Tag Help

Spring cleaning

Michael 2 Comments

I did some electronic spring cleaning tis morning. I fear this is a battle I’m doomed to lose. Of course by electronic spring cleaning I don’t mean deep cleaning my living space with robotic assistance. A robot vacuum might be fun to have around, but until they come up with one who can wash down the cabinets, keep the appliances sparkly, daily clean the bathroom, and tidy the bedroom – like Rosey on the Jetsons! – I’ll do the physical cleaning on my own for as long as I can. No, the spring cleaning was going through apps on the phone and tablets, reviewing bookmarks on the browsers, moving image and document files to cards or cloud storage or deleting them outright, and getting rid of those nasty cookies (which unfortunately eliminates the helpful ones also which is why I so rarely take that on).

2 + 2 5 (8)

It went relatively smoothly except for one tablet which makes me wonder if I take things too literally.  The tablet in question is an older Samsung that I’ve threatened to put out to pasture at least once a month for the last several years. But I’m used to its quirks, it fits me and my expectations, and I guess I like it enough to poo-poo my attempts to use the newer but still not completely set up tab sitting on my desk (which is now certainly itself hopelessly outdated).

The odd thing about this particular, older unit is the help that it wants to provide, particularly at clean-up time. It knows its storage limits and can clue me in on where I can reclaim valuable storage space. What it has a hard time with is knowing what’s stored where. Let me explain. As an older tablet it has limited storage, only 16 GB, so each little chunk of that is valuable. It wants to be a helpful little thing so this morning it told me that 970 MB was holding onto pictures and videos. No need to have them there but also no need to use up space on the cloud account with them when I have plenty of room and can move them to the SD card. Except when I tap the icon to show me the detail of what makes up those 970 MB of treasured photos, it gets confused and shows me all the files the tablet can access – internal, card, and cloud storage. It very graciously tells me how much each destination holds but not which files are at which destinations. So I go through file by file to find what goes where Sigh.

Another thing the poor old piece wants to help with is shedding itself of unused or rarely used apps. Every handheld device has a means of displaying all its resident applications by frequency of access. Except this one hasn’t learned the English definitions for always, sometimes, rarely, and never. I’m just certain that it would get so confused trying to complete a survey it would give up after the first few questions. Anyway, it listed all my apps by often used, sometimes used, and rarely used. Except that they aren’t. My crossword app that I use daily was in the sometimes used pile while Facebook that I haven’t accessed in the last several months was among those often used.

After hours more than I wanted to devote to the project I feel good that all my electronic, connected devices are as trim as can be and for a short while I should be able to enjoy efficient downloads, speedy uploads, and generally smooth, glitch free surfing on the Internet on my own little intranet.

I just really hope I didn’t delete my WordPress account.  Well, here goes nothing! (Hmm, let me know if you didn’t get this.) (Thanks!)

And I Helped

Michael 2 Comments

A little boy was playing in his yard when he tripped and cut his knee. His sister heard him crying and ran out to him where she started crying too. Their mother, hearing the commotion, goes out to check on them and finds both of them wailing but only he seems to be hurt.

She picks him up and tells him, “We’ll just go inside and clean you up and put a bandage on that and you’ll be good as new.” She turns to her daughter and asks, “And what happened to you?”

“Nothing Mom. I’m just helping him cry.”

Not to get preaching or anything but we could learn a lot from those two. Like the sister, we’re always willing to join in and help out when disaster strikes. We only need to look at 3 hurricanes and a wildfire in a little over a month to confirm that.

But just like those young siblings, unless we see blood we’re more likely to push, shove, pinch, and otherwise cause the pain of our brothers and sisters. We only need to look at any morning’s headlines to confirm that.

Nuclear testing is back in the news after a 40 year hiatus. Casting couches are indeed as stereotypical as we were led to believe 50 years ago. Trump haters are still hating Trump supporters and Trump supporters are still hating Trump haters. Boyfriends with PFAs are killing girlfriends. Parents are killing children, presumably after bandaging their cut knees. A new record for mass killings was set. Football players want to become social compasses. Football owners want to be richer. A young police officer was shot in an ambush in New Orleans. Almost nobody outside of New Orleans knew a young police officer was shot in an ambush in New Orleans.

On the environmental front, the Yellowstone super volcano may erupt soon. It could mean the end of the world.(Really, check out the article at Country Living.) But if it doesn’t destroy life as we know it, maybe we could take this opportunity to be nice to each other before a disaster happens.