Another blog post… and it’s still January! With this year’s goals including blogging regularly again, and getting my website and online shops updated, I am getting a bit better doing some things… Other things have left me with my head about to explode and feeling super helpless. This post is about those things driving me up a wall right now. On with the venting… after a photo of our snow…
I will admit it…. I am no tech geek! In the past I have been able to deal with website updates and minor network glitches, but this time I am totally frustrated from trying to do some of the things I wanted to. I did manage to get my new computer set up with it’s dual monitors and got my PenTablet installed and working well. What I haven’t been able to do is to get the laptop and new desktop (or big computer) “talking” to each other. Windows 10 has made connecting through our home network nearly impossible.
I still have days where I feel like I’ve been slammed by a train, and on those days, the laptop gives me a way to accomplish something. Using my Photoshop and Inkscape programs on the desktop computer is much faster as far as saving files and working with large images goes. The laptop just doesn’t have the memory or processor speed needed to do the big stuff well. I still want to use it on my bad days, while “vegging” on the couch. And with that, it would make my life soooo much easier if I could pull the files I want to use from the big computer’s hard drive, and then save them back on that same drive in the right places (so I can keep track of where everything is). It is a real pain to have to try to remember which folders I put modified files into on the laptop, to be sure I move them manually to the big computer. I get confused enough having things in only one place. It seems like it should be such an easy thing to do… I can see the name of the big computer on the network screen on my laptop, but I just get an error that Windows can’t find it… GRrrr….
I blew a whole week or more trying different “fixes”. I usually can find answers to my problems using google and YouTube, but no matter how many of the “sure fix” instructions I followed, I still can’t do what I want to do. I did somehow manage to access the laptop files from the big computer, but that only helps me to manually update things. It seems if I can move files in one direction, I should be able to do it in the opposite direction… So far, No Luck! Time to get a couple sons to hopefully find time to work together to maybe do a fix remotely… They are both so busy with work, etc. that it might be a long wait. I have given up on being able to fix the problem myself… so on to other goals…
The next thing I wanted to do is to get this blog updated. Writing blog posts is just a start. This is proving as easy as the networking issue… My email address has changed a couple times since I was regularly posting here, so I tried to update to the new one… Should be easy right?? NOT! Go to settings page in my account, type in new address, and just wait a few minutes for a confirmation email…. yea, right… no email… spam folder checked, nothing… cancel the change request and re-do it… nope… nothing still… Back to Google…. Yes others have had the same issue and some have fixed the problem with a simple plugin or something, but so far I’m coming up blank there, too. It’s amazing how fried one can get from trying to do things that look like they should be so simple, but turn out to be total time drains. Did I say I’m no tech geek???
The next thing I need to do is to update my website… I think the front page says it was updated in 2013… I’ve wanted to fix some links in the recent past, but have not been able to access the “inner guts” of my site (AKA the code). That requires a fix or lesson from one of the geek sons, but we’re back to his available time to deal with my stuff. At least for now I guess I’m not supposed to get what I want to do done… There are gobs of other things I need to do, time to pick something else to work on. The deadline for the next Spoonflower challenge I want to enter (another limited palette one) is about a week away, so I should get back to Photoshop. I also need to organize and update a number of online shops, then start to seriously promote them so I can get some sales. Maybe stepping away from the tech geek stuff will help me feel less frustrated…..
This photo shows some of the flowers on my Orchid plant that is blooming by the kitchen sink. I am usually bad with houseplants, but this Orchid seems to thrive on mostly neglect. I just throw a bit of water on it every few days and it is happy. There are six blooms open so far and more buds getting close to popping. These flowers may be inspiration for a fabric design.
I’ve blabbed on enough for now… Hopefully, by my next post, I will have had better luck doing what I want to…
I am a former textile artist and new pattern designer with a degree in horticulture, wishing to share my love of nature, flowers and gardens with everyone through my photos, sunprinted fabrics, and now pattern designs. Chronic Lyme Disease has caused major changes to the direction my life. I have to limit the amount of time spent digging in my gardens, and quilting has become more difficult. I discovered pattern design as a way to get art back into my life. I now use my gardens and photos to inspire designs that can be used on fabrics and print on demand items.
