Computer Upgrade Blues

Phil’s upgrading my laptop from OS 10.0 to OS 10.9999 or something. In terms I can understand, from private to El Capitan. I enter the upgrade process with dread. Whatever problems it solves (like stopping those nasty “Alert! We’re not supporting you anymore!” messages) it will certainly create others: it always does.

The operation takes hours, hours of not being able to use my laptop, to which I am attached as if by umbilical cord. I have to resist starting up my MacBook as soon as I’m out of bed. Sure, I can check email on my phone, but I can’t type words, many words, enough words to make many long lovely sentences, pooling into sweet eddies of paragraphs, releasing the streams of thought and feeling I cannot leave pent up inside. Besides, it’s easier to play solitaire and watch videos on the laptop.

When the upgrade is finally done, everything looks different, as if I came home after a hard day and while I was gone my Mission oak had been swapped for Danish modern. I stare at the menu bar, trying to figure out what’s wrong with it.

“They changed the font. They changed it all to Helvetica!” I cry.

“It’s not Helvetica,” Phil says in the patient voice he defaults to in tech support mode. “It’s a font that’s more readable on the screen.”

“It’s a san serif font! San serif is never more readable,” I yell. This is the man who taught me the difference between display and reading fonts and now he’s flipping his position like a Republican presidential candidate. Is nothing sacred? “Where’s my Times New Roman?”

“Well, if you don’t like it, you can research how—”

“Wait,” I interrupt, feeling a knot of panic in my gut. “Where’s the folder of poems I was working on? I left it right here.”

“Honey, go to your docs folder.” Now he’s speaking in that “you’re an idiot who doesn’t know how computers work” tone.

“I know what a doc folder is.” Click, click, click, I madly open the folder, scroll its contents and announce triumphantly. “Not here.”

“Open this,” Phil suggests. I do. “Oh, look: another docs folder.”

Suddenly I have a dim recollection of having had two docs folders before, but I don’t mention it. The knot in my stomach releases. “Oh, there are the poems. Good. But why does my email look like this? I don’t like it. Can I get the old format back?”

I can’t send emails. Each email I try to send pops up a dialog box saying “no can do.” I keep trying, of course, hitting send, getting the same polite “no can do” message over and over again. You’d think, after you’d done that a dozen times, the message would change to: “What about ‘NO’ don’t you understand?”

I receive emails just fine, as I find out from a new feature that makes me snarl: a banner flashes across the top of my screen telling me about an incoming email when I’m working. I’m working, and just had the right sentence percolating in my brain and you want to interrupt me to say Janie posted on Facebook and I’m getting this email because she’s my friend? Janie has nothing to say to me. She’s posting a video of a penguin. That shit is not happening. I turn those notifications off.

My dock insists on having tiny icons that enlarge when you run the cursor over them as if you were using a magnifying glass. I hate that too. The photos I had on screensaver have disappeared. I haven’t had time to look for them. And the names of all my files are in some repulsive san serif font that might as well be Helvetica and I do not have time to screw around finding out how to change it. I’m on deadline. I have a blog to write.

The next morning, I start up my laptop and that little gray line, the progress indicator bar, doesn’t move…and finally produces a dialog box that says “OS X” and gives four choices: Restore from Time Machine Backup, Reinstall OSX, Get Help Online or Disk Utility. This happens when I have to go teach my class and wanted to check which kids emailed me their stories. I carry my baby, my precious laptop, without which no writing exists, straight to Phil, wailing all the way: “Honeeeeeeee.”

I go to teach and Phil, because he is a magician, magically fixes whatever it was and now I can send mail and I’m adjusting to the odd look of everything, but the next thing I need to kill is email spelling check. I’m writing a friend to meet for brunch at Zaidy’s and it autocorrects to Zaire. What the hell? You’re El Capitan and can’t even recognize the Yiddish everyone knows?

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6 Responses to Computer Upgrade Blues

  1. C.M. Mayo says:

    Oh, dear, Pat… and I can relate! I have not updated my MacBook Pro to the latest operating system only because the last time I did it caused so many snafus. You are so lucky to have a computer savvy partner!! I am coming to the conclusion that laptops and indeed all these gizmos are more like houseplants– they need watering and they don’t live forever. I wonder what will become of my library of Kindles. But paper books, they can sit on the shelf and be just as readable today as tomorrow as 150 years hence. That said, I relish your blog. Many regards from Mexico! And mucha suerte!!

  2. C.M. Mayo says:

    And here is the correct link to C.M. Mayo’s blog.

  3. Denise Gibson says:

    Oh, we sympathize! Bill keeps wailing, “I thought computers were supposed to make life easier…!” I, being a designer like Phil, shrug and go along with the changes. (But I let upgrades happen overnight.)

  4. winnie says:

    Oh yes, my deepest sympathies as well!
    I hate changing, which happens after I finally get what the current thing does, and how and why.
    The power went out in our area a few days ago, we were on the way to lunch at a local restaurant. Not only our chosen spot, but several others were also closed due to the power outage and we finally came back to my house for PB&J.
    Just a taste of what it would be like to not have electricity, and we had new appreciation for it and all our electric devices.
    My spell check goes wonky at least once a day. How do you turn it off?

    • dubrava says:

      Email was really annoying with the autocorrections that were wrong. Go to Preferences on the email menu bar, or Preferences in Word, if you want to change that too, and unselect the spelling options you don’t want. Scary, where we’d be if the electrical grid went down!

  5. Bob Jaeger says:

    Windows is no better, probably worse. I’m limping along with many glitches mainly because I refuse to switch to Windows 10. I like my Windows 7. I know my Windows 7. Phil could probably make big bucks as a travelling computer wizard.

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