Empty Lives of Distraction

I've just watched a Youtube video which has made me really think about what kind of world we've created for ourselves.  

It's a world of distraction where we're always looking down, always looking at our devices, always sharing so many things - and yet we're alone.  We're never with our friends and yet we are, and nobody's with us, but somebody is always yapping in our ear.  We have so many hundreds of friends and yet we claim to be lonely all the time and nobody truly cares about anyone - no... not really.

This YouTube presentation is narrated by a man in the UK who has written a ballad about how much technology has changed us, how it's changed how we treated people around us, how we bring up our children and grandchildren.  
He's noticed how we sit on trains and buses looking at our devices instead of striking up conversations with people; terrified that we might actually connect with another human being - for real! - and have a real, human to human connection.  This might be too much for us to deal with.
He pointed out that our parks are empty and so are our backyards, that our children are born into a world where they see their parents connected to a computer screen and simply accept it as a normal thing.  They don't learn that talking to each other from across the living room or dining room table was once a normal thing to do.  Nor do they learn that playing outside on swing sets or in the back yard until sunset was once a normal thing to do once as well.  

This video made me sad.  It caused me to cry because I realised I'm also caught up in the computer age - the very same one I vowed to never ever get to caught up in.  Yes, I'm an addict to the machine of the Internet and the computer.  However, I do get outside and do the things away from computers, away from technology.  I have a technology-free day or two a week; just to reconnect with the world we are so quicky losing touch with.  It's nice to just jump in the car and drive to a park, a lookout or into the mountains and take in the fresh air and know it's all still here, but sadly there's nobody around to enjoy any of it.

So, before we all become too lost in this world of phones, devices, iPads and computers, do watch this 4-minute YouTube video.  About halfway through, I do remember thinking to myself: 'My god, what have we done?' 

Look Up 

Until my next post, take care, stay safe and remember, I'm always here.

Aussie Occa Out the Window

I just read that Dick Smith's commercial for his Aussie products has been banned because of some politically incorrectness that the fun police pulled a face at.  
Now, I was born in this country and is as Australian as the next Aussie, but was that advert so bad?  We use a play on words in our language which goes back to our English/UK heritage; it's called Rhyming Slang. The people in the UK used it first and it came here and we started using it, and it's not so bad once you get used to it.  But nobody uses it much anymore; and when the young generation hears it, they mistake as something horrible and rude when it's not.
There's even an Australian Slang Dictionary which has been published for all of you who think we're mal-adjusted misfits who don't know our way out of a paper bag without a compass and torch.  And that dictionary is getting bigger and bigger each time it's published mainly because of how many people have their own sayings and how many families have their own little ways of talking and communicating.  My Dad even got a word in that dictionary and it's still there; along with a meaning.

Dick Smith isn't a bad person.  He's as Australian as meat pies, Holden cars and Kangaroos (which by the way are not friendly cuddly animals) and he's one of our original and first people here in Australia who opened and maintained his own businesses of Dick Smith Electronics - which is still going with gusto!  Along with Dick Smith, there's Laurie Laurence who opened his first swimming school out at Springwood in Logan City where my brother and I learned to swim (him better than me) in the early 1980's.  This was way, way before Laurie became the big and famous swimming coach everyone knows today and does all those adverts about learn the 5 and survive.  Yep, he was teaching children as young as 3 to swim when I was a kid... so what he's teaching now isn't new or controversial.
There are other great Aussies who have made it big and yet, when one of them decides to make an advert where he stars in it - for the first time in years - and uses our good old Aussie Occa language from times gone by - as a selling point, everyone is up in arms about how rude and horrible it sounds.  At least he didn't use the usual rude and horrible words getting around the schools and streets right now.  Dick Smith used the words that Australians like myself grew up with as a kid.  And as for those who didn't like the people in the advert saying 'I like Dick.'... excuse me, but that's his name, not something else they're describing (and yes, I'm telling you lot out there of the 'fun police' to get your minds out of the gutter).  

To say I'm disgusted about how this Australian Icon has been treated is dreadful.  It's time we looked at our language here in Australia and began teaching people around us exactly how we speak; instead of hiding our true selves acting so Americanised and proper.  We're Aussies.  Our country was once a prison camp by the English and seeing where we have come from, I'd say, we should be damned proud of our accomplishments and the people who are making us proud.  This includes our language too; by not losing it but teaching every generation around us about it.       

A Rotten Apple - An Update

Today, I was online and thought to recharge my iPod and see what apps were online for it - seeing I didn't have the ones I thought I had.  But instead of buying new ones, I looked up the old ones I wanted back.  And I found out something...

The ones I had lost - all 4 pages of them - were all free-bies and they were programmed for this year... and I had gotten them last year!  So, when Dad and I were insulted on Thursday morning by the idiot in the Apple Store, we were basically called liars.  The guy didn't know anything about my iPod (another one who doesn't know anything about Apple products or their apps).  

