A CHALLENGE WITH MY PHONE

        I only recently got a little flip phone. I haven't mastered it's use yet. I fumble my way around the menu. Well, to be truthful I knew there was a menu but I was looking for something to click on. I couldn't find anything. I looked in the manual. That was no help.

      So I wouldn't have had to look in the manual except there was a nasty problem. Today in Canada they tested the national alert system. So at 1:55 our phone were supposed to ring. It sounds like a simple enough plan. However my flip phone didn't get the message.  It kept on ringing every 2 minutes. It didn't know how to shut up. So you want to find something quickly to shut off the annoying rings.

     I learned  lot about my flip phone this afternoon but I didn't get it to stop giving the alert. 

    So  I began looking for some help. Telus has a hot line for help. I contacted them with my problem. I waited. No answer. I discovered their answer hidden under another screen. We started a conversation and then I lost them.

    So I had emailed my daughter, my son and my daughter in law. My daughter in law answered first,. She told me exactly what  to do and that solved the problem immediately. I just had to power off and the phone would reboot and the ringing was gone.

     So this evening I am happy again.

HEARING AIDS

      Well, here I go, down the rabbit hole of hearing aids.

       I was surprised in the last post how quickly the topic turned to the performance of hearing aids. So in this post I will comment on the function of my hearing aids and I, and some of my readers may get some good tips.

      I've had problems wearing masks during covid. The hearing aids have popped out when I'm taking the mask off and on.

      Hearing aids are good for some things but they aren't a complete solution. Hearing aids make all sound louder including what you're trying to hear. In noisy places like restaurants hearing is very difficult. 

     Partners quite often have difficulty with the hearing aids. They are disappointed with the performance. The MM thinks I'm ignoring her and asks me to turn up the hearing aids. There are some frequencies where we don't hear well. Sometimes much of the partner's voice is at the frequency that you don't hear well .

    I use batteries. The batteries die in about 4 to 6 days. So you go with one aid working for a while before you get a chance to change them. 

   Changing some of the wax protection devices can be a challenge.

    So I would like to hear some advice to get more out of hearing aids. I hope readers will pick up tips as well as give tips.

MY HEAD HURTS!

    Did you ever get a problem where you worked for hours trying to set things up but couldn't find a solution.

    That's what happened to me today. I told you about my 150 species count. As usual , I get a good idea but I don't think it through to the end. I knew I wanted to set  up a list that would show all birds spotted, the spotter, location and date.

    Now some people would say that's easy and I'm sure it is. They would say set up one of those little boxy squary things and away you go. I've never learned how to use that handy dandy program.

    So I tried about 4 or 5 things and found out they wouldn't work. Put the list on my word processor and transfer to face book. It doesn't work. I wanted to pin the list to the face book page so that it was obvious and people could see the additions. The face book page is too narrow.

    Finally, during supper, I said I'll bet the blog would work. So I've worked another hour and yes, the blog does work.

    You won't see it on this blog but on Natural Wise.

    So now I feel much more relaxed and when I get all the reported birds typed in I will be happy.

    So go over  to Natural Wise and have a look at the list.

   Do you ever get a problem that is so difficult that your head hurts?

That Dang Camera

      Last fall I bought a new camera. I was so proud of my new possession   that I wrote a post about it.

      As I told you before I wanted some zoom, pixels and a good handle. I got those things and "much more."I don't know if I'll ever use the "much more." I set it up on Easy auto. This setting allows the camera to do most things for you automatically.

     Every once in a while I look at the menu and some of the options. As I'm meddling I sometimes accidentally change settings. 

     Apparently I changed something a while ago. It took me a while to notice the change  so I can't recall what I fiddled with. 

     So I recently noticed that the flash was not working. At first I wondered if there was something wrong with the flash. I went to look for the 216 page manual. I couldn't find it on my computer. I tried everything. Finally, there it was in plain sight all the time. So look up flash. There are two different sets of numbers so It took awhile to find flash. In my first session I discovered that I had probably turned the flash off but I couldn't find out how to turn the flash back on.

     So after a few days of worrying I finally got back to the challenge. It all depends on how you read the book. After half an hour today I finally got the flash turned back on. While puzzling the problem, I learned other things about the camera. So I'm going to have to go through the manual step by step to learn more so that I don't accidentally turn something off that's important.

     Well, it didn't spoil my summer!
   

Blogger Blues

    My most ardent followers have noticed that I've been missing. I've reminded some that I'm still in business.  When you follow so many blogs it's hard to notice when some one goes missing.

