A lot has happened since you last read this column!

Have you gotten tired of Facebook or Classmates sending you email like this?

I dropped Facebook long ago because what generally happened was a half-sister posted yet another picture of her yard.  I ignore Classmates because the great news is that someone who I didn’t know posted something or other.

Well, you may or may not be interested in the “lot” that happened to me last week.  If not, go on to something else,  If you are curious, I hope to reward you with a few chuckles.

At least twice last week, I woke up with some stupendous ideas for this column, mostly about politics and billionaires.  I should have gotten up and written them down, but I preferred trying to go back to sleep.  I would remember these great ideas in the morning.  Of course, they faded with the rising sun.

Well, a few annoyances happened and they are hard to forget.

My printer started producing broken letters.  I twice tried the nozzle cleaning procedure, but the test papers came out even worse.  I even replaced the one ink cartridge that was low.

The warranty was about six weeks shy of running out.  Oh, well, for a few dollars, it’s hardly worth making a claim.

I looked up a few printers on Best Buy, and of course my model was no longer sold.  And of course, none of the current printers used the ink jet cartridges of my model.   I selected a model that was similar in functions, took my old printer to be recycled, and at the last minute took the receipt for the old printer.

When I got to Best Buy, I took in the tray that accepted envelopes.  I hoped I could use it in the new printer so that I didn’t have to change the paper in a tray.

I looked over the model I had selected and it looked like a good replacement.  As I really knew, the old tray wouldn’t fit.  I asked a clerk a few questions including how to recycle the old printer.  He said to bring it in a cart.

I went to check out, paid for my new printer and some ink cartridges.  I couldn’t find my Rewards card but the cashier looked it up. I took my purchases out to the car and brought in my old printer for recycling.  I gave the clerk at customer service the old printer and my story.  When I gave him the receipt for the old printer, he said that I had a replacement warranty!  I could have paid for the new printer with the old printer.

I still couldn’t find my Rewards card, and so he gave me an in-store card for future purchases.  I had no idea what I would be using it for in the near future, but as you will read, I soon found a use for some of the credit.

I took the printer home and started to set it up according to the instructions.  Things went smoothly except for setting up wi-fi on my modem and on my computers.

Then I tried printing some business cards.  The printer broke the card stock apart and jammed.  Check instructions.  Open back panel.  Pull out pieces of card stock, broken along the perforations and crumbled.  Also pull out pieces from the front.  Put back panel back, but it won’t fit.  Just which way does this thing go in?   I think it took me ten minutes to do it right.

Print a sheet of business cards and leave for a meeting, finally.  This was Thursday.

On Friday, we headed to the Twin Cities.  As I often do on trips of an hour or more, I use my iPhone and a low-power FM gadget to play podcasts through the car radio.  Except the gadget didn’t work!  The power light was on, but the radio frequency lights wouldn’t come on.  Nothing I tried would change the situation.

So, we spent two hours barely hearing “To the Best of Our Knowledge” (ttbook.org).  I had the iPhone between the seats and we could barely hear the speaker above the road noise.  At least we learned more about the operations of Coca Cola than we had known before.

When we got to the Twin Cities, we headed first to the Roseville Best Buy store.

We couldn’t find the same make of FM gadget, but we did find one that was considerably less expensive and automatically found the most open station.

I paid for it with my rewards card and the in-store credit card.  I still couldn’t find my rewards card, but I could use the email message on my phone about the rewards credit I received for the printer purchase.

We next stopped at a grocery store.  While my wife shopped, I installed the FM gadget.  It gave me 88.1 as the frequency and I could hear the podcast scratchily.  I reread and reread the instructions, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a clear signal.

Because the reception changed as we changed direction, we figured that we were getting interference from the humongous antennas in Shoreview.

Before we left the Twin Cities, we tried again in a Caribou parking lot.  We reread the directions and tried again.  We were able to listen to a podcast with a minimum of static.  We were still within sight of the Shoreview towers.

Oh, I also found my Best Buy Rewards card.  It was in my wallet all along.  It is silver-gray, not blue and yellow!