My main question for Apple is this:  how in the hell did I get all those apps for my iPod last Christmas when they were all coming out this May, September, October and November?  And all but one was free?  Accusing the customer of being a liar by patronising them isn't the way to keeping on the good side of anyone.  So, acting holier than thou and playing mind games with somebody you're supposed to be helping (especially seeing I did ask to see another person after not getting anywhere with this first idiot and he refused to get anyone else for me to talk to) really ticked me off.

Also, today, I looked around on Apple's official sites and found that they are really distancing themselves from the public. 
Three weeks ago, I could phone a number on their website and get a real person talking to me.  Now, I have to go through a series of buttons on their site and e-mail them my complaint which will be looked at within 24 - 48 hours by a tech guy who will then e-mail me back.  And if I want to make an appointment at one of their very few Apple Stores, I have to do the same thing and click around on their site and make the appointment myself... it's so impersonal and cold.  Apple has become a place where I can't talk to anyone because the company doesn't want to talk to the public.  And if you write in to them or on their Facebook page, you don't hear a reply or hear back... you are ignored.  Sure, you get the automated reply, but you don't get personal service - unlike other computer companies that are around today.
This is not good enough for us.  We are people - the public - and should be treated like people, not like numbers.  If our devices malfunction, the company - not the retailer - should be held accountable.  And if the device needs to be set up in a particular way, the company which built it should have a way of telling the customer by adding a little booklet with the device instead of blaming a 'dodgy company' for the problems that come up in the future for somebody (which is what was blamed on my dilemma on Thursday). 

So, if you have an Apple device and it's stuffing up on you, don't take crap from it - or Apple - do something about it and make yourself heard.   

A Rotten Apple

A quite a few of you know, I received an Apple iPod last year for Christmas.  At the time, I was over the moon about it!  It had everything I'd ever want in a little bit of metal and glass... and I thought Steve Jobs had left his company on a great high.  I couldn't praise it high enough.  It had 4 pages of very cool apps (some of which I couldn't use because it was for children; but there were games, trivia questions, languages I could learn and some other great things too that I wanted to have fun with once I had time to sit down and sift through those tiny apps). 

Less than a year on, my old computer bit the dust in a very unceremonious way and I was up for a new computer... a brand new one.  No worries, I thought it was time to upgrade.  So, I did.  And a few months later, I plugged in my iPod and synced it with my computer, which promptly wiped all my music, all the apps that were there (not including the factory settings) and screwed up the security and anything else I had put into the iPod - like the wi-fi from my brother's computer when I first set it up on Christmas Day 2011.

Boy, was I peeved!

So, I looked around on the net and found that there was help at hand at Carindale.  There was an Apple Store there so, I made an appointment and Mum and Dad took me there where I was given the run around by a kid who looked like he had just graduated from high school.  He barely looked at my iPod and told me to move the old iTunes software from the old hard drive to the new computer and it should recover everything... otherwise come back in and I'd be able to  get all the apps that were missing from my iPod next time.
Well, we thought it was a win some lose some situation.  Yeah, he didn't know how my iPod really worked, but he had an idea how to get all my music back.  So, I went home and did that.

Now, today, three weeks later, Dad and I have just gone back to the Carindale Apple Store to be given the run around yet again; in a different form.  I have been told by a totally different guy named Anthony, (at what they call 'The Genius Bar') that the 4 pages of apps couldn't possibly have been on the iPod, that somebody must have fiddled with my iPod before I got - as he smiled at me patronisingly.  I told him that the whole thing came in a proper box, wrapped in the proper tape with 'Apple' written on the top and 'Apple' written around the edge on the tape.  He still insisted that it was stuffed with by somebody before it was given to me.  Dad got really insulted - as Mum and him had bought it for me 2 days before Christmas and they didn't have a clue how to open the box, let alone turn on an iPod, so it couldn't have been them - and he told the guy that he has seen the apps and there were lots of them... and now there's not.  I told this guy in a red shirt (as they were having a sale) that the last guy told me to come back in and the tech guys would put the other apps back on for me - and Dad nodded saying that was true.  Anthony said that was impossible because it was illegal for them to do that if I hadn't bought them; unless they were bought as extras with the iPod.
I said I didn't know, but Dad said that regardless of whether they were bought as extras or not, my demands to get them back isn't beyond him or Apple; and I should be able to get them back if I have the receipt of where we got it from.  He told us to go back to the retailer and ask them for our money back.

Mum and Dad had bought my iPod from 'WOW Sight and Sound' at Underwood just before it went bust.  This guy didn't know who this company was - or so he said.  He insisted then that we had been ripped off by a dodgy company.  All this time, he sat there smiling and being quietly patient... and being very patronising to both my Dad and me.  Every time Dad and I tried to attack this issue from a different angle, he found another way to stonewall us, with that stupid smile on his face and staring at me to make me back down.  But he still wouldn't refund my money on the iPod and wouldn't get my Apps back on to the iPod (which I know tech guys can do as my violent ex-boyfriend showed me time and again, that he could hack into a computer in our unit when I lived with him; and I was sitting at the computer next to him).  Then, this idiot had the audacity to say to us to 'have a nice day'... 

