Why I'm Not Writing Here or Posting Pictures

The gremlins living in my computer are on such a serious  sit down -- or slow down -- strike that I don't have the patience to try to post a picture.  One thing and another has been super frustrating in the past ten days -- all computer related. In other parts of life things are going along generally well.

It started when my printer sprung a spring which somehow was related to feeding the paper through.  The printer was 7 years old and had been cranky about paper jams for some time so I had to get a new one. The lovely one I bought proved to be such a new model it was incompatible with my 7 year old Macbook.  Either I could get an expensive upgrade to the computer or take the printer back. I took the printer back. I also ranted a bit amongst some friends and one angel said she had a printer sitting unused and I could have it -- for free. Yipee! Except she arrived with it and spent a couple of hours trying to install it.  It was going to be compatible, but she's not a Mac person and I'm inept. However, the next morning my daughter arrive at 7:30 a.m., wet from a shower, foregoing breakfast with her husband before church, to help me. We just about did it.  Later in the day, all by my little self, I managed the final step.  Viola!  a printer that works and talks to my computer.

Meanwhile my external hard drive was not backing things up properly. It hadn't for a while and I was getting nervous with files on the computer I absolutely would hate to lose.  Two trips to the Mac store eventually revealed the hard drive had an internal defect of some kind. That's when the internet connection on the computer began to act like a stubborn snail that could take all day to move a millimeter.  It's still doing it and I'm mega-frustrated.  And looming ahead of me is probably a period in the Mac service department just when my writing is rolling along wonderfully and I need to do other work on it as well. 

So that is an update on my unhappiness with the fact that I feel so dependent on this little machine in my lap.  How did I get to this impass? I don't want to need a machine, I don't like it to hold in its innards some of my most precious possessions -- my writing, my photographs, my contacts with friends and businesses and much of the outside world.  And I hate that my most primitive impulse, which would be to simply buy a new computer and transfer the important stuff is both very expensive and also time consuming.  I feel as if aliens have taken over a large part of my life.  And I DON'T LIKE IT.