My record has got stuck again …
Many Rusters will share my exasperation at the stupidities and frustrations of 21st Century life and nurse perfectly understandable nostalgia for the good old days of ‘brick’ mobile phones, flared trousers, Afro haircuts, audio cassettes and the classic Dukes of Hazzard television series.
Last week on this organ a colleague referenced his revulsion at boorish cyclists – an attitude with which I wholly concur.
Personally, if such things were within my gift, I would introduce a new statutory legal defence to murder/manslaughter of ‘justifiable homicide’ for any pedestrian who, surprised whilst waiting to cross at a set of traffic lights by a cyclist proceeding through a red light in excess of 20mph, took the opportunity to push said miscreant sideways onto the road.
I am fed up to the back teeth when out and about in these days of social-distancing, to find cyclists coming towards me along the pavement, often in packs of two or three, weaving in and out of those of us on foot and/or causing us to jump out of their way.
Insufferable, inconsiderate swine!
Only yesterday afternoon, parked up outside my gaff, I had to hit the brakes with urgency immediately upon pulling out because a thirty-something male in T-shirt, shorts and sandals was cycling uncertainly towards me upon the single-width street whilst completely engrossed in a message on his smartphone, blissfully unaware of anyone or anything else within his vicinity.
And these are the kind of people the Government are proposing to give blanket priority to throughout the streets of the greatest metropolis in the land!
However, cyclists are not the intended topic of my post today.
Once again – now beyond nauseam to infinity – my gripe of the moment is about modern (computer) technology.
Yes, you’ve guessed it – it’s another case of every senior citizen’s beef with the complexities of the workings of computers, not least the apparently inexhaustible need to advance and/or evolve ‘just for the sake of it’ when in fact the human race reached all the development it ever needed in 1975.
Well, okay – 1977.
Back in the day of typewriters, every man and his dog knew where he was. You could arrange any words on any page exactly how you wished – you were totally in control – and life was good.
Fast-forward to the modern world …
About 54 hours ago, whilst I was working upon a Word document in my computer, a box came up on the screen advising me that “updates were available” and would I therefore please save any software currently open so that the process of updating could begin.
With huge reluctance (because I knew from experience what was about to happen), I duly “saved and closed” my document and waited. Shortly afterwards the screen went blank and a kind of rolling series of dots began circulating in a clockwise direction in the centre of my screen, shortly thereafter signalling that the process was “5% complete” …
It took some 45 minutes to first “update” and then “install” the new Microsoft software.
I then began working within my computer – whereupon within minutes the entire computer shut down completely again … and presumably did some more buggering about with my computer innards. It actually had the effrontery to bring up a box saying “Your computer may shut down and start up again several times”.
And so this is where I have reached.
My previous – and laboriously learned – email set-up is now completely changed and decidedly for the worse. Whenever my computer starts, my email account is automatically ‘open’ via an icon at the bottom of the screen, whereas previously I had to both type in my email address … and provide a password … before I was able to access it.
Result? My email account is now available for anyone who comes to my house to read at will. I have totally lost my email account’s security and confidentiality.
The layout has also changed significantly.
What I do not understand (and object to) is that I was just about satisfied with how things were before – in the sense that whilst not everything was to my liking (in other words I still would have preferred to retain not just the last set-up – un-requested by me and indeed unnecessary – Microsoft “update” given to me, but in fact the one that was about two updates before that!) – I at least just about knew how to find my way around and do what I wanted to regarding my emails.
But now, as of today I am completely in the dark again.
Why is it that when our lords and masters – whom I presume already know everything there is worth knowing about each of us, including things I don’t know – deem it necessary to “update” us, there is no box option provided in which those of us of a certain age and/or disposition who wish to do so can indicate “Thanks for the offer, but I’d rather stay with things are they are!”?
(And have the absolute right to have them do so).