I was hoping to get somewhere on this issue.   However, it looks like I'm not.  I may yet have to go to the media and find out where I can go from here as it seems that since Steve Jobs passed away, the company of Apple hasn't been moving forwards - as most companies do when their CEO moves on or passes away - but going backwards instead; with its new products incurring more problems than possible to work with.  As a person who's totally frustrated with my Apple iPod, it looks like I have to purchase the apps I have been using lately and put them onto the list there; seeing I'm getting nowhere with confronting company itself - whether via phone, in person or on Facebook.  But if you do want to buy an Apple product, I'd think twice... as they don't tell you everything about it.  The guy at the Apple Store today told me that if I had bought it there at Carindale, I would have been 'walked through' my set up so I wouldn't have any problems... well, this is something nobody tells you when you first get one of these stupid things.  Another is that there's a very useless online manual which doesn't make any sense no matter how much you read it.  So, choose carefully when you're looking at your next product to use for music... if I was you, don't buy an Apple.

Freaky Wednesday

I'm having a hell of a week.  Monday was busy, Tuesday was lazy and yesterday was freaky... jeez, you could make a movie out of my week!  Or write a book about it.  Anyway, yesterday wasn't at all a great day... and I didn't do what I was planning on doing that day; especially seeing I ended up at the doctors and having an ECG by around 2pm when I had planned on washing my hair and reading a good book by that time.

Okay, I was on the computer - kind of like now - reading an article on The Huffington Post.  And it was a great article about creativity from a mathematician's point of view.  I was really getting into it when I suddenly felt off balance!  I thought I had held my breath for a little too long, but I hadn't.  Then, I thought my blood pressure was probably down a little and I needed something to eat or drink - but I had just finished my milk drink not 10 minutes before.  But then, the worse thing happened I could imagine.  I felt the left half of my face go all tingly and numb... it's as though it suddenly went to sleep for no reason.  I grabbed the cordless phone and raced into the bathroom, looked into the mirror and remembered my First Aide training and smile nice and wide and watched my face carefully for anything bad.  I verbally said my ABC's (just to hear my self to make sure I wasn't slurring) and smiled again, and noticed that the left side of my smile wasn't quite making it, so I called my Dad... but he didn't answer.  I was about to call an ambulance when he called back.  I told him what happened and he said to make an emergency appointment at the doctors.  I did as I raced around and got ready to go out; and tried to keep myself together in the process.  I just couldn't lose it while I was on my own, I really couldn't.  Dad called and I was on my way to meet him out the front of the unit complex.  I only hoped I didn't run into anyone I knew... but I did.  One of my neighbours saw me and said I, I responded and hoped he didn't notice that I wasn't feeling great.
Well, once at the doctors, I was in within around 5 minutes and the doctor asked me whether I was a smoker, drinker or anything else that might contribute to this.  I told him I was on the pill and he asked how long I'd been on it and told me that he thinks that is what has caused this and told me to get off it immediately.  Luckily I was taking the sugar pills and I was on my cycle this week.  Anyway, he wrote up a lot of tests he wanted done:  blood tests, EGC, MRI and he wanted my corotide arteries in my neck looked at too.  He told me that what I had suffered was a TIA - a small blood clot that form between my heart and my brain and it blocked an artery in my brain causing a small stroke.  This can happen when women of my age (39) are on the pill.  There are warnings on the paperwork for this, but you never ever think you'd ever have this happen to you.  And when it does, it scares the crap out of you in a big way.
 I had the ECG yesterday afternoon at the surgery and my heart wasn't damaged in any way (thank God!) and now, it's a matter of seeing about the other tests... mainly the MRI to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Today, I fasted and had the blood test and this afternoon, I'm off to get my corotide arteries looked at.  However, the MRI will have to wait until next week; until my neurologist comes back from leave.  This is going to be the longest bloody weekend of my life!  Last night, I felt as thought I couldn't sleep because I had been so scared for the day and half my face was still numb for most of the day.  Today, it's all good now.  I only hope this doesn't happen to anyone else.  I'm writing this for people out there who have had this happen to them, so they know they are not alone.  I now have to take an asprin every morning with my breakfast to thin my blood no thanks to the pill.
And I was taking the pill to help reduce an ovarian cyst that kept on rupturing and causing massive pain in me.  Seeing the pill is not an option for me, I think I may have to have surgery to have the whole ovary removed.  I'll have to look into it.  I only hope what I've written here today has helped - and will help - others who have their doubts about taking the pill.  I didn't want it in high school or in my 20's ... and I didn't want it now because of the side affects it had.  I didn't know it was going to do this to me, but I knew of the weigh gain and acne that could have happened to me.  Who knew this could have turned life-threatening like it did?  Not me for sure!