Computer Corner
Presided over by
Eric Thiel
Dear Computer Illiterate
By Joanne Tolson
Es gibs you insight into the computer.
My copier poetry
Is in the groove.
When the copier reads.
Paper mis-feeds.
When I am up to deed
At copier speed
That is all I need.
When replicating like DNAS.
What my poems say.
You were not born with an instruction manual per se so you will find out what works and what does not. Just as your computer once had to be programmed, your mind has to be. You just have to click away like you do with a Mouse. At least that is what I have learned from my computer. It has taught me well. Computer manufacturers do not supply you with a tell-all manual. I guess they think in the computer age most everybody knows about computers. I did not know much about computers or as much as I need to know, but I remember the computer catalogue from the Radio Shack and the clunky small black monitors. I was a disadvantaged youth back then. Now I am just an inept computer user in my 40s. Now computers are made simple and basically anyone without a computer science degree can run one.
I don't know how or why I have developed such a passion for computer technology, something I barely grasp, but it just seems to be something I am wired for in a part of my psyche. I am sure I have a talent for being an analyst of some kind, since computers are analog and we tend to think alike. If I can't find it in one place I look in another way.
Computer applications are like gilded artwork frames made of gold overlay upon a wood frame. They are layers and layers of programs downloaded onto discs. Once installed it behaves like a liquid of sorts. Kind of like a liquid television that can be manipulated.
Maybe I should re-think this; it's got me thinking programmers have a lot to remember. All those codes: letters, dots, symbols and numbers. I suppose I am not to be the computing genius I would like to be or even think of being.
I suppose if I had not frilled up my computer I would not have found out I had three bad sectors on my C drive. I would not have known what to do or how to retrieve my documents from the C drive, as my brother did. Aren't they great? Brothers, I mean. So I think I should give myself a quiz on this.
What do you call someone new to computers besides a Newbie?
- Dazed and confused in computer land.
- The dizzy computer.
- All dialed up and nowhere to go.
- Let the chips fall where they may.
- All of the above.
Yeah, I ask myself questions like this all the time even though I have bought books to help myself out some, but they seem to be about the internet. I don't like to try something unless I have someone to show me as I have screwed up like I have. The computer has broadened my horizons.
More ROM Please
My computer has as it retains
More than my brain.
It runs on less chips.
Like from information we
Send and receive to each other.
The computer transcends our earthly realm,
Extends it above and around;
To the ancients it would astound.
That's how information gets around—
We follow it like a hound,
From town to town,
Around the global village.
A Few Words On Word
Word for word I am amazed by what I can do with Microsoft Word Documents, while I am still transitioning from the typewriter to keyboarding as it's called or known.
How writing has changed from scratch marks like cuneiform on pieces of clay to writing on microchips. It is like that riddle of how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. The age-old question proposed by some scientist or mathematician/philosopher about, ye gods, I don't know, 200 years ago, asked the question. Well, it's just like I would ask about word documents. How many items can you have on a single word document? The answer would be in the thousands range or more precisely millions, but I have found out on a single document I can put about 36 pages of an individual document or 36 items altogether. You can have documents in the millions range times about 27 pages would equal 270,000,000 pages if you had a million single word documents. So there could ultimately be billions as such. Well, I have sort of semi-mastered word documents.
I do not know all of its uses yet as I am learning what else I can do with my computer. Next I hope to be doing my own address labels next year, but if I want anything like a crazy design I will have to special order by mail order for graphics.
Office in a Box
Is what I think of my computer. I was not clearly “thinking outside the box” when my computer arrived. I could not imagine what I could do with a computer about three years ago when it came to my apartment. Of course when I took a computer course about sixteen years ago I knew they were the future.
I wanted to ride the wave of the future rather than always being stuck on the ground floor. Actually I do not really know my original thought way back then. Due to subsequent head injuries that information is trapped in a vortex like a black hole from which it cannot escape or be retrieved. Not that it was probably any significant genius thought about computers, it was only significant to me being the freakin' user that I am. Of course I had questions, but I was amazed as well as lost when it came to using such computer programs as Windows. I had a little experience with Apple computers. My knowledge was limited. When education is compromised and biased against you it makes it hard to gain any ground. I was smart in some ways. Just because they are scared and do not understand and appreciate and have no use for a high IQ like mine, they abuse it.
But now I can, thanks to the computer and the internet, go freely and proudly Google like never before. Since I have lived on the ocean's edge down here in North Carolina , land's end, I have felt that I was like a genie trapped in a bottle. I have been suddenly freed. Someone has pulled the plug, or cork, on me.
Now that I was pretty much left on my own to learn how to use the computer, which I find myself bulking at from the beginning, saying I need a computer course, because I did not know how to handle those little things mastering left click and right click. My click is still too slow. Oh yeah, and multitasking. I am still working on that one but I am coming around to it. Unlike the multitasking pro my brother is. I just could not get over how he multitasked like that. I was stuck in a mindset that went back to the Civil War. That's how I think. But it is time to get over it. I am still trying to adapt to acid rock (which I never will; not my thing) and hip hop. By the injuries I had you could tell I was head banger by accident of course all of my life.
