (One button to turn it on and Blogger and my email pop up automatically ) I'm sure I would never have made it back here to make more than one post.

My car screams at me when something is wrong. It tells me when it needs a service. When it thinks it needs more petrol. What's going on every time I start it. The thing greets me for crying out loud. If my car is so smart why doesn't it fix itself? Drive itself to the mechanic? Self heal when something is broken by using a calming mantra? Find a cure for cancer?

Computers  are  temperamental. I spent most of Miss Pyjamas childhood worrying about diseases , got her safely to adulthood without increasing the child mortality rate and now I have to worry that my computer is going to get a virus as well. I just don't have the time to nurse a computer back to health. Sorry 'puter - you get sick - we're gonna kick you to the kerb and buy a new one. That was also the plan if we had more children by the way. All our sympathy and sick days got used up on the last one.

All of this is painfully raw for me today because I sent an hour last night  trying to work out how to get RSS feeds to my computer. Unsuccessfully. In the end I figured I've lived 43 years without them , and gave up. I excel at giving up with technology. I  have a sneaking suspicion that while I was attempting the seemingly impossible, I reset my computer settings and RSS is being secretly downloaded to a file somewhere on my computer and the first I'm going to know about it is when my 1.5 terabyte hard drive crashes because it's full.

Technology and I have an uneasy relationship. At the moment I'm calling a truce and acknowledging technology IS the boss of me, but the times they are a'changing. Just warning you technology...