Computing really is a blood sport!

 

This morning I attempted to work out when it was that I first owned a ‘reasonable’ personal computer.  I had a sort of access to a machine when I started teaching in the 1970’s, but in those far off days, the computer was limited to one to a school – and in the school I was teaching in, it was in the jealous safekeeping of the Maths department, and ‘lesser breeds’ (i.e., non-mathematicians) access was somewhat limited.

     In Cardiff in the very early 80’s I was gifted a hand-held Sinclair machine, and by the mid 1980’s I had bought my own Sinclair QL.

 

     The QL remains the only computer that I have owned that has literally reduced me to tears as a long and graphically complex document that I was typing out to an external deadline was almost wholly lost when the keyboard froze.  In those distant computer times, when the digital world was yet young, a page of A4 could take over a minute to ‘save’, so you tended not to and usually you were lucky, and you could mark the completion of your computer typing by having a celebratory ‘save’.  Usually lucky, but not always.

     On that unforgettable occasion I had to retype everything that I had done and eventually went to bed in the late-early hours of the morning.  Slept for 30 minutes.  Got up to go to work.  Had a rough day.

     Given that I have had almost 40 years of computer experience (as user not programmer) and have lived through the trauma of the various versions of Windows, you would think that I have become digital savvy.  But no.

     I say this because I spent virtually the whole of the morning after I returned having completed my early swim, looking at a blank, or near blank, computer screen.

     The fault, I have to admit is mine.  I am sometimes sloppy in the way that I leave my computer at the end of the day.  Some things I close meticulously, but other documents and suchlike I tend to leave lurking on a variety of screens, as I tap the sleep button and depart.

     Usually, of course, this means little as my work from the previous day is there ready for me to edit or ignore with a tap of a finger and the writing of a password.  Except.

     Except when the computer tells me that it needs to update.  I suppose, like most people, I tap the ‘update later’ choice and usually plump for ‘Try tonight’ when I’m in bed for the machine to do what it needs to do. 

     And this is where my digital slovenliness comes back to byte me.

     For me, my computer is little more than a glorified typewriter.  Certainly, anyone listening to the way that I thump the electronic keys would be able to tell that I have not lost the techniques that I learned from my typewriter classes in Colchester Avenue in Cardiff on actual typewriters.   

 

So, most of my work on the computer is in Word, and I am usually working on more than one document at the time, and I like to have easy access, so I leave the documents on the active screens of the computer, and I don’t close them.

     Usually this doesn’t matter.  Except when I’ve clicked the ‘Try later tonight’ button for a system upgrade.  What happens then is that the Upload tries to upload, gets to a certain point, and then finds that there are open documents, and the process needs to know what I want to do with these documents, but I’m in bed, asleep.  So, the Upload stops, until I open the computer and am faced with questions and directions.

     I, of course, save the documents and then watch helplessly as Upload starts up, and what should have happened in the dark hours of inactivity, now happens when I have things to do in the daylight.

     This has happened more than once, and I am always being caught out.  It is because the clicking of the ‘Try later tonight’ is a case of ‘once clicked, soonest forgotten’ and by the time I come to close the system down, it has slipped my mind that the computer will reactivate itself hours and hours later.

     It seems to me that it should not be beyond the powers of the insanely powerful chips and programs that we play with today that, if you have, however quickly and thoughtlessly, programmed an Update, there should be a message when you try and turn the computer off or if you ask it to sleep, to remind you that all other programs should be closed if you don’t want to waste half a day in the daylight!

     I can remember on previous machines that I would sometimes get a “Are you sure you want to do that?” message on the screen which would, almost invariably make me pause and instinctively say, “No!  I don’t!  What am I doing?”  Computers do make it ridiculously easy to be intimidating.

 

     I remember on one of my early Apple computers, you would get an occasional “FATAL SYSTEM ERROR!” and a graphic of an old-fashioned spherical bomb with a fizzing fuse, which would panic me instantly!

     The only good thing about not doing digital things properly nowadays is that you waste time, whereas previously you could do severe programming damage to the future running of your machine.

     Perhaps this is the time that I learn to link my easy Update delay with tidy digital housekeeping.  Though I doubt it!  All computer users have to be masochistic to a degree, it is the price we pay for the wealth that sophisticated programs give.

     No pain, no gain.  That is the motto, and an article of belief in the digital world!

It's character building!

 

Man, and boy, I have worshipped at the shrine of The Gadget .

What luck is has been that I am someone who has seen the advent of the True Electronic Age with the invention of the transistor and its dissemination through society and useful (and otherwise) machines.

Sitting at my desk and without moving things out of the way, I can see a plethora of machines and gadgets.  Let me confine myself merely to the surface of the desk.

