Mischief Monday – Crazy Contraption

Hey It’s Jet Here.

Look at this contraption…

This thingie is vital for the transcriptionist (MOM!) to convey my:

• Innermost thoughts,
• Musings,
• Comments to my blogpals,
• Rapier wit,
• Negotiations skills when required,
• Expert detecting process and conclusions,
• Comedic repartee,
• Well wishes,
• Condolences,
• Daily adventures,
• Family interactions,
• Pack experiences etc…

For the last week or two, our keyboard has:

• Frozen for seconds to minutes,
• Typed gobbledygook when Mom swears she pressed certain letters,
• Changed lower case to upper case and vice versa,
• Required Mom to pound on each letter (not helpful for repetitive strain),
• Required mom to switch programs, cut and paste or close down and reopen stuff to kickstart the thingie.

I watched Mom problem solve by:

• changing the batteries,
• cleaning the keyboard,
• shaking the keyboard (when she felt like throwing it!),
• and checking the tower all to no avail.

Since biscuit money is a bit scarce, she’s trying to make do.  She told me that commenting can take up to 5 minutes per post, her newsletter required about an extra hour (5-7 instead of 4-6), and let’s not begin to discuss her regular word processing or recipe inputting.

For all these reasons, I call MISCHIEF on the crazy contraption!

Another great except for the keyboard, day.

Thanks to Alfie’s Blog, Snoopy’s Dog Blog, My Brown Newfies and Luna, A Dog’s Life…for sponsoring the hop!  Click on any of the sponsors to join the hop.

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Mischief Monday – Email H-E Double Toothpicks!

Hey it’s Jet here.

Oh boy, this isn’t good.  I needed to communicate privately with Lady Litchfield of LLCD on Friday and … that email thingie well… maybe it was the HORRIBLE week of storms, rain, roof leaking again… I’m not sure… it didn’t work.  So, Mom did other thingies and set her mind to take care of one email issue which many of you shared with her.  Her business email was FULL.  She called Mr. GoDaddy and they helped her with a few issues.  Good so far, right… well… good news/bad news.

Mr. GoDaddy helped her with an ancient problem; he helped her connect her business email to her Outlook thingie.  Sounds great.  He also taught her how to delete 1,000 emails at a time.  Since her mailbox maxed out at 29,000, she felt deeply appreciative.  Mom diligently deleted 16,000 right away and thought she would call it a night.  Follow my math here.  How many remained?  Yup, 13,000!

She popped over to see if that naughty Outlook recovered and … what happened?  Yeah, those of you (most of the world besides poor Mom) know where I’m going…  Outlook began importing 13,000 emails!  Now those of you who read our blog know that our equipment is on the wise and mature side, so, this threw Outlook out of whack.  Mom triggered finger, wrist, forearm and elbow inflammation as she deleted 8,000 emails … ONE AT A TIME!  Yes, I asked why, too.  Well, Mr. Fred has the installation program. Something went goofy awhile back and without that disc, no repair.  Where Mom could at least group by sender previously and delete a little faster, her opening screen now displays in a way that’s unhelpful and she can only do things one by one.  UGH… Poor woman decided to relax by combing JJ and me around midnight.

I made sure she woke up bright and early to yet another yucky day. (We received 6 inches of rain on Saturday alone.) So, on top of all the tech stuff, I’ve had my, uh… you know… storm issues, causing Mom to spend an extra 30 minutes at least twice a day with me.  Little Miss Happy Happy even refused to go out yesterday morning.

So, Mom decided to use her time wisely and go back and delete the remaining 5,000 emails.  Well, Mr. Microsoft decided otherwise.  He repeatedly sent this error message and then the Outlook program shut and reopened ad nauseum.  Clever Mom clicked away in between the 30 seconds to a minute she had each time and managed to get rid of about 4,000.  Sounds not so bad, right?  Nope, now the whole Outlook thingie isn’t working, period.  Yes, she opened, closed, restarted, rebooted, hard shut down, begged, made deals with higher powers… and did other things.  We’re kind of afraid to deal with it.

