February 01st, 2021

Checker/Chess, Scattergories and Scrabble.  Those are the only games in our house.  And in all honesty, we don't play any of them very often. It's mostly my fault. I don't especially care for games.  Not card games or board games or relationship games. Just not a fan.  It's not that I'm a sore loser or a poor winner for that matter, it's that I just don't find them very interesting. 

I just do not understand the appeal of games in general.  Card games in particular do not interest me. Probably because I have Zero competitiveness. I just do not care who wins. I do not care if I lose.  And yes I have been told, so I already know that I'm a big old party pooper.  But I mean, if everyone else in the room wants to play, generally I will play and be pleasant about it. But you will never ever find me initiating a game.

So knowing that about me, you will not be at all surprised to learn that I am especially annoyed when my computer decides to play games with me.  And yes it does.  Oh sure, when things go wrong on my computer I almost always assume that it's my fault, another operator error.  But sometimes, as it turns out, it is not my fault at all. Which is shocking to me first of all. Then a relief. And then, hey...if it's not me then who?  And I hear my computers evil chuckle in the background.

What sort of games you ask?  Well for instance, you may recall that about a week ago suddenly there were no blogposts from me.  That was because I was so annoyed with my computer that I could not even look in it's face.  I had done what I do nearly every morning.  I sat down and composed a blog post.  A lot goes into these silly little posts by the way.  It's not just a matter of cut and pasting stuff other people wrote.  Nope. It's all me.  If I quote someone else, I tell you.  I have integrity! I have pride!  And I have a trickster computer.

That day, the post I wrote I had been thinking about for awhile. It took several days of thinking it through, then making little notes to myself over several more days, then coming up with the supporting photograph of course.  Once I was ready to actually begin writing, I had to spend some time finding the approach, selecting my words with care, doing my research and then going back and editing. All the things I normally do.  I will admit that occasionally I am in a big rush and I do not edit.  When that happens,  I always regret it.

When I was finally ready to commit my work to the blogosphere, I did what I always do. I gave it one last quick glance and then used my mouse to hit "post".  The instant I did that, clicked on the "post" button, the entire screen blinked and all of the words disappeared.  Every last comma, each carefully chosen phrase, all of my work was gone. Completely totally entirely poofed out of existence.  I nearly screamed with frustration.

But I didn't want to scare Tim so instead, I just growled a little with narrowed eyes, shut everything down and walked away.    What happened?  Not a clue.  Why would my computer do that?  Just to be a pain in my butt!  

Also recently my computer ate every single photograph that I took in January. All of them.  Alakazam......gone.  

I keep my photographs in files by month and year.  Every photo I took in January of 2021 was in a file marked Jan21.  And that particular file was suddenly not there. It no longer existed. Just gone.   Every other photo file was still there as it always was, just not Jan21.  I looked everywhere I could think of and when I ran out of ideas, I asked Tim to look.  He couldn't find them either. Sigh.  So annoying.  

Oh days later he found the pictures hiding deeply inside of a different file within a file within a file within...well you get the idea.  

Another great trick my computer likes to pull is to not show me my pictures. I mean they are there, but only by their identifying  number. I cannot actually see the photo.  You know how they usually look?  Teeny tiny little square miniature photos (like the paint chips at the hardware stores).   And then I can usually select,  drop and drag that tiny little square into whatever document I wish.  But if I cannot see it, I cannot select to to attach or drag or edit or anything else.

Oh and when does it play this game with me?  Only when I'm trying to attach or drag or edit.  If all I want to do is Look at the photos...it's not a problem.  So I end up pretending to just look and then write down the identifying number of the photo I want and selecting my photos that way.  I can still get the job done, it just takes a lot longer.

Every once in awhile there is a game my computer plays where I cannot do anything with my emails except read them.  I cannot delete them or respond to them or even compose a new one.  I can only read them.  So I end up doing all of my  emailing from my phone for awhile which is not ideal.  I am a terrible typist on my cellphone.  And then suddenly one day, it's all good again.  My computer is a happyhappy machine and everything works correctly again.

It's weird.  It's wild. And it is what it is.  I have almost no power and no control over the situation. Clearly my computer is in charge and it has a very strange sense of humour.

Frankly I am not amused.