The so-called Old School gadgets: stapler, Sellotape dispenser, stapler remover, pens, pencils, markers, scissors, paperclips, rubbers, etc

Electronic: digital web radio; Mac Computer,  Bluetooth keyboard, ditto mouse, Bose mini Bluetooth speaker, studio microphone, digital led lamp with USB connections, telephone, new smartwatch for a present, electronic flashlight, cables, connectors, batteries, battery charger, power points and plugs galore, printer, removable hard drives and on and on.  And I’ve left some of the things out because such a mass of things becomes rather embarrassing when you list them!

The number of computers that I have owned is little short of astonishing in all their forms from handheld, through portable to desktop.  I have loved them all and have willing accepted the cruel price that dedication to the computer has demanded in terms of lost time in front of an unresponsive screen when programs simply didn’t work or went wrong at exactly the wrong time, in spite of the pleading that all of us have done to the harsh masters of plastic and glass when they decided not to cooperate.

I am not afraid to admit that I have wept tears of pure unalloyed frustration in front of dead computer screens, when I had put all of my digital eggs in one fickle electronic basket.  But I have kept on, keeping on.

And let’s be fair, modern computing is nothing like it was in the Dark Ages of thirty years ago.  Things generally go well.  Delays are minimal.  When you consider that with one of my early computers, the Sinclair QL, I had to wait up to a minute for the machine to save one A4 page of typing – and you could do nothing but wait while it saved – the microseconds that you wait for small documents to save nowadays is little sort of miraculous.  And programs (generally) work and there is a logic behind operations that you are (usually) more than capable of working out.  Life working with computers is (generally) good.

Which brings me to today.

And banks.

I am in the process of buying a new bike and, for reasons too complicated and irritating to go into, I had to pay for the bike by getting my bank to send the money in US dollars to Hong Kong.

The money was sent off.  And eventually the bike makers plaintively asked where it was.  The money had been sent god know where, but my bank did not see fit to let me know that the payment had been unsuccessful. 

When I went to the bank a second time to find out what had gone on, I was informed that the money had been returned and would I like to try again to send the money to the manufacturer.  As the manufacturer had, by this time, sent me a photograph of my bike packed up with my name on it waiting to be shipped, I said that would be a good idea.

So, the money was sent off and successfully reached its destination.

 

But.

 

I was charged 22 Euros for the original sending of the money.

I was then charged 22 Euros for the money to be returned.

I was then charged 22 Euros for the money to be resent.

66 Euros for payment of a printed invoice!

This is an on-going case!

 

However, I had another bill to pay, this time to a firm in Barcelona and I was determined that I would not be caught in the 22 Euro trap of getting a bank teller to do the transfer of funds – I would use the digital aspect of my bank to do it myself.

It took half the morning and a fair part of the afternoon to get things organized.  I could, without too much difficulty, get into my account online.  I even managed to input all the details necessary to pay the debt, it was just the final part of the transaction that let me down.

It was not enough to use all the security to get into the account to make things safe, there was also a mobile phone app that acted as a sort of digital signature.

I am not, for the sake of my sanity, going to itemize the number of times that I went back and fro, from computer to phone, copying and pasting various security numbers (“Only valid for 5 minutes!”) to get some sort of mystical authorization so the bloody money could be paid.

In the course of trying to get things done, I utilized the menu help, the automated digital assistant and anything else that I could click on.  Nothing worked and I found myself in a Circle of Authorization of the Damned, repeating various SMS routines and getting precisely nowhere.

I eventually, through a process of elimination, clicked on a link to a named individual who was apparently my Personal Banker.  I asked for help and nothing happened and so I gave up.

And then the phone rang and, to cut a long story short, after a confusing conversation I was given Another Way to try and it worked.

 

My point is that things were difficult when they should have been easy.  In spite of my dedication to things gadgetful, I was still left hanging.  And re-living the frustration of years ago.

If I think about it, years ago I would have written a cheque and put it in the post.  Job done.  When is the last time you wrote a cheque?  You are not given a cheque book in Spain.  If you need a cheque you have to get the bank manager to sign one and they cost a fortune!

So, although on my digital account I can see every payment and get details of when and how much has been taken from my account; I can see pretty graphs of my expenditure; I can sort and search, it is just all there to compensate me for the fact that some things were easy and are now complicated.

But, and this is the real lesson that one takes from the digital experiences that bloody one; the next time it will be easier and I will be able to take advantage of the glorious possibilities that digital banking offers.

Such self-delusion is the way that we keep sane.

Nothing is easy

“Computers make things easier!”

There was a time when that little mantra might have been a source of fond hope.  There was, who knows how long ago, a sort of tipping point where the manifest failures of new technology were offset by the promise that after a few tweaks everything would be button pushing easy!

I remember as a smallish child I was given a Maths Computer to try out by a friend of the family, no, bugger that designation, he was my uncle in all but name.  He was a maths lecturer and was able to get his hands onto all the newest technology and I was privileged to try it out.  And it was, indeed exciting to feel that one was in the vanguard of modern education – well, more playing around with a gadget, even if that gadget was to do with maths!

