More Fun With Computers

This week has been like living in another country where the pace of life slows way down and just getting basic services is a big hassle. That’s what happens when your bad-ass Apple goes into the shop, and you’re forced to work on an old model with dial-up speed. Things that used to take a few seconds can now take literally 12 minutes. Not only that, but it’s an uneasy wait often leading to an idiotic Error Message such as "Your cookie is disabled." What the hell does that mean? Why bring something sacred like cookies into this? And the worst? AOL. One of my clients insists on getting the work on AOL, and if I ever get my hands on the bastards who made that email website, it is not going to be pretty.

The Portland Freelancer blog has suffered, and for that I apologize. My writing relies on many trips to the edit page to smooth out the clunky stuff, but this week, I only stuck to changing clear mistakes. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to spend 7 minutes staring at a screen, as it slowly changes so you can fix a typo? It’s like waiting for a cable hook-up in some third-world hellhole.

By the way, Apple likes to brag that they are Microsoft Word friendly. I remember when I realized back in the 90s that my docuement could only be sent to another Apple, but they’ve fixed that now. Or so they say. One of the setbacks from this week is my radio client. When I used the old PC with the regular Word, they got all excited. Something about handling the text on their end gets a lot easier when it doesn’t come from Apple. So I got a message asking me to keep doing it this way from now on. Keep doing it the slow, ponderous way from now on. That’s not going to happen so I may have to score another computer just for them.

Okay, I’m done complaining. Perhaps the anger of the situation - there were some instances when I wanted to hit my monitor with a sledgehammer - propelled me into a different level of comedy writing.
(There is a connection between humor and anger, folks. Jokes can be verbal sledgehammers of their own.) And of course, there is the anxiety about the elections. But whatever the reason, I had 4 jokes on in the space of three Tonight Shows, which is good. Not only that, but Wednesday night featured three jokes, and that’s only happened a few times ever. So away we go. Take that, cruel cyber-land! Uh oh, my old computer is smirking at me. Time to get out the sledgehammer.