Nia teaches me a lot of things. So does my husband. He is my computer technician. As you probably know with computers when something isn’t working correctly it isn’t always an easy fix. When he suspects what the issue is he can plan for it and figure it out and fix it. But sometimes something comes up that is not familiar. The first thing he asks me is “What have you done?” The second thing he asks is if I “Googled it”. Two times within the last nine months something has been troubling my computer. The first thing was an “Active Desktop”. The second was a HUGE e-mail. They annoyed me enough I was desperate to find relief. This time I remembered that whenever I have something wrong with my computer my techno-geek asks me if I Googled the problem. So that is what I did.
The Active Desktop “thing” happened when I wanted to save a picture from an e-mail to my computer. It was a Nia e-mail and a Nia promotional picture so I wanted to save it so that I could help in promoting the Bay Area Nia event. When I went to save it my computer asked me if I wanted to make it an active desktop item. I believe I was in so much of a rush I didn’t read the whole question, I saw “desktop” and said yes. I was thinking it was just asking if I wanted to SAVE it to my desktop. When I said yes it caused this “thing” to continue to happen with my computer. Every time I clicked from icon to icon or from document to document or webpage to webpage, my screen would go blank for a second then it would flash back up and continue on with its task. I put up with that for months. Every time my monitor went blank, my stomach would sink because I thought my computer had died. But then it would flash back up. At one point I did “Google” how to fix it, but the directions did not match with what I was seeing in my files. But after feeling sick for months I finally decided that I couldn’t take it any longer and if I broke my computer worse than it was so be it. I looked at the directions again and just kept looking and poking into my system until I found what the instructions were telling me I would find. I fixed it.
Then a month or so ago, I tried to send an e-mail. I didn’t realize it was as big as it was until my e-mail program kept showing something in my outbox. Well, it wouldn’t send it, it wouldn’t delete it, it wouldn’t do anything with that one e-mail but the rest of my e-mail was working fine. So for about a month I just put up with it, thinking there was nothing to do. But . . . I did it a second time. (Eyes rolling). As I was scanning the document I thought, “Remember to check it before you send it.” But as always when I am on my computer I got distracted and by the time I finished typing the e-mail and pressed send I had forgotten to check the size. It was huge and it wouldn’t send. So it was stuck again. Now I had TWO stuck e-mails.
So again I turn to “Google” and I found something that explained what I had to do. Now . . . keep in mind that I am pretty much a chicken when it comes to messing with my computer because I know if I break it I will be without it. So I only do things that I am confident about. The solution to fixing the e-mail was to disconnect it from the internet. I was completely comfortable with doing that because when I had a corporate job I used to do that all the time in order to connect my work laptop. So . . . .I disconnected the internet from my computer. My e-mail program had no way to try to send the e-mail (that was too big to send) so it allowed me to delete it. Yay. No more e-mail that can’t be sent and a message coming up saying “Do you want to exit with an e-mail yet to be sent?”
So . . . my point is there are things in life you can “Google”, especially if it has to do with a computer problem. Did you know that? It took me years to learn that many people post answers to computer issues. Its awesome.
Terre Pruitt's Blog 