A pain in the where??

Sometimes, advances in technology give me a pain in the neck, brain, a$$…you pick the body part!  Today was one of those days.  Perhaps you remember that while I was down in Rochester a couple of weeks ago seemingly almost on my death bed, my laptop also went up in flames.  I ordered a new laptop with Windows 8, and initially liked it.  Then I tried to get my pictures into Picasa, and ran into many frustrations.

         A successful breeding pair of Trumpeter Swans with three growing signets.  No ugly ducklings here.

Today was the day to set up a ‘hangout’ on Google+ with our favorite guru Rick.  He worked away with me for well over an hour before we came up with a solution I can live with.  Thank you so much Rick!  I was so relieved! 

Just as we were finishing up, I noticed that my computer switched to using the battery rather than electrical power.  Oh no, now what?  I checked, and power was good to everything else in the rig so it wasn’t like the power went out.

For Pete’s sake, I’ve only had this laptop a couple of weeks!  In my mind I had visions of having a lemon, and what would be involved in getting this new problem solved.  I shut everything down and sat outside with Emma for a while to calm down. 

As I sat outside, I decided to call my son, Daniel, to see if he knew what might be the solution.  I had even moved the computer to another outlet, but the laptop continued to only use the battery.  Grrr!  Perhaps you can guess how that conversation went.  He told me to take out the battery.  Okay, where might that be?  His response, “ MOTHER, just take the battery out!”  I’ve never done that before.  After flipping the computer over and pushing on a few buttons, something fell off.  I guess it’s the battery.    Then he told me to plug it in again and see if it worked.  It did.  It was a great surprise to me.

That’s when he said, “Oh yea, I forgot, I set your computer to occasionally switch to battery power so it will drain and then recharge to prolong it’s life.”  Uff-dah!  So my panic over no electrical power was apparently unwarranted.  Like I said, sometimes advances in technology just give me a pain.

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy