Never Trust Your Children

Continuing in the same vein that my first two blogs are let me tell you a story that might amuse you. I must admit that I didn't see the humor in this situation for several months, but I guess I do now.  I think that it illustrates perfectly the difference between the techies and the non techies - or those who were raised with computers and those of us who weren't.  I also think that it illustrates how differently these generations think.

I was toying with the idea of a web site of my own and decided to talk to my daughter about it.  She is a photographer( named one of the 20 top wedding photographers in the country last year - sorry, proud mother - her site is Artisan Events) and has had a web site forever.  Does lots of stuff with it and was also in the throws of opening a web based business. So we have this long and involved discussion about the pros and cons of me having my own site, as opposed to opening a (my) shop where there were other artisans selling their wares and I just had to follow the web sites' protocol. We talked about the cost of development and the cost of this being on a server as opposed to the costs of a site like Artfire, where I am, which is a monthly fee...or at a place like 1000 markets, where I was, which charged a % of any sales.  It was a good and involved conversation and when we were heading to the end I asked her, what to me was a perfectly logical question, which was..........."what do I look under in the yellow pages to find someone to write my program????"

I will make a bet that to most anyone over maybe, 55, that this question makes allot of sense.  I will also make a bet that anyone much younger than that is still laughing.  My child, flesh of my flesh, told the whole free world about this - and she didn't just do it verbally, she put it on Facebook so that the 1000's of her friends could have a good laugh too.  I found out about this the next day when my other daughter called me, laughing, of course, and the first words out of her mouth  were - " You didn't really ask Amanda where in the (snicker, snicker) yellow pages you could find someone to write a program for you, did you"

There's not much more to say -

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

Okay, according to my computer guru, the more of these that I can post, the more serious that google will take me.  Does that sound as stupid to all of you as it does to me?  I am actually taking an action, spending a little bit of the little bit of free time that I have to impress something that lives in machine?

As you know from my first post, I am a very non techy person.  In my first life, before retirement, I was, among other things, a dental consultant and fell into being a national expert on dental software implementation...I was on technology's cutting edge.  Unfortunately, that was in the 80's and it is now 2010 and I am so far from the edge that I can't even see it anymore.

After retirement I became a jewelry artisan and have a shop at Artfire. Before that I had a shop at 1000 Markets, and unfortuately they were sold and then I moved to Artfire.  This is where I am now spinning my wheels and trying to cope with the technology of the 2000's with a brain that was trained in the mid 1900's. Let me tell you, it ain't easy. I am dealing with things that I never heard of until last week...caches...SOE (or is it SEO's??) ...links ...and let us not forget, clickable links....they even want me to tweet, and I'm so tone deaf, I can't sing...I will have a kiosk to connect my facebook page to my shop - isn't a kiosk one of those freestanding, small shops in malls???  I just found out that "tabs" and "bookmarks" are the same thing - boy, you could have fooled me, without even trying...

I may be older - but I do love to learn.  So in the back of my mind is a desire to conquer this monster. But...I discovered a connection here that I bet that no one else has seen.  When they stopped printing hard copy documentation for software and hardware...I stopped learning about it.  I upgraded my accounting software in the early 90's and there was no documentation except on the computer...I could either do the computer or read the directions, it was impossible to do both at the same time, and in order to maintain my sanity, I decided that I needed to stop doing this....and I did.  I did not learn one new thing about these machines until I was forced to learn a little for 1000 Markets and now allot for Artfire. It is very hard to relearn the way that you learn...trust me on this.  I have printed out almost 2 inches of instruction from Artfire in less than a month.  I know that I can afford the monthly fee to be on the site, but I am concerned if I will be able to afford the reams of paper that I may need.

That's about it for now - but this may turn into a continuing saga...Have a good one all.