Stop the madness



Does technology ever frustrate you? It seems like we going backwards now when it comes to technology. I was over at the seafarer mission just hours ago, downloaded my email, to read later, then left to sleep before watch. Well, lo and behold, I turn on the computer and, poof, all my emails are gone. Just gone.  WTF!

Over the winter I was on a shitty boat and a leak from the deckhead dripped on my computer, frying the keyboard. I guess the computer got confused with so much whacked keyboard input, and corrupted the hard drive. So I had to buy a new computer. I went with a trusty brand, a Toshiba, and of course there was no choice about operating system, so Windows 8, it was.

What a piece of shit ! Both the hardware and software. I have never had to pay so much attention to ‘mickey mousing’ the operating system since Windows 95. This hardware is not user friendly and unnecessarily gimmicky. The keyboard looks cool but is hard to type on resulting in many missed letters.

The operating system is made for the benefit of Microsoft, trying to insert itself into every facet of your life, to try to scam a few more bucks out of you. I get it, they want more profits, they are jealous of how Apple’s been able to swindle so much more money from their users.  But it’s just not those basic tools that we need; it seems everything is designed to suck you into a void of unproductive, time consuming, wasteland.

Last year, I create a few websites using different content management systems (CMS); it’s been the trendy thing for some time. Most website now use a form of Wordpress, which is a CMS based system. My intentions were to find a system that would allow me to join the “crowd” and move my website, created in the early days of the internet as we know it, and modernize it.  

I am realizing that CMS is like my laptop, its looks really great for the first few minutes, then, you realize what a pain in the ass it is. It is constantly under spam attack, always needs tweaking, because the endless security updates are not compatible with the skin or “apps” you’ve installed. Its non stop !

I was thinking of moving my website to a CMS system, but I am sooooo happy I did not fall down that shithole. No, I like my little old simple HTML website, sure I’ve added a few things here and there, but the time I spend on it now, is actually time producing content.  …and time, like many people, is my most precious commodity.

I believe I have a pretty good record of adapting technology and making my day more productive. But these days it seems I am wasting so much time fixing, tweaking, updating, dodging bloatware and scams; and let’s not forget all these gadgets track and spy on you to boot.

I am fuming because I’ve lost my whole email program, luckily I just backed it up a few days ago, so I probably just lost a few emails. But still, technology should not be this painful. It seems now that technology has become an enslaver; I guess it always was, but at least five years ago the benefits outweighed the negatives, to me at least.

Can anyone stop the madness!

Pics from the interwebs

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