As this ‘computer’ was in the late 1950s you might wonder what it looked like.  It was basically a long metal box with a little Perspex window in the centre with a coin-shaped cut out on the bottom right edge, and with a large button to be pushed along a notched groove parallel with the right hand side.  To work the machine, it had to be pre-loaded with a series of cards on which there were maths questions.  You used the button to load up a card which then presented the viewer with a maths question that you read through the little Perspex window and there was a space underneath the window for you to write in your answer.  After the answer was written, you pushed the button up a notch; your answer was now behind the window and the official answer was revealed and you could put a tick or a cross in the little coin cut out and push the button on to get a new question and a new space for your answer!

How cute that now seems!  And there were design flaws as the mechanism rucked up the paper and the whole thing had to be disassembled to get it going again.  But the excitement of being a pioneer never left me and unfortunately dictated my technology buying infatuation for the future.

As soon as they became available for general consumption I bought calculators, digital watches, handheld computers, personal assistants, computers, radios, cameras – you name it and I bought it, as long as it had electronic thingies making it function.

And most of them failed or crashed or simply let you down.  One computer, my Sinclair QL, actually reduced me to tears after the keyboard froze and, in spite of my plaintive pleadings with it to work, it steadfastly did not.  I retired to my bedroom and sobbed into the pillow knowing that I would have to work all night to get the work done that I had to do by the morrow.  Those were the days when ‘saving’ a document could take a couple of minutes and the computer would be inoperative during this time.  I hadn’t saved and I had to redo.  I went to bed at 6.30 am and got up at 7.30 am for a full day in school!

And that was not the only time that faith in computers was misplaced.  How many program failures, software failures and messages like “FATAL SYSTEM ERROR!” with a digital bomb fizzing on the screen have seared themselves into my technological memory.  I can remember buying programs where the developers encouraged users to report failures so that the inevitable bugs could be ironed out.  Bug free was the impossible dream; bug ridden was the everyday reality.

But when things worked it was like magic!  And that remembered ecstasy was enough to get one through the difficult times when nothing appeared to be working, nothing would print, nothing would load up properly and the screen was blank.  But we were encouraged to think that all the machines (all the expensive machines when you compare them with what you get for your money now) that we used were John the Baptist Computers, all of them preparing the Way for The Computer that would truly be The One!  I’m still waiting!

Where, you might ask, does all this come from?  What has prompted this remembrance of technological pain past?  The simple answer is, buying a ticket on line.

For the first time in a long time I am not going to the opera alone.  I have a fellow enthusiast accompanying me!  As I am a season ticket holder I can get a small discount on extra tickets and I offered to purchase a ticket in the hope that the discount would be able to buy us a cup of coffee at the interval at least.  As it turns out the discount may stretch to a couple of small beers, if we are lucky.  But that is not the point; the point is that simply purchasing the thing was a bind.

Buying a ticket has to be thought of in terms of how easy using the computer is to purchase it compared with picking up the phone and doing it via a real person at the other end of the line.

It took me two attempts and to complete the operation (in spite of the fact that I am a registered season ticket holder) and necessitated re-setting my pass word for the boking site; using the details on my credit card; using details on my season ticket; taking a code from my mobile phone; taking a further code from my email account; filling in part of a form; deciding just which of the many reductions I was entitled to; other bits and pieces and, finally, printing out the ticket myself on my own machine – and for all this I was charged a €1.50 fee for -  what exactly?

Would it have been easier on the phone?  I think the answer is probably yes, it would have been easier, but my ticket might have been waiting for me in the theatre, rather than being in my hot little hands. 

And, as usual, I will know what to do the next time round.  This is the ‘Billy Bookcase Syndrome’ based on the famous bookcase of the same name in IKEA.

The Billy bookcase is one of the basic pieces of furniture that is sold in the millions.  Countless people have unpacked the bits, looked at the illustrated page of instructions and thought to themselves, “Well, this can’t be that difficult!”  Then they try and make it and find that, yes, the basic principles are fine and easy to understand, but then the ‘why didn’t they mention’ element creeps into the creation: the unstated assumptions of the obvious that neophytes need to know, nay, need to be told.  And as you make the first Billy bookcase you know that the second and succeeding ones are going to be so much easier.  In reality, of course, that attitude is one of the ‘saving lies’ by which we live our lives.  However, the general principle holds true: the second time is easier than the first.

The real tragedy of this shared experience is that the results of that experience are not shared and therefore do not appear to inform a reworking of the instructions to include the things that you thought you didn’t need to point out.

Remember, we live in a world where someone bought a mobile home and when the owner went on a drive they put the home into ‘automatic’ and then went to make a cup of tea, as they assumed that ‘automatic’ meant that the thing would drive itself.  After the inevitable crash, the owner of the van sued the manufacturer for not making it clear what ‘automatic’ would and wouldn’t do!  And won. 

If that story is any reflection on the standard of public understanding then it is difficult to imagine any set of rules for anything like building a pre-fabricated bookcase being smaller than War and Peace!

But in my specific case I say, bring on the next person who wants me to buy a ticket for the Opera, I’m prepared!  I think.


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