Technology Hell

I’ve been fighting my way through the fires of technology hell, and have almost given up hope that there may be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Let me start by saying I have a richly cultivated mistrust of machinery in general, technology in particular.

I blame it on being introduced to Dr Who and the Daleks at a young and impressionable age.  Since then I’ve tried to maintain a respectful demeanour with any non-human life forms, albeit in an uncomfortable kind of way.

In my childhood that discomfort was directed towards the family washing machine – which, during the spin cycles, revealed it was secretly possessed – and the large snow graters that cleared the roads in the winter.

Wyevale – June 2017

As an adult, however, most of my deferential behaviour is reserved for computers both big and small, and these insidious monsters have been the subject of my recent descent into technology hell.

For the past couple of years I’ve been working with a laptop that is the biggest piece of manmade junk ever created.  We started off on the wrong foot from the very first time I removed it from its shipping box, and our relationship never improved.

Let’s just say that I eventually reached the point where I neither unplugged or shut down my laptop in the increasingly desperate hope that it would continue to operate with a reasonable amount of efficiency.

The final straw came after a 6 hour marathon call with DELL technical support failed to resolve any of my issues following an automatic software update by Windows 10.

Although I had been a PC user since the early days of personal computing in the 1980s, I was defecting to Team Apple.

Me – the final straw just snapped

It’s been about 2 weeks now since I’ve armed myself with a shiny new MacBook and I feel like I’ve been dropped behind enemy lines without a map or reference guidebook.

Apple language is a secret code of seemingly random hand gestures that makes things happen whether you want them to or not.  For the uninitiated, it’s been unnerving to say the least.

However, over the past week, after spending countless hours bonding with Siri, she has helped me navigate the turbulent waters of backups, moving files, reformatting external drives, and endless other minor details like ‘where the hell are my files?!’

… but there is one thing that continues to elude me – recovering my Lightroom photo library with its catalog.

I’ve been through this particular version of hell once already with the demon PC, and it ended badly.  I eventually had to rebuild the catalog from scratch.  With a library that is now more than double its size from the last time, there is NO FREAKING WAY I’m going to manually rebuild that catalog again.

So until I find a solution to this problem, my access to photos is extremely restricted.

Random photo because that’s all I’m capable of right now.

Which now brings me to my most recent SNAFU.

After spending several weeks and countless hours working on a post for the Cherished Blogfest this weekend, I hit the “Publish” button last night with a sigh of contentment.  That contentment was short-lived because to my horror, WP published a blank post.  Nothing.  Nada.  Nichts.

Nor does it appear that I’m able to recover the original pre-published document.  I just don’t have the energy, or heart, to even consider trying to recreate that post.

Let there be no doubt.  Technology is not our friend and I think I’ve just uncovered its secret long-term mission is to slowly drive us all insane.

For me, that is just as fearsome as the Daleks battlecry of “Exterminate”.

{Note – The Cherished Blogfest has been extended to the end of next weekend.  Check it out, join in … it’s a great antidote to counteract all the negativity permeating the world … like this post}