Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Today A Smart Phone Has Been Making Me Feel Really Stupid

I don't know why I find it slightly disturbing that if I don't do some blogging by some point in the afternoon I start getting emails asking me if I am okay.

I thought I had done some blogging today. But then when I was asked a couple times about my state of okay-ness I remembered it was on another blog I'd blogged, not this one.

Today started off cold and stayed cold. Despite the cold I had myself a pleasant hot tub hydrotherapy session this morning, with one quick dip in the cool pool to cool down from the too hot hot tub.

A visit to a doctor mid morning in Hurst threw me off my usually tightly scheduled schedule today. That had me doing a walk around my neighborhood today around noon, where I found myself walking into my neighborhood cell phone store where I got my first smart phone.

Figuring out a smart phone has had me feeling stupid for hours now. I don't remember the last time I felt stupid for hours. Usually the feeling stupid bouts only last a few minutes, not hours.

After I got the phone I walked to Miss Puerto Rico's to do a cat check and call the island to learn that my cat sitting duty has been extended to March 7.  From Miss PR's I called my mom and dad and sister in Arizona to give them my new phone number. All I got were answering machines.

Later I was driving to Walmart and tried to call the Tacoma Connie D. Somehow my mom answered. I have no idea why my smart phone did something this stupid. I suspect user error.

Mom told me they called me back using the number I'd left on their answering machine, but some woman they did not know answered. Apparently the last two digits were difficult to understand in the voice mail I left. From mom I learned the reason why my sister was not answering her home phone was because she is in Vegas celebrating her first husband's sister's 50th birthday.

When I got back from Walmart I decided to see if I could figure out how to take a picture and send it to someone. How difficult could that be? I take pictures all the time and send them all over the world.

So, I took the picture you see above, of the beautiful view from my patio outlook on the world.

Due to my smart phone stupidity I thought the USB cable that came with the phone somehow transferred photos to my computer. So, I plugged that cable into the phone and my computer. The computer recognized a new device, did some install thing, but nothing happened. Several minutes later I figured out that the USB cable was charging the phone's battery and had nothing to do with photos.

It took me awhile to find where to  find the photo I'd taken. At one point during this process I found myself watching short videos of myself making all sorts of disgruntled faces. Apparently I had turned on the video camera whilst fiddling with the camera section of the smart phone.

Eventually I found something to click on which brought up all sorts of options of where to send the photo I'd taken. One was emailing the photo. I thought, how hard can it be to email the photo to myself?

Well.

I have never been a text messenger. Typing an email address into the smart phone was painfully excruciating. None of my digits seem to have a good level of dexterity when it comes to hitting a  key on a touch screen. Just figuring out how to add the @ to an email address was very challenging to this particular smart phone challenged person.

Eventually I successfully entered my primary Google account info and somehow did some auto-sync function which also suddenly popped up what looked like an email with the above photo in the body of the email. After some more excruciating email address typing with multiple errors and re-dos, I  successfully sent the photo to myself.

I suppose eventually I will get used to using a smart phone.

Maybe....

No comments: