Friday, February 26, 2010

Frustrations with Technology

At first when I started to think about my frustrations with technology I could not think of any specific instance, mainly because technology seems to fail me almost once a month!

However, I got a rude awakening this morning. I encountered a problem by attempting to create business cards with the Microsoft template, for the first time. Everything was going as planned, until I moved one of them and some how deleted everything off my clipboard, forcing me to create the whole template over again! Now, on my second try I thought I was going to be successful and converted the file to PDF to upload online through a file conversion website. However, to my surprise I get the converted file back with an extra page in the middle full of the old business card template that I thought I had deleted! So, I decided to try to delete this information, forgetting that it is now in a PDF, making me unable to edit my work. Therefore, back to the conversion website I went for a second time around! After the process completed and I upload the new file it has the same exact mistake, making me feel completely defeated. Again, I went through the files I wanted to convert and tried to change anything that was causing this problem, sent it through the conversion again a third time, to only feel completely defeated when the new file still had the same mistake! Finally, the fourth time was a charm, only after I deleted the whole template and started all over again!

Despite the frustration that technology gliches create, overall I would go through the set-backs to get to the final product. This is because at least in my case, it is normally the users fault, and not the machine! Also, nothing can top that great feeling when the technology runs smootly and you feel like it is practically working for you! Therefoe, even though we will all encounter problems all the time with technology this should not be a deterrent for our usage of it, because of the great rewards we get when we are successful.

2 comments:

  1. I had issues with the doc to pdf format as well. Also, I had a little bit of frustration creating the business cards, too. I definitely can feel your pain about the technology frustrations. I agree with you that it is most often the users fault, but sometimes you would think things might just be a little bit simpler!Though it is nice when you finally figure something out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with both of you! Persevierance is so important BUT wouldn't it be nice if it just worked like it was suppose3d to the first time!!!

    And, as much as it stinks, things don't always go our way. Coping skills are also something that you may notice are lacking in many students today.

    This also makes me think of what my teachers had to go through to make a 'ditto'! Writing 'neatly' on that carbon paper thing, having to start over if you made a single mistake, purple crap up the side of your hand, the smell of that bug can of fluid that made the 'ditto' copy ... YUCK! In fact my highschool German teacher now makes copies of some of her dittos .. no crap! lol .. we've come a long way baby!

    =) AKG

    ReplyDelete