I’ll take hollow victories for $200, Alex

I sometimes entertain my insecurities by watching Jeopardy. Even when Alex Trebec isn’t speaking French (flawlessly), it sounds like he’s on another astral plane from the rest of us plebian idiots. When the contestants miss a question, he’ll say, “Oh no, it’s kinnikinnick.” Then he’ll repeat the answer with a look that says, “You are a disappointment to your mother.”

This is how I feel when some well meaning tech support person tells me to delete my cookies and try again. It should come as no surprise that I dragged my feet about adding a new feature to my website. I found a program called Buddy Press, which promised to turn my website into a communication super highway, when I would have been happy with a communication cul-de-sac. The one feature I wanted was bundled with “unlimited options,” except for one thing. This marvel of internet engineering came with a font about the size of the directions on an Advil bottle. Really, I just want to know if I should take one or two.

I read all the instructions I could find as I installed and activated plug-ins and widgets. I disabled the default perma-link, and brought up my new and improved theme. As I admired the new screen, with the picture that had a “search” box right over the top of my face, I realized that the printing was really tiny. I wrote the blogs so I already knew basically what they said, but the average 20 year old reader would have a headache before he could decipher the first sentence. The 50 year old reader would be looking all over for his smudged-up reading glasses, which are perched majestically on the top of his head.

I tried a different theme, dragging and dropping widgets onto my sidebar. This screen was the no-frills version, but I could change the color of my links from the nearly invisible aqua on the last screen. The writing was still tiny, only now it also looked boring.

Rather than pay a monthly fee for a moderately adequate theme, on a system built for somebody who posts more than two pictures a month, I deactivated, deleted, and re-widgeted my way back to where I started. People may scorn me for not having the missing feature, but at least there’s no search box blocking my face.

When I called back my IT tech support guy, I could picture him looking at the phone and thinking, “You are a disappointment to your mother.”

What is kinnikinnick? A tobacco hybrid smoked by the Algonquin Indians in the Ohio River valley. -Duh!

3 thoughts on “I’ll take hollow victories for $200, Alex

  1. Don’t beat yourself up over it. A computer is a tool and most people just want it to work, kind of like a car. You don’t know every nook and cranny of a car, you just know that you want it to turn on and go when you have somewhere to be. That’s why there are mechanics and auto body workers. That’s the same thing with I.T. technicians. There’s always someone out there who knows what needs to be done and can help you.

Comments are closed.