    I've been missing for a month. I've been posting but people weren't finding me. In other words my feeds were not being picked up.

    It was disappointing for me as I missed the contact. It was difficult to post when you didn't know what might happen. You keep hoping the feed will magically return.

    I was trying to find out why my feeds were not being picked up and what to do about it. I did lots of searching...mostly in the wrong places. I found many people had the same problem I had. I didn't find any solutions. I got mixed up and confused many times. I contacted my son. I contacted a good friend. Everything came up empty. My friend left me with one comment ringing in my ears, "You should be able to find a blogger site which will help you." Sure enough. Yesterday I stumbled on to a blogger forum site. I asked my question. This morning in my email was an answer. I then started to worry about the security of the site. The answer came from nitecruzr. I hadn't seen anything about nitecruzr on the forum. I then realized the answer to my question was in the email. I reset what I was told and bingo my feeds returned.

    So a big thanks to nitecruzr.

    A big thanks to all of my followers. I've missed you. 

    Now don't give yourself homework and try to comment on all the posts. I'm  just happy if you start to comment on the new posts.

    So did I have blogger blues or what!

My Humiliation Has Some Limits

      I have had a computer in my house since 1997. I did not have the Internet at my house until 2009.  For the Internet I went to my daughter's house. This arrangement worked well as I could go to her house when she was at work and search the Internet or do my email. 

The messy desk is for a later post with more humiliation.

     This arrangement worked fine for me except that I did not learn much about looking after a computer or learn what possibilities were available. Since it was her computer I left the management to her. 

     According to my daughter the computer crashed and since she was in a hurry she bought another computer right away. There was warranty on the old computer. The agreement she made for settlement was to take a reconditioned computer and since she didn't need it she gave it to Dad. I guess she thought that Dad had done enough dog sitting and renovation assistance that he deserved a computer.She left a few months later so I had to get the Internet at my house.

   Now I could really explore things since I had my own computer that was connected to the Internet. It took a while until I discovered that there were things I could listen to on the Internet but I found that the sound was way off. I could only get some garbled sound. I learned an awful lot about computers but I couldn't get my sound to work. I asked people and was about to replace the sound card. Now I had lots to do so I never got around to replacing the sound card. 

     I wonder if somebody has figured out what my problem is by now?

    The other day I posted about my ipod problems and how my neighbor told me to push the jack in until I heard a distinct click. A few days later it clicked in my head that maybe the same solution applied to my computer sound. You guessed . I pushed the jack in until there was a click and tried the sound and there it was! So after three years I have sound on my computer. 

    Now this is embarrassing and humiliating. Two of the same problems and the solutions were extremely low tech. Since I bragged about some of my technical skills I am humiliated to admit that I was stumped by such a simple problem.

     Please don't laugh too hard!

Tech Guy Go To.

    With all due apologies to the teens across the street, I have an excellent go to tech guy. When ever I'm really stuck I can check with my son on how to do something. Now in some of my previous posts I have described my limitations in the tech world. Thanks to my son the header on my blog was changed recently.


     My son's introduction to tech stuff started a long time ago. In the early eighties Apple decided to give schools computers. What we received were Apple II e's. Now these computers were very primitive. They were on a disk operating system so you had to have a disk with a little program and that's about it. You could write something , print it and store it on a disk.


      My son was about thirteen when we got the computers at school. There were many games and the games were easily copied so all the little beaners wanted in the computer room after school to play games. We had a sign in system for the kids to use a computer after school. It was great fun trying to get these kids to leave after an hour.

     A friend of my was teaching a small community computer class in the evenings. He could not make one session so asked if I would sub for him. He had his lesson very well planned out for me. I took my son along to help me. So on one side the computers did what I asked and the other side nothing happened . I gave the instructions again. My son watched and tried it himself. Finally my son discovered that the one side had put the disks in upside down. From that time on he became my respected adviser.


     My son has stayed with high tech throughout his working life. He was in the Communications Branch of Canadian Armed Forces (Reserve) and became familiar with electronics. He taught four different computer courses at a small college in the 90s & continued teaching to adults in various school districts throughout the Vancouver area for many years following. He has worked for high-tech companies that produced air traffic control systems, DC power supplies and wireless telemetry equipment. Now he is an Accounts Manager for a company that produces Ethernet security systems for control networks.

     So I have somebody with great knowledge and experience to help me with computer challenges.   By the way , he still loves computer games which are a million times better than in the eighties.