Technology Fail

Usually I would consider myself very technologically savvy. However, in the last week I have gone into a "technologically challenged" state. Fortunately, I have lots of time on my hand due to the fact that I'm done working for the time being and will have about a week to fix my technology headaches.

The first problem that occurred was probably the more important of the two, but I still am more mad about the second one. The first was a problem that resulted from my procrastination (see "Procrastination Pro" post) and the fact that I own a MacBook Pro. As I have explained in a previous post, I am a procrastinator to the core. The final paper that makes up 40% of my grade in the Composition 2 class I took this summer ,via Cowley County Community College online courses, was put off until the final 3 days before it was due. Keep in mind that the paper had to be at minimum 7 pages, so this was no small task. This part of the problem is not what really set me back in the end as I finished the day before it was due. However, I was going on vacation to Arizona the day that the instructor would be grading the papers. So if anything were to go wrong, like he was unable to download the document you sent him, I wouldn't have known until I got back. The thought of bringing my laptop on vacation for this very reason did cross my mind but I assured myself that there would be some sort of computer use at the resort we were staying at. Of course there were no computers, just free wifi. Free wifi only helps when you have a laptop to use it with. FAIL! After finding this out, I just had to cross my fingers and hope for the best. Hope that he received the papers and that he was able to download them without any problems. Not so much. After getting home from vacation, I made sure to check my e-mail first to see if he had e-mailed me about my paper, hoping to see my grade. As it happens, he was unable to download it in the format I sent the paper to him. This is the one downfall to having a MacBook, you have to remember that the formats you use Microsoft word will not always work with other, inferior operating systems ("Cough" Windows). I proceeded by immediately sending him the paper again in a more convenient format but was disappointed two days later after finding out he never received the e-mail. FAIL! Luck for me, my professor was very understanding about the situation and the heartaches of running an online class. He allowed me to re-email him my paper, almost two weeks late, with no penalty. So after all this frustrating and hair-pulling computer issues, I got my paper graded and my mind at ease. As Borat would say, "GREAT SUCCESS!".

The next problem I had was more of my stupidity then it was technological confusion. My Ipod, that I've had for about 3 years, has music on it from my previous computer which has since bit the dust. I've always wanted to get the songs off my Ipod and get them onto my new laptop so I would have them in case anything were to happen to my Ipod (i.e. losing it, breaking it, or accidentally losing all the songs on it). Turns out, I ended up doing the last of those examples in the process of trying to save my music. Kind of ironic right? Theres a program to do this, it's called JailBreak and it's suppose to be a simple process. Not for me, when I tried to run the program, it told me that I needed a newer version of the Ipod firmware. I updated it and tried again. To my surprise however, when I updated my Ipod firmware, Itunes took the liberty of erasing all of my music that I had previously had on my Ipod. FAIL! I knew I should have listened to the South Park episode that was a satire of the Itunes terms and agreements that nobody reads but just clicks agree to. If I had, I might have realized that it said in Bold letters, "By updating your firmware, all previous music, videos, and apps will be erased so make sure to back up your data before updating" Problem was that  I couldn't back up all my music because it wasn't all from the same computer. So after an ambitious and confident attempt to Jailbreak my Ipod, I lost almost all of my music. Fortunately in today's age, you can get music with the click of a button. Whether it be Itunes, mixtape websites, or P2P downloading applications like Frostwire, getting music has never been so simple and fast to do. Consequently, I have been rigorously downloading music to refill my Ipod before I go back to Manhattan, because the radio can't keep me entertained for more than 30 minutes. I am currently at about 350 songs, which is about a 1/3 of the songs I had previously but I have confidence I can get this done and have an even better collection of songs than before. As long as I don't delete them all off my computer (knocking on wood).

That is all I got for now, only 5 days until I move back to Manhattan for my second year at the Kansas State University. Stay tuned.