Techno Friday - the good and the bad

The good news is that I have a brand-spanking new cell phone. The bad news is that the sim card from my old cell phone is not compatible with the new phone. It was necessary to spend about about forty-five minutes on the train yesterday reprogramming the new phone, and then, of course, another half hour listening to ring tones, trying to figure out which tone was best suited to my personality. Very complicated work, that required a lot of well deserved concentration. Why a new phone you ask? Well, my son's phone has lost it's ability to relay messages and for some god-forsaken reason, our phone plans are intertwined making it necessary for me to relinquish my old phone so that his could be changed over too. I let my husband deal with the entire thing, and refused to listen closely to all the complicated details...he is king of all cell phone knowledge, so I left it in his entirely capable hands. The reason my son's phone doesn't work anymore is because, as he claims, it got washed last month in the washing machine. My son blamed the whole thing on me, which I entirely disagree with, of course. I am not entirely convinced it ever really was in the washer, but if it was, had he not left the phone in his pocket, the whole alleged phone washing incident could have been avoided in the first place. I knew from the get-go something like that would happen, and last fall when he asked for his very own cell phone, I just kind of chuckled, and said "Yeah, right, like that's gonna ever happen!" But, then he started playing on the water polo team and after about a week's worth of practices I saw the light and realized that my life would be so much easier if I had a means of communicating with him about where and when to pick him up. Now that he is back swimming again on the highschool swim team, I realized, "Wow, life would be so much easier if that phone worked again!" So, here we are, the two of us playing with our new techno toys, calling each other to test out our ring tones and sending each other lame text messages...just to make sure our phones are communicating again, of course.

The good news is that I recently upgraded my headphones. The bad news is that I think I have abnormally small ears. I decided to go with a pair of miniaturized "buds", that are supposed to fit snugly into your ear. You know, the trendy, new, teeny-tiny ear technology that replaces the big ol' headphones that wrap around your head and are reminiscent of the head-gear you wore when you had braces on your teeth. However, as cool as they may be, the stupid, little "ear buds" don't stay put in MY ears. I even bought a pair that have a little hooky-thing that wraps around your ear. But, it doesn't even matter. My ears are small, small I tell you! I spent the better part of my work out trying to cram the teeny-tiny speakers into my ear canals, and every couple of minutes they would slide right back out again. Ugh! I just don't get what is up with the shape of my ears! Very frustrating. I guess it is back to my old, behind the times, headphones again.

The good news is that I finally opened a four year old file that had been corrupted. The bad news is that I spent an inordinant amount of time doing so, and pretty much ended up wasting a good two hours of my day. But, that is me...never give up in the face of a good challenge. In the infamous words of Captain Taggart..."Never give up! Never surrender" (okay who knows what movie that is from? If you know you get a gold star!) I tried a thousand things to prod the file open, I resorted to disk utilities, tried importing it, and changing it to a .jpg, a .tif, a .png and a .pdf. I used every trick up my sleeve to no avail. And then, I got lucky! I renamed it with a Freehand9 tag and Viola it opened! It worked like magic...and just when I was about to give up in dispair and cry into my pillow and cancel the rest of my day! I could just do a little dance on top of my computer at the moment! Maybe I will!