#74 Taking A Break And Tech Woes

Anne Morse Hambrock

Sep 09, 2024

My life involves a lot of tech.

And a lot of files.

I mean a LOT of files.

And every so often, a device will fail.

Which is something I DREAD.

Because it not only means spending money on a new piece of equipment it also means:

Setting up a myriad of stupid things like clocks and language preferences
Getting the unit to sync to whatever cloud things it needs to sync to (Which usually includes remembering a bunch of passwords I don’t remember and have not had the good sense to “add to my keychain”. And we all know we are not supposed to -cough- write them down anywhere…)
Moving the thousands – yes thousands – of files to the new device (Don’t preach to me about just keeping everything in the cloud – A. there is no storage plan I can afford that can hold my insanely giant archive of high res files. B. I need to know my files are safely on my hard devices where I can get to them regardless of internet access.)
Learning where the hell the developers have now decided to put everything (Because they think they know better than I do how to organize my systems and my life.)
Figuring out which versions of my favorite outdated apps and software systems I can continue to use and which ones will turn into a pumpkin requiring me to learn how to use the program ALL OVER AGAIN because app developers have to break things that weren’t broken. (Can you tell this is a particularly sore point?)

This past week the small cracks that I’d been ignoring on my iPad pro turned into BIG cracks that I not only couldn’t ignore but that started to impact my ability to use the unit for the work I do for comics syndicates.

Once my replacement iPad arrived, I spent TWO DAYS getting things set up and synchronized and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. (My head is going to be swimming for weeks to come as I figure out what files are where.)

I understand that technology needs to grow and change but I wish I could believe that all the developers out there didn’t derive secret satisfaction from making us jump through all these hoops.

I have visions of them sitting in their sad cubicles gleefully plotting the new systems and laughing maniacally as they imagine me on the receiving end of their “upgrades”.

I wish I could just walk away.

Divorce myself from all this nonsense.

Perhaps become Amish.

Doubtful.

Taking A Break

You may have noticed there was no newsletter last week.

This is because I send out my missives on Mondays and last Monday was LABOR DAY.

And I woke up that morning and said to myself: “NO!”

I am taking a day off!

And I did.

Well, sort of - I still did a bunch of stuff.

Like catch up on projects I’ve been meaning to get to all summer.

If you’ve been reading a while (and if you haven’t you can just pop over to the archives and catch up) you know that this was the summer of the big porch renovation.

Because once upon a time the porch looked like this:

Every rainfall meant flooding and drama.

And the hubby thought he might just make a few repairs.

Until it turned out that, between the flooding and the carpenter ants, all the wood was like this:

So he embarked on what turned out to be a fourteen week complete tear down and renovation. Not only did he bang out a brand new porch, new roof and all, but he also miraculously found time to make some stone/brick paths we’ve been wanting for a while.

So I couldn’t just sit around being a slug and glorying in the results of all his hard work.

I took Labor Day to bust out the good ol’ Rustoleum and give all our patio furniture a much needed facelift.

In hopes of sneaking several photos into this newsletter without breaking substack to the point that I get a warning message about “too many images” I will now attempt to use the gallery feature to give a snapshot of our efforts:

I’m particularly fond of that last one of the sunset because it was taken from my new favorite perch on those fabulous couches. I love how I can see the sky both through the roof and the window.

Did I mention my hubby also has about three full time jobs? He’s amazing!

Apple Season!!

Years ago our daughter managed to germinate seeds from a grocery store apple (which, supposedly is notoriously hard to do) and now we get our own apples every fall. So this will be the first pie of several :-) If you’d like to take a deep dive into all my pie secrets click here. Or if you would just like my piecrust recipe click here.

Mark Your Calendars

I am pleased to be one of the performers at the upcoming Kenosha Performing Arts Festival! My show will be at the White Lilac on Sunday October 6. More details in the next couple of weeks.

Get The Latest Book!

The new books are listed in my online store where they await your purchasing pleasure :-)

Keep The Messages Coming!

A big “thank you” to all of you who have messaged me commented or hit “like” after reading my poems and commentary!

I appreciate the feedback and knowing how often I have struck a chord with your lives.

Crowden Satz

Sep 9

Hmmmm. When I read the start I figured you had a PC but then you say iPad. You're not using an iPad with a PC, are you? I'm fully invested in Apple and one thing that's trivial is updating - the thing that you say is causing you grief. You can just duplicate your old machine onto the new. And when you say not to mention iCloud - do you have more than 2 TB of storage needs? That's how big my icloud storage is and it accommodates a lot of files. My entire computer, in fact. SuperDuper copies everything onto a SSD drive in seconds as backup and my documents file is continuously synched with the cloud. I guess my main point is that perhaps some alterations in your system would improve life for you as far as tech issues.

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