Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Software,Hardware

I'm in kind of a snit, at the moment. Couple of reasons.

First, the damn grass keeps growing. I let it get too long, and now I have to mow it again. I like our mower, but it does not like long grass, and it seriously doesn't like wet, even damp, long grass. Stalls out at the drop of a hat. I've been trying to talk myself into a riding mower - ahem, specifically, a 'garden tractor' (or 'lawn tractor', apparently they're not the same thing, though the terms are used interchangeably), one which can a) mow and b) blow snow. Optionally, c) pull a cart, and d) shovel snow (that last is really reaching). Okay, those are doable. The price goes up -- boy, does it ever -- as you add options, and when you say things like 'clutchless', 'auto-reverse', 'mulching', and 'Zero Turning Radius' - it rapidly becomes stratospheric. But the deal killer is: power. I'd really, really rather one that's battery operated. Don't care if it only runs for an hour before needing a recharge (I imagine I would, once we were using it, but thats then, not now), I want one. But, do you think John Deere, etc, make one? Hah. There apparently are prototypes on the market.... and thats it. So, I have to use this mower, or get a new one of the same type. Don't want to do the first, really don't want to do the second.

Second, my wife offered to bake something for a bake sale at work, and I said oh, I can do that. Which, usually, no problem. But, in the middle of that, my daughter presented me with

Third, a need to download a song onto iTunes. She didn't know how. I thought that was the prevailing paradigm, that all kids of course knew how to do this, not to mention, that Apple software was so freepin' easy and obvious to use. Hah again. Half an hour later (it kept dropping the network connection, and then restarting from the top), I got the song. Um. How do I get this stupid thing from the PC down to the iPod? Finally, after looking at every damn control, I just tried a drag and drop, which worked. iTunes, you suck.

...and I still haven't baked the damn cookies.

2 comments:

Sweeti said...

maybe a case of over analyzing, hmmmm. I like Rhapsody a lot better anyway.
My kid is 30 and she sends her kids to me to download and burn music.

Cerulean Bill said...

You may be right. I'm a computer guy, so I think I need to understand it, not just push the button that seems to make sense. I also assume that anything with the Apple name must be elegantly designed, so if it doesn't work, I must be doing something dumb - pushing on the PULL handle. That didn't appear to be a good assumption.