We have three lessons here that we constantly forget.  One, read the directions first and understand them.  Two, when looking for something in your wallet, make sure you see the face of every card.  Will I forget the next time?  Does the sun rise every morning?  Three, I found one of the lost middle-of-the-night notes.   It was in a folder I didn’t check.  Sorry, it’s more about billionaires.

How much corporate nonsense can I take in a day?

I received an email about a sale of Adobe Photoshop Elements 12.  Since my old Elements expired long ago, I decided to give it a go.  I clicked on the button in the message and a webpage opened with an ad for Elements 12.  It required me to sign in before continuing.

When I did so, it said that I needed to use a new password.  They would email me a temp password.  That came in a short time.  I used the temp password and created a new password.  That verification came in a short time.

Finally, I could order Elements 12 and I did.  I went to my cart and was ready to whip out my credit card.  Fortunately, I read the details of the order before I checked out.  It was for a Windows version!!!  No matter what I looked under, I could never get a Mac version.

I was going to give up, but somehow I clicked on Chat Now!  I explained my problem to 'Selena' and after a few minutes, she gave me a link to the Mac version of Elements 12.  Then I looked at the download times and decided to pass.  Besides, the time for this simple chat was almost ten minutes!  Total time trying to order must have been over 30 minutes!

I have been slowing moving my email from one provider to another.  Sometimes we can tell an organization our new email and it is changed in minutes.  Some organizations say it will be updated in 10 days.  Sometimes we tell an organization and our email is only updated for one department; email from other departments goes to the old email address.

And sometimes we get a doozy of a notice:

"Your primary e-mail address has been updated.  Please note that if you deleted your e-mail address, you are no longer eligible to suppress your account statements…"

"Suppress" our account statements?  What country was this task outsourced to?  Didn't they mean "access".  And why so wordy? 

I have a Monster iCarPlay FM transmitter that I use to play podcasts in the car.  Somehow the tuning goes out of whack and I have difficulty finding a unused frequency.  I know I have the instructions buried somewhere, but I could not find them in the car.

I went to the monster.com to look for the instructions, but all I found was a flyer (called instructions or directions).  It described what one could do but not how to do it.

With a few more searches, I found the PDF of exactly just the piece of paper I can't find.  But it was not at monster.com!  I put those directions on my iPhone and will use them next time I want to drive and listen to a podcast.

I think I dealt with  a couple of other websites or programs that did not operate as one would expect, but it has been such a hectic day, I can't remember what they were.  Oh, yeah!  Blogger "crashed" on me while I was posting a blog entry.  At least, it didn't lose any of my text.

iPhone and Google Maps save our marriage

As I drove towards our son's cabin my wife was reading the directions from an old Google Maps printout.  In Aitkin we are supposed to turn right onto County 1.  But there is no sign for County 1.

I pull over and pull out my iPhone and open Google Maps.  Lo and behold it shows exactly where we are.  I type in Cross Lake MN.  I don't remember whether I fat-thumbed a button or not, but a woman's voice says turn right on to County 1!

I am writing this early in the morning and I can't double check the directions because the sounds may wake somebody.  But we follow our guide's directions.  Well before each turn she tells us we should turn in so many feet.  At the turn she tells us to turn.

We made into Cross Lake without any further problem than the snow-packed roads.

There was more adventure but it is late.  Maybe I'll continue another time.

Read labels carefully

A couple of weeks ago I went along one of our paths in Brimson with a string trimmer.  When it ran out of gas, I went back to get the gas can.  I refilled the trimmer and it wouldn't start.  Gosh, a friend had just fixed it a year ago and had it running great.

Eventually I got it started but it would only keep running when I could grab the throttle quickly enough.  For many tries, I just wasn't soon enough.  Then I did grab the throttle quickly enough, but I couldn't hold the throttle and get the trimmer back on the harness.  Again and again, the fool pushed on.  I gave up trying to get it in the harness and just rested it on my hip.

I was really cutting grass now.  Then the trimmer ran slower and slower and started smoking.  I stopped it and headed back to the cabin.  Then I looked at the gas can I had taken.  It was regular gas and not gas-oil mix!!

The can for the mix does still have a clear 50 on it for 50-1 mix.  Read labels, dummy!

I emptied the tank and refilled it with the mix.  After many, many pulls, the trimmer ran as it should.

The old saying "If all else fails, read the directions" still holds.