Embrace the Dinosaur - A Musing

Would you describe yourself as a modern person? Do you keep up to date with all the latest developments, breakthroughs in science, fashion, music etc? Or are you a Dinosaur, not necessarily reluctant to do the aforementioned things, they just tend to pass you by.

I made a misinformed choice when I was at school. Computers. They were very much in their infancy back then and I don't think many really understood how much they would change our world. At least I certainly didn't. When it came to choosing our options, I wasn't going to choose computer studies over classical studies, I was fully rooted in the past and not interested in this impending technological explosion. Computers were for geeks, so I thought, and probably wouldn't come to much. As an idea, that falls into the category of stupidity and puts me up there with the likes of the person(s) who turned down signing The Beatles, JK Rowling and Ed Sheeran. OK, so maybe that's bigging up my bad decision a little, but it was definitely not my finest.

Don't get me wrong, I can navigate my way round Facebook and Instagram almost as well as the next person and I can create a decent Word document, use Google on my phone to check the meaning of a word to dazzle and beguile people with my vocabulary, send a nicely worded email, with attachments, and get by just fine thank you very much. I just about understand the Cloud, although for me clouds will always be the fluff you watch drift across the sky while sunbathing, noticing that this one looks like a tree and that one looks like a swan in flight , but talk to me about storage facilities, gigabits and algorithms and you may as well talk Klingon for all the sense it makes. (incidentally, I am a huge Star Trek fan.....the original of course with Captain James T. Kirk, Spock, Scotty and Uhura and talking Klingon is, as I understand it actually a thing!)

Yes, I am a Dinosaur. A Techno Dinosaur, a T-Rex no less. So when I acquired my new laptop I took the Hubster with me as he does know a thing or two about what it all means and what I should be looking for. (Just to clarify....I did actually buy my laptop. I didn't 'acquire' it in some shady deal. It is all legit and although the keyboard does click beautifully when I type, that is not an indication of it not having been paid for as it used to be said for shoes that squeaked. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're obscenely young and you need to ask your parents!)

I'm very fortunate that I work with one of my Besties and we've known each other since about the age of 8 or 9, have shared a house, been on holidays, drunk too much and partied together so we are very well placed to tell each other exactly what we think and when I quiz her over an Exel spreadsheet query at work, she often imparts this nugget of information, 'you just can't be bothered'. Although that's obviously very rude, I am quite willing to admit that she's absolutely correct. But it's not that I can't be bothered because I'm lazy, I'm just not interested in what goes on behind the scenes and I'm very happy for the Hubster, Son-of-Mine, my Bestie or more recently The Daughter's partner to help me out with the more complicated aspects of IT. I feel this is very generous of me because it always seems to make them very happy and accomplished.

So my recently acquired laptop to me is a thing of beauty. It's small and compact, sounds amazing when I'm tapping away on it and it's all mine. I have it set up to recognise my face, it has a PIN number and a password so NOBODY is accessing this baby without my prior agreement. My sole purpose for making such a purchase is to write. To rediscover Ben and his sidekick Captain Mack but also to Blog - to scratch that writing itch - so the first thing I had to do was set up my Blog. Huge, scary decision for a Techno T-Rex like me!

The name was easy, that's been in my head for 4 years and after a little research, I decided on which platform I was going to grace to publish it. I decided to choose one of their existing templates as I hoped that would be the easiest way and it pretty much was. A quick tweak of a blog post I'd written 4 years ago, a tap on the 'publish' button and as you have (hopefully) read....I Am Here. All sounds rather good, especially the part about me setting all sorts of passwords to actually access the laptop, I could be mistaken for an IT genius or, at the very least, an ancient tomb builder who sets booby traps for grave robbers as we see in the Indiana Jones movies.

Only, one week later there's not one view of my Blog and I'm unhappy with the format. I'd been dreading the moment when I had to log on and again battle the technology that is so alien to me. It felt like a St George and the Dragon, David and Goliath, or Harry Potter and Voldemort situation - battling good over evil - who would prevail and emerge victorious? I really, really wanted this to be my baby, not just the content but the whole thing from set up through to the regular posts I hope to make. I really didn't want to ask anyone for help for a change, I wanted to be the asteroid that made this particular T-Rex extinct. So I approached it with a positive vibe, hit the 'Edit Site' button and set about trying to delete parts that I didn't want, change photos and re-clothe my baby in the style I wanted. I would overcome my nemesis. I would prevail.

