Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut; Sometimes You Are

by Jody Worsham

Part One

All rights reserved for the Nut House

You know how in Ice Age that pre-historic squirrel is always chasing that illusive acorn?  Just about the time he almost gets his paws around the acorn, the world shifts on its axis, the ice Age starts to melt, or a huge crack appears in a glacier separating him from his nut.

That's the way I am when it comes to computers.About the time I finally learn how to do something, it gets improved on or updated. If you have read my posts for the last couple of times, you may have noted that my writing appeared to be one long paragraph.  I assure you that in its original pre-cut-and-pasted Microsoft format, there were ample paragraphs.  What looked like nicely spaced paragraphs in the draft version became one long sentence in the posted version.  With the new and improved BlogSpt, the acorn escaped my clutch.

Some eight-year-old, probably named Bill, in a garage "improves" on a perfectly good method of doing something, making it faster, easier, and more global for him.  Suddenly the Gates are opened to a flood of new procedures, apps, HTML and making something you just figured out, obsolete and often doing so without informing you.  The acorn slips down a crevice.

The latest "update" sent me scurrying for help from my more compter literate friends on Net Wits, Southern Humorists, and Humor Writers.  What happened?  To whcih there were no less than 25 responses.  Three suggested I learn to speak HTML, an obscure Third World language of alien computers.  They may as well have suggested I buy the Rosetta Stone version of Farsi and learn it in three simple lessons.  One kind soul offered to tutor me off line; I'm sure to prevent the world from knowing how inept I am.  I have, thanks to him, mastered the first half of the first lesson.  Still grasping for the acorns, though.

(To be Continued later)