You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August 2007.
It’s the little things that make me feel old. I know I’m not hip. I don’t know if I ever was. But I’ve come to the conclusion that you can spot my un-hipness a mile away. It’s in the way I talk. Its in the way I don’t wear my messenger bag across my body, but off my shoulder. It’s my shoes. My lack of hoodies. My lack of hits on a Google search. My wondering just what the hell she was thinking putting that on the web, not spreading my innermost thoughts across MySpace. Wondering if that tattoo not only hurts, but what the hell is it and why would you get it pierced to boot.
My generation didn’t grow up with computers. Hell, I helped my friend test out his brand new ISP BEFORE it was called ISP. Back in the dark days of mainframes and dial-up. Today’s generation doesn’t even know what noise a modem makes…
Oh well this old fart, needs her beauty sleep. It’s tiring being un-cool and un-hip. 🙂
Ciao
For some reason I decided to take a class locally. Well, local in the sense that it would only be 5+ hours of driving time. But hey, it was going to be an “adventure”. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have tempted the gods or maybe I should have just flown to Las Vegas. The class was to be a boot camp of 6 full days (9-7 pm). I must have been crazy!
My friend from work heard about the journey and loaned me his GPS Navigator thinger. After a few lessons, he drove off confident that I wouldn’t break his toy. I was a little nervous about using the darn thing. The last thing I wanted to do was break it or have it stolen. But I was going on an “adventure” and it would be just like having my SO with me to navigate.
Well, for the first 100 miles the poor little device was constantly telling me it had to recalculate, cause I just wasn’t going the way it thought I should. Once I crossed over the big-ass bridge, it finally got its act together and started talking nicely to me.
There was this little scary moment when the thing ran out of juice and I plugged in the charger. Seems whoever had the charger last hadn’t treated it with loving care and the darn thing fell apart (more like exploded) in the cigarette lighter. I pulled off the road and started pulling pieces of the charger out from the socket. Praying I wouldn’t somehow electrocute myself.
I pull back out and as I’m sailing back down the road, I noticed I have no tunes, no books on CD, no clock, no dash lights, no radio, no noise, no charger… Nothing…. You have to understand, I could get along without the GPS Navigator thinger, but I could not survive (and many others might not) without my Books-On-Tape. Things would get very ugly, very fast.
I grabbed my owners manual from the glove compartment, found a grocery store parking lot, and pulled in for some repairs. Seems in order to get the spare fuses, I’d have to pop the hood, poke around in the very, very hot engine compartment and find this very little tiny fuse remover tool. Then go back under the dash and find the offending fuse. I did it. I found it and got it replaced. Lights, noise, clock, radio, charger, everything worked again. EXCEPT for the Navigator thinger.
Talk about a rollercoaster. I’m sitting there with sweat dripping off my nose and the damn thing won’t work. I tried every button, every plug, even tested with my phone charger. I’m thinking how to break it to my friend that I busted his toy.
Okay, once more through all the plugs. Still no joy. Resigned, I start to take everything apart to put it away and I noticed a little button on the back under the clamp piece I just popped off. I get a pen out, poke it, and the darn thing fired right up. Seems somewhere in all the power plugging, battery running out, and fuse blowing, the puppy lost it’s mind. Hitting the hard reset button made it come back. Crisis averted.
Back on the road, with it once more happily telling me what to do, I made it to my destination.
Gota’ love that gadget stuff…
Ciao
Thoughts of an Old Fart 