So. Every week I hold a Torah class at my house with three of my friends. We have been doing it for a few years now. We have done a lot of deep study together. It's hard work. [ As B. puts it.... 'My brain hurts.'] We are trying to wrap our minds around some very challenging concepts. But at this point we are pretty committed to having brain strain because the rewards are so great.
Well guess what?
It... who we do not name, is harshing our bliss right now. Shelter in place, quarantine, self isolation, social distancing.... whatever. None of those things sound like fun. I'm not gonna lie.
So I thought, I'm not going to let It win. We will just meet on Facetime and take care of that right away. Only thing is when I tried to get more than one other person in Facetime I discovered that I had a really old version of it on my iMac because I hadn't upgraded to the newest OS. This was pointed out to me by one of S's daughters who rather sternly told me I needed to take care of that oversight toot sweet. I said yes ma'am and got right on it. [Truth is truth. Might as well surrender to it.]
In my defense, the reason I was putting it off was because of a giant email issue the last upgrade caused that wasn't fixed by Apple for many months. I had issues. I had baggage. I had an attitude. Apple Corp. will do that to you. They be slick, they be shiny, but they be autocratic as a mean geek in a basement.
But if this is what was between me and holding our class... well, I had to get over myself and take the plunge.
So I got out my flash drive and saved all my 'precious stuff' as T. put it. This gave me a measure of security, or at least enough to push the Download button.
I won't bore you with the sad story of having to get up at 1:40 in the morning to finish the install and fretting about how things were going to pan out when the sun came up. Though at this point I wanted to caption this photo with: "Don't try this at home."
Turns out most things are okay. All my files are still here. My bookmarks intact... BUT.
The AppleMail is messed up. AGAIN.
It dropped all my emails I had in folders. The fonts in the inbox can no longer be changed, a group I had set up for bulk emailing this blog was missing, *[more on that later], and I generally had a particularly nasty case of Computer Disorientation.
Anyhoo... the good news is that I tested the new version of Facetime with C. this morning and it looks like it's going to work just fine. So my adrenaline levels are tapering off and the ringing in my ears has subsided.
Now that my brain is no longer overheated, the thought filtered through just how important this machine is to me. Especially right now when we depend on the virtualverse to keep us connected to our carbon based lifeforms.
It is a gift from God that we have this medium to help us cope with the situation while It, who we do not speak of is rampaging around trying to make us think it's an ACTUAL life form, when it's NOT. Viruses are not living things. They need hosts, or they just sit around on street corners waiting for rides and do nothing at all. I say we give 'em the cold shoulder and put them back into the Twilight Zone of creation where they belong. We have things to do, places to go, people to squeeze.
Because ... as my daughter in law T. said yesterday.... "I thought I was an introvert and now all I want to do is hug strangers."
And my friends.... there you have it.
*If you received an email notification for this blog and would prefer not to, let me know and I will take you off the bulk email list. No offense taken. I had to try to reconstruct it from memory. And everyone knows how shaky that thing is here in my golden years.