The trouble with technology
I am having a bad tech day. We rely so much on technology to take care of everyday tasks. Like the old-style secretary, technology keeps track of our contacts, sends meeting memos, searches for the best airfare rate and sends greeting cards to mom. So when we rely on technology to do our drudgery (ok, sending my mom a card is not drudgery), who do we yell at when things go wrong?
Today, we had a meeting of my local GIS user group. Several people complained that they never received a meeting reminder. We usually are on top of things thanks to the reminder settings on Yahoo! Groups Calendar, one two weeks before and another one day before the meeting for all entries. Yahoo’s default reminder is set for just 15 minutes before the meeting. Several Blackberries rang out as the meeting was about to start, confirming my fear that the posting had somehow returned to the default. At home, I checked the help file and found a Yahoo! Answers posting that pointed me toward an event settings feature that allows you to set a default reminder setting for all posts. (”Click on Reminders”), but when I clicked through to the Events List settings, the Reminders feature was gone. It occurred to me that this might pertain to Yahoo! Calendar and not the Calendar feature on Yahoo! Groups. Sure enough Yahoo! Calendar’s options appear to be more robust than Yahoo! Groups Calendar. Why?
I wanted to blog my frustrations, but since diaries are now also online instead of locked twice and stashed under a pillow, I had to log into WordPress….whose password reminder doesn’t work! I tried several login/password combinations and must have hit the right username, only be told to wait for an email that never came. Reams of help documents and forum postings later, I found a way to reset my password through my host’s CPanel. It always resets to a random password, which is probably why I forgot it. This time I took the time to figure out how to reset it to something I can remember.
I guess I should document these solutions, so I can remember them for the future, but alas, I don’t have a secretary.
Add comment September 19th, 2007