Back in the late 80s, I got my first computer, a Tandy, from Radio Shak, when I was in my early 50s. I fell in love with the fact that I no longer had to use liquid paper correctors when I made a typing mistake - I could simply backspace. I also fell in love with software. It was in the old DOS days and I am still an old DOS gal. But when Windows came along, and I no longer had the freedom of hours to "play" with new techniques and the like, I was frightened that my skills had faded.
These days, it takes a lot for me to dive into my PC's innards. Years ago, I had no problem yanking off the cover and swapping internal cards and drives.
Over the weekend, a dear friend and neighbor had a granddaughter who was appearing in a Canadian talent show for singers. I think she's 14. He wanted so much to see the live broadcast which his son had called to tell him about. Friday afternoon and part of Saturday, I really sweated this. See, last July, my PC crashed and a dear friend gifted me with a rebuilt, but perfectly usable, PC. I have never had my speakers work since I got this one.
SO, I searched for tips online on sound system troubleshooting. I went to every spot on my own PC where I could troubleshoot. Nothing was working. One tutorial kept mentioning proper cable hookups. I only have little stereo speakers. Finally, I picked the silly things up, and traced every skinny wire and eventually, I found my problem. Back in July, when I had connected everything, I must have done that on a dim, dreary day. What I did was plug a gray jack into a pale blue socket. Yep, that's all it was. Can you believe it?
The second success this weekend involves my Busy Person's Prayer Book. When I first wrote it, I wanted it to be available to as many people as possible while still enabling me to earn a small amount from it. When I formatted it for a print-on-demand company, I found I had to place a $9.98 selling price on it. I've never been happy with that. I also have been offering a $4 e-book download from that site. Sales have been very few.
Nowadays, though, with all the electronic book reading devices (Knook, Kindle, etc.), I realize I can reformat my book and place it out there for a simple $1 or $2, tops. Now, this involves my doubling or tripling the text size of everything in the current file, and then making a .pdf, at least to start. But to have it really user-friendly with the electronic devices, I need to do even more formatting. This doesn't scare me as much as I expected. Nope, in fact, it kind of excites me. I will finally be able to do what I first wanted to do with this book, and then I can go forward with the others I have been holding off on.
So, I am thrilled with finding the old gal still has it in her. I'm not exactly a perfect geek, but I am thrilled to find I can still be flexible and adventurous.
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