I like the idea of computer applications making my writing easier. It took the hack work out of hack. Like the Xerox copier did away with the messy carbons. Remember those? With the Windows applications like Word Documents you can type up and save, and print copies any time you need a copy or just e-mail them. You still have your original and you can go back and make changes as needed.
It is just convenient. I like my office in a box.
That's A Wrap
So you think. Well, at least I learned what a word wrap was before I bought a book called WINDOWS 98 FOR DUMMIES, but according to the news over the last year, Windows 98 will only be supported through June 30, 2006. Which makes me glad they aren't phasing out Windows 98 yet. That gives me time to tinker around with 98, if I only would. So if my computer comes with 98 I am pleasantly stuck which I don't mind even if Microsoft pulls support of 98 in 2006. What do I upgrade? I guess what's next is Windows XP?
But I really like my Microsoft Word 2000 which is what I am getting too. I have typed so much over the years it's just a natural thing to hit the return key on a typewriter, which has been replaced by the computer's keyboard enter key. But it's something I am in the habit of doing, hitting the enter key like it was the return key on a typewriter. I really get carried away by my typing, er keyboarding it is now called. I am wrapped up in Word. Literally. I don't realize I have hit what is called a word wrap, then I have to go back and erase then double-space.
Why double-space at all?
Because editors expect it, that's why.
So hitting a return key is a habit and hit the enter key like the return key, expecting the same kind of function from an enter key; but ‘tain't so, you see. So that's when I often hit the enter key. I think it's going to automatically double space on the next line. But double spacing is second nature to me now. I do it anyway.
Well, why double-space when I could fit another 4,000 or 5,000 words on a document easily? If I did not double-space an editor could not proofread between the lines. At least if I make a spelling error and I forget how to spell a word, spell check underlines the word in red to let you know about it, or sometimes it will automatically correct the misspelling of a word. Well, it takes the guesswork out of being a hack, because Microsoft Word does the chore of being a hack. It files, saves, duplicates and prints and all of that, but you still have to put something in it to get something out of it. Yes, it's the old Input-Output device thingy, of course.
Men have been looking for ways to store information since they hunted mammoths 10,000 years ago. They have found ways to manipulate rocks by tweaking the microchips and semiconductors to store that information in boxes called PCs. So man has found a way to sort and store that information and teach it to his young and pass it on to countless future generations. Long since the oral traditions of passing on knowledge have mostly faded or have vanished with each conquering culture that has succeeded the last generation.
My Computer Crash Course
This course started about a year into using my PC. My problems began first after I installed my present ISP's disc. First of all I did not find out what my new LAN was, so we started getting $230.00 phone bills. After I got the new number in after my brother told me to call my ISP, which I did, but I hated being put on hold and the automated system which I dreaded. For a person who never used or caught onto the automated world I was thrust into it suddenly on my own up until about three years ago. Well, actually, longer than that, because I have been doing the automated teller system longer than ten years. I had part of me that did not like change, so my ten-year experience with the automated banking system turned into a fiasco because certain parties found out I had a checking account. That's another story altogether in itself. So my experience in the realm of the automated world had not been pleasant. I'm sure it's a crime of some kind. Well, fortunately my need for a techie has diminished along the way presently.
Second of all I did not know where to find in my PC anything on my computer. I did not know about those things. I reeked of Newbie. I thought I had to be on the internet or that was when I had the computer on—I would stress out because I was afraid I would mess up things to a certain extent and I did. But like it is always, my big brother to the rescue, but he lives so far away. I did not know you could go to certain parts of the computer without being on the internet, but I learned. It was a hard lesson for me. Bittersweet.
With this technology in my hands, new to me even though it's been around for about 65 years or more, since the creation of ANIAC computer in the 1940s, a giant calculator of sorts.
Techies did not seem to understand my problem as a Newbie. I did not know how to fix my Outlook Express box and configure it to my new ISP. So for awhile I had web mail which worked for a while. It suited my purpose until then in September 2003 my e-mail started flooding my Outlook Express box. I guess it had to go somewhere. So when my brother was home he fixed that, but that was not all that happened to my computer. I found out the hard way you don't find cookies under find. I knew that. Why did I do that? I brought up all the stuff in my computer and corrupted my PC. It's a good thing I stopped it in November 2003, I believe. I almost wiped out my PC. I guess I am still kicking myself even today. It seems these things are timed to happen after my brother leaves and around Thanksgiving.
You better duck or grab one. I was under attack with all these computer viruses going around. I would read that on the news on the internet. I was traumatized by it and unprotected. My antiviral had expired. I had no protection.
Since then my computer had the scan disk running every time I booted up, since fall of 2003. Finally my computer crashed in the fall of 2004 after my brother ran the Defragmenter on it and forgot to turn off the screen saver. He found out I had three bad disks in my C drive. He spent two or three days, you might as well say a week, working on the computer, re-installing Windows 98. I don't know how he did but I am thankful to have a brother who learned how to do all that. He saved all my stuff and other stuff. Now I have learned how partly to use a scanner, as far as that goes, for right now to copy things, but I am yet not proficient at scanning and saving photos for a family project. I have learned some functions for a digital camera. I can take digital photos, short clips, and put them in my computer myself now. My computer learning has been a rudimentary grasp of its functions, just enough to get by.
My knowledge suffices, but not enough. My brother did not take classes, but eventually I still hope to take computer classes. I would still like to know more.