However, T-Rex are known for having short arms that were pretty useless, and all the constant tap, tap, tapping on my new beautifully clicky keyboard was not having the desired effect. I was getting nowhere. I could feel that dull dread starting to rise in the pit of my stomach, the sort of feeling that becomes all consuming and makes me think irrationally and out of context. Thoughts of failure and project abandonment were lurking and I really didn't want them to take over and so I decided to use T-Rex mentality and started to snarl and growl at nothing in particular, throw in the odd mild expletive until someone took pity on, or got fed up with me and asked me what was wrong. Son-of-Mine was closest at the time and tentatively looked over my shoulder as I explained that I could not delete two boxes that were ruining the aesthetic of my blog. It was much more of a rant than that, but Son-of-Mine calmly took control of the keyboard and started clicking my beautifully clicky keyboard with assured fingers. I tried very hard to follow what he was doing but like most Millennials, he emerged into this world knowing what terabits and algorithms are (and most likely Google was his first word) and within a few minutes the two offending boxes were removed and he had moved on to advising me to attach my own domain name! What??? A few more taps at lightening speed and he'd brought up a menu offering me an 'upgrade'. It was a terrifying sight.

When you buy car insurance using one of the on-line comparison sites, you are presented with a list of companies willing to insure you in the vehicle of your choice and the price they are willing to do this for. Then there's the long menu of 'added extras' that do not come as standard but are obviously deemed to be important. These are simple to understand....do you want legal cover (no brainer....yes every time), do you want roadside recovery, home start assistance, no-claims bonus protection, this list goes on but it all makes sense. This menu was clearly meant to confuse the unsuspecting and appeared to be written in the aforementioned Klingon and my little T-Rex arms began to involuntarily wave around in panic. At this point, Son-of-Mine, his original job done, took one look at me, decided he'd gone one step too far with the upgrade suggestion and said 'I'll leave this tab open here for you to look at' and skilfully exited the room avoiding serious injury from the flailing arms.

To cut a very long story short, I decided to ignore the upgrade issue and closed the tab down but it got me thinking, Surely I'm not the only person who has this problem around IT? And am I actually being too hard on myself? Afterall, I did most of the setting up stuff myself, the research, adapting the template, adding pictures and writing, editing and publishing my first post. That's quite an achievement for me.

So I had to ask for a little help with the final aesthetic but I am lucky to have people around me who are happy to help and like the challenge of working a computer problem out.

So I got myself in a lather over 'domain name' but ultimately, I made an executive decision and ignored that little issue and carried on with no ill-effect so far.

So I'm a Techno Dinosaur, but does that mean I am in every aspect of my life? No.

Look to your strengths - that's what we all need to do a bit more of, and realise that everyone asks for help sometimes. And maybe we shouldn't refer to our weaknesses as weaknesses - maybe we should call them our points of disinterest. I'm not the slightest bit interested in computer domain names and algorithms and that's fine. I am interested in putting a story together, making it read right and I hope to bring smiles to a few people's faces in doing so. I need to reach those people via the power of the internet and I need a little help to do that but that doesn't make me a T-Rex.....maybe a Stegosaurus, content to plod slowly on, happy to leave the more complicated aspects to those who enjoy that sort of thing.

Maybe your music tastes are confined to the 70s, maybe you still hanker over the Ford Cortina or Escort Mark I, maybe you only ever buy retro clothing from your favourite charity shop....you could be described as a music, car or fashion dinosaur. But is that so bad? It makes us all interesting and leaves the current DJs, petrolheads and fashion icons to their joys.

So I've decided I'm going to embrace my Techno Dinosaur, especially now I have tamed the T-Rex into a Stegosaurus, and accept his points of disinterests, I'm going to look to others who have the passion for the things I don't for help and guidance, for this is surely what makes our beautiful world go round!

Maybe we should all embrace the dinosaur.