Mom has a super busy week with classes, fasting and holiday and a possible trip to see my Nana and Poppy, who are both under the weather.  I promised to give Outlook Jetty kisses, we’ll see if that helps.

Another great, except for naughty Outlook, day.

Thanks to Alfie’s Blog, Snoopy’s Dog Blog, My Brown Newfies and Luna, A Dog’s Life…for sponsoring the hop!  Click on any of the sponsors to join the hop.

Mischief Monday – Bath Salts, Take Her Away!

Hey It’s Jet Here.

Mom’s got these thingies called chemical sensitivities.  In the dinosaur TV days (term coined by my human sister, Rachel), there was a commercial  with a stressed out woman.  The tag line was – Calgon, take me away!

Mom spent much of Saturday having more tech issues:

Mom had to deal with the sudden POOF of her Kitchen Counselor blog. Gone, off the radar, like it never existed! Don’t get her started – one week of emails between 5 individuals, two companies and 3 hours on the phone yesterday!

Remember the WP issue? Well, we officially apologize, as yesterday confirmed that the MISCHIEF is on GOOGLE CHROME.  We tried to add the Saturday Pet Blogger hop link as usual to our post.  What happened?

• No Jetty boy banner,
• No access to comments,
• No access to posts,
• No access to notifications to comment for quite a while,
• Funny gobbledy gook format when we tried all possible ways in,
• We tried to go through our BFF Savannah’s Paw Tracks, another WP blog (which was working fine, btw) which helped a smidge.

Mom:

• Shut down browser many times,
• Restarted computer many times,
• Shut down computer and restarted…
• Went to the laundry room to address another ridiculous tech issue.*

*Ridiculous tech issue: Remember the second Mr. ATT? (Not Mr. Steve (installed unneeded new tv, Mr. Mario fixed phone and alarm) Well he moved all the equipment to the laundry room about a month ago to “fix the problems.”  Now, almost EVERY time Mom turns off the laundry room light (where our food is btw), loud beeps begin, orange and green lights on the two machines go nuts and the phones, wireless, tivo, and some computer features STOP.  Mom must go to the outlet and press the red BATMAN button – actually restart).  Come on… give Mom a break!

At this point, Mom began acting like a crazy mad scientist.  Until…

She remembered the suggestions of many of our kind, patient, tranquil petbloggers… try other browsers!

• She tried IE, (so slow, not so great),
• Firefox (wouldn’t load some of the stuff),
• Safari (worked slowly, responded to a few comments, was NOT user friendly),
• banging her head on furniture.

On top of this, she contracted (vocab builder project VBP) a stomach virus from a co-worker who came to work Friday quite ill.  They work in close quarters, so, Mom knew the die was cast.

Mom had to run a few errands before dinner, returned for our usual routines, made call #3 to GoDaddy (1.5 hours) and then tried visiting our blog again through Chrome. Sure enough, everything was back to normal.

Another, glad I’m not in charge of tech, day!

*As she’s preparing this post, it happened AGAIN… OMD!

Thanks to Alfie’s Blog, Snoopy’s Dog Blog, My Brown Newfies and Luna, A Dog’s Life…for sponsoring the hop!  Click on any of the sponsors to join the hop.

Thankful Thursday – 7:30 Phone Call

Hey It’s Jet Here.

Amazing what a 7:30 a.m. phone call can do!

So, if you read Monday’s post, you will know we’ve had some “tech issues” at Casa Jet.  What you might not know is Mom had a 25 minute phone call Tuesday with Ms. ADT and they could not solve Mom’s alarm problem.  They wanted to set the alarm off at 7:42 a.m. to “test something else.”  Mom did not think the neighbors would appreciate that test, no siree, bob!  She said thank you, and would call back another day.

