Curbing My Enthusiasm

With apologies to Larry David I'm taking my son's advice and curbing my enthusiasm for new technologies.

If you've been following my attempts to master the photo organizing and sharing service of Google's Picasa you know it's been a challenge for me. I haven't given up yet, but I'm going to take it a little slower.

I got into it originally because my grandson in Israel began using it to send us pictures of our great-granddaughters. It worked much better than trying to send them in small doses vial email. So I signed up for the service and thought it was going to be easy.

I was wrong. I guess I'm not attuned to the fast pace of internet life. I need to take things one step at a time and I need to have things explained to me in plain English rather than tech-speak. I need to be able to find things in a simple way and I hate having to ask questions on line because they never offer the answers I'm looking for.

I don't think I'm totally ignorant. I'm using the internet to blog. I send and receive emails, although the amount of spam is growing drastically. I use a cell phone sparingly. I also use it to text my grand-children in New Jersey. Most times they respond. Sometimes I have to text twice to make sure they get it. I love them unconditionally.

I read about the new techno-gizmos introduced virtually daily and wonder why we need all that stuff. But there are early adapters out there who will grab at anything that reeks of “new.” I will not be one of them. I will monitor my techno-pulse and whenever it seems to be racing, I will lie down and take a nap.

Call me retro-man. Or whatever.

Moving on...

I took a break from Picasa today. Some issues still to be resolved but I need to think about something else for a while. Like Netflix charging separate fees for streaming movies and DVDs by mail.

No way, Jose. As soon as Netflix made it's announcement I canceled the streaming part of my subscription. I'm not going to pay an absurd fee for second-rate streaming selections. That service is terrible. I'm sticking with DVD-by-mail, especially since I'm now using a Blu-ray DVD player. We like that.

Wrapping up another vacation by-product we come to the “Where-did-I-put-that” syndrome (WDIPT). WDIPT afflicts anyone who travels long distances by car and packs a months worth of “stuff” for a two week vacation.

It's usually the small items that disappear first: eye glass cases, nail clippers, shoe horns (do people still use shoe horns?), keys, books, notes, anything that can fall into a crack. After a while, of course, you just do without. Probably didn't need it anyway.

Then there's the stuff that falls under the car seat. It takes a contortionist to recover those hard to reach items. Sometimes they sit there for weeks until you decide to dig it out. And you do it with a great sense of accomplishment.

End of vacation. Back to Picasa. Soon.

The Attack of The Unnamed People!

At last count there were 5,019 faces smiling at me out of a Picasa file labeled Unnamed People. But I do know them, all of them. The question is: where did they come from and how did Picasa lump them all into a new folder?

This is beyond weird. First of all these head shots had to come from group photos scattered throughout my PC. Which means many of them are duplicates. Then, how or why were they isolated from those photos and clustered into this huge file? And I also have the option of identifying the portraits. I doubt very much if I'm going to add names to them all. For what purpose? I hesitate to think what Picasa might do with them if I added their names.

I think I'll keep them anonymous to protect them.

I do have a lot of old photo files on my PC and Picasa has conveniently listed them all in one column which makes it simpler to delete the older ones. So I will, a few at a time. After all, it's taken years to accumulate these photos. I'm not going to junk them in a single session.

But it's getting to the point where I'm almost reluctant to open Picasa for fear of what I might find next.

By the way, at least one person was able to view my Maine 2011 album shared via Picasa. Still waiting to hear from two others.

Progress, slow but steady progress.

Blowback

That's a term for unintended consequences on a much larger scale than I'm dealing with but it seems appropriate to me.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time organizing vacation photos and writing captions for them and, I thought, making them available for viewing by children and grand-children via Picasa, Google's web-based photo album service. This morning came the bad news that no one was able to see the pictures. They were nowhere on the web.

Back to the keyboard I went and again tried to find the right formula for getting the pictures up there. I have my fingers crossed that this time I got it right. But, thanks to the time difference between New Jersey and Israel I won't know until the morning whether I've succeeded.

I'm beginning to think that maybe the modern world is a little too complicated for me. But I like some of the concepts technology offers and I'll keep trying to master at least some of them.

After all, I am Muddling Marv and that's what I do, muddle through as best I can.

Aftermath

I was tossed around in a perfect storm of technology today starting with an early morning Skype video call from one of our granddaughters in Israel. She used the ear buds of her iPod as a microphone and we heard her just fine. The video was clear and we had nice pictures of our great-grandson on her lap.

The only drawback was she couldn't hear us too well. My wife scurried to get her iPod so we could try the ear-bud-as-mic trick, too. I plugged it into the PC and it worked. I must get a real microphone some day.

So what's the aftermath of any vacation? Sorting out the pictures, of course. Transferring them from camera to PC is not a problem. But getting them organized for uploading to the web took a good part of my afternoon. Since the Israeli branch of the family started using Google's Picasa service, I thought I'd try it.

First, I had to to consolidate 51 images into a single folder and then transfer that folder to Picasa for uploading. I liked the captioning feature which I used for identification of locales and people as well as brief comments.

The time spent navigating the system will be time well spent if the children and grand-children enjoy visiting our Maine 2011 album.

It was another full day of muddling through Skype, mics, photo transfers and uploads. But definitely worth it.

Maine-ly Maine

This is mainly about Maine, which is where we were for the past 10 days, less two for travel. And the first time we saw the state name as part of a business title was when we left the interstate and entered the local roads. “Maine-ly Used Cars” greeted us.

At first I thought it was cute. We soon discovered it was endemic in the Pine Tree State. It was Maine-ly this and Maine-ly that and we even had lunch at Maine-ly Delights, a well-recommended local lobster joint in Bass Harbor. Of course on Mt. Desert Island all you have are local lobster joints.

By the way, did you know that Mt. Desert is pronounced de-zert' rather than dez'-ert. Something to do with the Frenchman who discovered it and named it.

Anyway, we had a wonderful time exploring Acadia National Park by land and sea and, of course, car. We were astounded by the number of people hiking and biking, paddling and waddling over, around and through the many trails of this magnificent park of lakes and shorelines and mountains and streams and camp grounds.

We drove to the summit of Cadillac Mountain, the highest peak on the eastern seacoast. If you get there for sunrise you’ll be the first to see the sun hit the continental U.S. We opted for Noon.

Some other highlights:

• The 7 a.m. Rooster. Somewhere near our rented house a neighbor sold fresh eggs. And her rooster woke us up every morning about 7. After a while, I actually listened for him each day.
• A horse-drawn carriage ride through part of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. estate. He donated most of his land to create the park.
• A boat ride out of Northeast Harbor to Little Cranberry Island and then into Somes Sound, said to be the only true Fjord in the lower 48. However, our Park Ranger guide insisted it was only a Fjard, a somewhat lesser breed of waterway. Still pretty impressive.
• Lunch on the lawn at the Jordan Pond House justly famous for its popovers.
• Our weather was pretty good compared to the heat wave that hit the NY Metro area while we were away. The hottest day we had was Friday, July 22, but we sat on the beach at Echo Lake and a warm breeze made it bearable. By the way don't let those manly Mainers tell you you don't need air conditioning in the summer. You do.

Before we left, I wrote about the benefits of traveling by car in the sense there were no restrictions on what you could take with you. I did not mention the potential hazards of traffic tie-ups. We had three, one going and two coming home. But in each instance my trusty PGS (Phyllis Guiding System) got us around them and saved countless hours of frustration.

Her system is simple. She sits with a map in her lap and keeps track of our progress all the way to and fro. When we see a snag she is ready with an alternate route.

My GPS never left the glove compartment.

Good to be home.