Friday, October 23, 2009

Is this thing on?

I may have mentioned this before on a few occasions...

Ugh. She needs to get out more I think. She's beginning to repeat herself. Even she knows that. And she spends an awful lot of time sleeping when she could actually be drinking wine and blogging, er, about drinking wine. And stuff.

Yeah! What's up with her?!?!

...but I'm somewhat of a technophobe.

Or more accurately, I don't like it when technological things change. Especially if more buttons and features, and whatnot are added onto something that's already working fine and that I have just learned to use closer to its full capacity than ever before by some obscure designer entity that is only attempting to make the thing more 'user friendly' (by which they mean targeted to someone who is already bored by the bazillion options out there for spending every waking hour of their day by 'connecting' with someone or something out there).

For me, development and change signal frustration with my inability to perform such simple tasks as turn the thing on (I say, all vacuums should come with a big button that says ON to avoid that awkward 5 minutes of staring and circling the vacuum expecting it to magically turn itself on [They will bring out the kind that can be switched on by the power of thought soon enough. Or possibly by sneezing.] resulting from the button having been relocated to a more 'easily reachable' position making it reachable alright but also practically invisible, and it not being marked with clear letters, but some difficult-to-decipher symbol), refresh a page (why does anyone feel the need to keep moving that icon? All the time?), or send an email (I write an email, I don't compose it).

Okay. We've heard this all before. Now she'll start talking about pulling her hair out, curling up in a fetal position and crying herself to sleep, because someone changed iTunes and she can't find Whiskey Lullaby by that guy Brad Paisley, or because someone moved a button to the tabs bar on Safari and she keeps clicking on that when she means to refresh, and she maintains she's doing no such thing. 

Exactly, I hear ya. It's the world's saddest song played on the world's smallest violin. She's always hogging that thing too. She'll break it soon, if she's not careful...

So imagine my surprise today, when I found myself sending a request in to Google Wave to be sent an invitation to their new interface (I'm not sure that's what it is, since I'm not sure what constitutes an interface and what Google Wave is really about, or much else for that matter, but anyhoo). Somehow, I went from finding out that Blogger had crashed and wouldn't let me edit or even browse most of my blogs, to expertly (So what? I want to use this word about myself. It's my blog.) tweeting about the problem and looking at other report-a-problem tweets come in at the same time, to watching the (Entire! It's 80 minutes long!) demo video of the Google Wave.

And I felt fine.

Waah? She didn't even touch her hair? No tears? No calls to Hubby? 

You know, and this is something I didn't want to mention until I had more proof, but I think she might be a clone.... One of the clones made by the big corporations to market their products.... Only, I had thought that it was Starbucks who'd sent her. 

And then I finally decided to look into what that thing I'd been hearing about called the Sidewiki was, and since it was not supported on Safari, right then and there without any kind of sighing or rolling of eyes all the way to the back of my head, I downloaded Firefox, and Sidewiki too, after which I skyped with the Hubby about it all, and found out that he hadn't even heard of Google Wave yet.

And I felt even better.

She's a clone alright. A veritable Google clone drone. What should we do?

I don't know. I've only read up on the clones sent by Starbucks and Stellenbosch. There was nothing there on Google clones.

I'm scared. I miss the hairpulling and shrieking. At least then we knew what we were up against.

I know. I'm really scared too.

... 

Uhm... Maybe we should just Google her? 


Excuse me Sir? I'm looking for the ON/OFF Switch?

Have a good weekend everyone! Don't Google me while I'm gone!

Or I'll Google you right back.

7 comments:

Sarah said...

i'm dying for an invite to google wave. a friend of mine had to wait a couple of weeks after requesting his before he got one. if you get your account verified, i will do anything for an invite. anything at all.

My name is Erin. said...

I once spent almost two hours on the phone with tech support talking with someone named "Brian" who lives in India. I asked him what his real name was and I tried calling him by his real name, but "Brian" was indeed easier. Not only for me to say, but for him to listen to me say. He kept snickering.

Anyways... he had me opening up my computer tower and doing this and that. He even stayed on the phone with me when my baby woke up from their nap and needed a diaper change and a bottle made. We just kept chatting and talking about our families and then we fixed my computer. It's been running fine since then.

At the end of our conversation he said, "Well Mrs. Johnson, this was the most enjoyable tech support call I've had. You were very good and maybe you should think about a job in computers." I laughed at the time and yet here I am 4 years later, going to school for Web Development. All thanks to "Brian".

Mara said...

I sent in a request for Google Wave weeks ago, but I haven't heard back. :(

Possum said...

Okay I felt right at home up to and especially including the word technophobe...google what?? wave?? I'm still trying to work out what an ipod is!!
But I AM waving... and smiling...just in case there's some webcam thingymajig filming me.

Mei said...

And I do not feel fine considering I have NO IDEA what google wave is. (I guess I can just google it.) But I am pretty sure I won't be committed to watching an 80 minute demo video. Kudos!

Cwybrow said...

OoOH, hubs just installed Google Wave... BUT he's refusing to invite me! something about it being a beta.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry, I consider a night out when I am out til 9 these days. I dont have the net at home so its kinda turning me into a sub-social person again, i used to party til 4am now can hardly keep my eyes open past 10 Haha. I do try to get out, but would rather stay in! Talking google, whats google crome like? worth getting?