Embarrassing Technology

So this was the week I embraced technology. Following a session of NLP and having visualised where I want to be in life and what I need to do to get there, I decided that tackling technology head on, was the way ahead.

I have a habit with technology. I get the first bit and then learning anything else becomes too time intensive and too complicated, so I don't bother. As a consequence, I have mastered a spreadsheet but have no idea how to manipulate the cells. This means that I have to shorten my words to fit and I have to add everything up myself.

So I set myself three challenges: to get some training, to stop telling myself I can't do it and the final challenge, to master the art of setting the central heating boiler.

So my new phone arrives. It takes me 30 minutes to work out where the sim card goes. I resort to watching a YouTube video. Three hours later I work out that it is not me that it the problem, but the new and very duff phone. By this time I have transferred the numbers on my old phone back and forward on to various Sim's and all are full.

Two hours of trying to get through to a call centre and I realise I am calling a mobile number. The new phone has suddenly become a whole heap more expensive. The holding message should simply have said:

"We are experiencing a large volume of calls right now. Since we are charging you 13p a minute we have figured that we can make a large sum of money by making you hold for excessive periods of time. We fully intend to bleed you dry"

So I finally get through. Of course it is not their fault but the manufacturers and so I need to be transferred. They want to freeze a huge sum of money on a credit card in order to send a replacement by guaranteed delivery for Friday. It is now Saturday. No phone.

Having had the same mobile number for 16 years, I have now changed it three times in as many weeks. If divorce would be a civil affair then you might get to keep your number. Any one who fears there may be trouble afoot, take my advice - transfer your mobile to your name.

On the upside, it means that you can not bother to give your new mobile out to all those people that you probably should not have given it out to in the first place.

I digress. So I spend three days swapping Sim cards around because I am no longer certain who has what number. Then I realise that all of my contacts in the last two years were transferred to last weeks Sim. The one that I can no longer find. The one that I put in a safe place.

So my attention moves to the central heating. I try and programme it and notice the pressure is very high. I let some water out of a radiator and end up with an internal fountain. I call the gas board. Unsurprisingly, they have not got the parts and now I have no hot water. They return 2 days later and replace a part. 24 hours later I discover that the new part leaks and I have three shelves full of soaking wet clothes. The gas board return and they do not have the parts. I have no hot water again. It is all feeling a little like groundhog day.

I refuse to be beaten. I have signed up for one to one tuition. I refuse to be a one cell spreadsheet kind girl. I have been bombarded with computer systems that I need to know inside out and all I can do is stare at them blankly. When people ask me a if I need high resolution I start sweating. The last time I wanted a photograph, I went to the counter at Boots.

I shall master the phone, master the programmes, master it all.

I am steering clear of the central heating. It is going to be a very hot summer