Mom finally stopped procrastinating, wishing the problem away, hoping for tech miracles, etc… and called Mr. AT&T this morning to discuss: home phone (working on and off in no logical fashion), wireless working the same way, causing mayhem on computer, cell phone all of a sudden working sporadically, and internet going koo-koo!

Mr. AT&T spent 1.5 hours on the phone with Mom.  Here’s what the outcome was:

• Unplug little Netgear wireless thingie from computer and hope things improve. CHECK.
• Set an appointment for another Mr. AT&T to visit Casa Jet in person for home phone. CHECK
• Transfer to Mr. AT&T mobility to discuss cell issue (Mom could not bear another long call.)
• Test internet, turn off computer, reboot, etc… push lots of buttons. CHECK.

Mr. Mario called first (very polite) and arrived on time.  He liked JJ and I right away, so, we followed him around to learn a new trade.  JJ in particular may have a career change in her near future.  (She particularly liked Mr. Mario’s IPad!)

After some investigating, (my Scooby Doo Academy detecting techniques teacher would be proud,) Mr. Mario found this teensy weensy thingie outside wasn’t crimped fully.  Well, he crimped and then: home line had dial tone right away!  And, Mr. Mario recommended that Mom call ADT while he was doing paperwork (really IPad paperless work!), to see if that fixed the alarm problem.  Mom did so and yippee, yippee; the trouble light went away after Mom pressed a bunch of buttons in the order prescribed!

Now if Hurricane Isaac leaves Casa Jet alone, we may stay in business!

Another great, tech support day!

Mischief Monday: Fine Motor Skills Required

Hey It’s Jet Here.

Last Wednesday night, Mom intended to get started on her Kitchen Counselor Servings Newsletter.  Instead, she spent 2 ½ hours on the phone with this person called Mr. AT&T.  We heard everything because she had Mr. AT&T on speakerphone.  This thingie called the internet connection wasn’t working.  She followed all of pleasant Mr. AT&T’s instructions.  He would ask Mom, “so, can you get online now?”  Mom would reply, “unfortunately, no.”

Mom:

• sat on the floor looking at the back of the thingie I try to melt into when it storms (CPU unit for you computer folks),
• played with lots of wiry thingies,
• clicked,
• rebooted,
• asked Mr. AT&T to check with his superiors,
• she had lots of that patience stuff.

Many times during their conversation, it seemed like Mr. AT&T spoke French while Mom spoke Portuguese!  (not really, you know what I mean!)

Anyway, somewhere during hour number two, Mr. AT&T asked Mom to check this modem thingie.  Mom realized he meant gateway and told him she would need to go into another room.

JJ and I dutifully followed Mom to lend support.  Mr. AT&T asked what color the lights were.  Mom said
green.  He asked her to unplug/plug which required Mom to figure out lots of wiry stuff again on the floor.  She did and nothing changed.  Then Mom had a technical epiphany.  Look at what she saw.

She told Mr. AT&T, reconnected the wire, and poof, everything improved.  She hung up with Mr. AT&T (after a bit more stuff that messed up other parts of her computer like this Outlook thingie).

Mom assumed her contemplative (vocabulary builder) face.  She looked at me, then JJ, then Puffy, then Fluffy.  This sizing up looking process took about 5 minutes.  The hour chimed 11:30 p.m. and Mom told JJ and I that we were off the hook.  She told chatterbox Fluffy that she knew he didn’t do it.  She glared at Puffy and said, “How did you do it this time? Only you have the fine motor skills to fuss with that wire, Sir Puffy.  Look what you caused.”  He stared Mom down indifferently, feeling quite proud of his technical skills.

Another great wiry day.

Thanks to Alfie’s Blog, Snoopy’s Dog Blog, My Brown Newfies and Luna, A Dog’s Life…for sponsoring the hop!  Click on any of the sponsors to join the hop.  (Unfortunately, WordPress does not accept the coding.)