Sunday, February 21, 2021

 Sunday, February 21, 2021

 

            I woke up at 3:30, anxious about the PowerPoint presentation. I felt a need to show it to people but wondered if it was ready. I felt I couldn’t fuss with it anymore. I got up at 4:30 and played FreeCell. Around 5, I went over the PP presentation again. That’s it. I made a few mistakes, and I’m sure I will make a few more when I show the slides to others. I contacted Damon, Judy, and Dorothy’s friend Mary, saying I was ready to show it to them. I also called my friend Carol in Ohio. Again, she didn’t answer the phone. This time when she got back to me, there had been an emergency. Her son-in-law had collapsed and was in the hospital. She was with her three school-aged grandchildren. 

            At 11 am, Tommy came over. He texted me at 10:55 to tell me he would be over in five minutes. Definitely not Hawaiian. He was haole, and I asked him his background. Sure enough, German and Scandinavian. My parents were German. On-time meant 5 to 10 minutes early. Hawaiian time runs on whenever.

            He went through both my computers. He used Mike’s email and password access to get in and set up another admin account. He was also able to get rid of OneDrive on both computers. It may have made sense on the tablet, a Microsoft machine, but not on my Apple. OneDrive basically kidnapped my Apple computer.   

            I also asked Tommy about the problem with disappearing graphics on my PowerPoint. He said they were linked rather than inserted, and when my computer couldn’t find the original image on my computer, it deleted it. Great! I had visions of the graphics disappearing right in the middle of a presentation. He said I had to insert images, not link them. No, I didn’t understand, and neither did Dorothy when we contacted her, asking her to email us the original images she created and sent to me. They are great little sketches. My friend Jean also did a drawing for one of the slides. It came on too large a background. I had already emailed her asking if she could make the changes at her end. Tommy knew what to do. Under his instruction, I could shrink the borders without diminishing the image. The kid is worth his weight in gold.

            I couldn’t believe I was looking at a 22-year-old. I don’t get to see many of them in my current t life. I was beginning to wonder if they made them anymore. The boy is an absolute Godsend. Besides working on my computers, he felt confident that he could help me attach a slide show to my phonemic awareness audio files and post them on YouTube. He sounded like it would be easy. He took my new disk player and two copies of the audio files, my only two copies, home with him. I have four of the recorded stories on iTunes but not the fifth.

            I downloaded an update a day onto the Blog site one year later. I check the statistics every day. Often, it’s zero or one viewer. Sometimes, it will be as high as three or four. And then, every once in a while, it will be 87, completely out of the blue. I have no idea what causes spikes like that or even if they are real or just a computer glitch. It’s fun to watch anyway.

            I had a four pm appointment with Damon and Cylin to show them my PowerPoint; so loving of them to support me in this way. When I told Damon what I was working on, he volunteered himself and Cylin as an audience. They were great, responsive, and appreciative. Damon volunteered to tweak the visual aspect of the presentation. He works for DreamWorks Animation; this is his profession. They also had some good questions and observations about the program. I keep clarifying the work for myself. There is a big difference between performing the work and explaining it to others clearly. The feedback of others helps me clarify my own thinking.