When you are used to typing on a computer keyboard, writing a blogpost on an iPad is not easy… But necessity dictates!  I seem to have been attacked by my first-ever virus!  All of a sudden my screen went black and all of my icons (except recycle bin and McAfee  Internet Security icons) just disappeared.  And a whole slew of  really nasty threatening things titled File Recovery told me everything was critical and I must do such and such to get my files back.  Every minute the invader would spit out another  nasty notice:  Data error reading drive C:,  the device cannot find enough free resources  that it can use, critical error- hard drive controller failure, serious disc error writing,  drive C error –sector  not found,  device initialization failed critical error – drive sector not found – error.  Plus, a whole series of overlapping notices informing me that “A write command during the test has failed to complete.  This may be due to a media or read/write error. The system generates an exception error when using a reference  to an invalid custom  address.”  And there you have it?

I did a McAfee’s scan which took several hours, scanning over  200000 items.  In the end McAfee told me  “Full  scan complete.   All issues have been resolved.   McAfee has eliminated all threats on your PC. ”  Viruses, Trojans  and Cookies quarantined.   Artemis!507EEBE93FA2 found and fixed.   Scan summary:   Total 252889 Files 235837 Cookies 119 Processes 138 Registry items 9230 Boot records 4.   The virus was still sitting there in full view and McAfee was telling me it had scanned my computer and had fixed everything?

A friend who does Information Technology for a living advised getting McAfee’s Stinger but first I should go to  Start, find my programs, and put them on a thumb drive!  When I told my son, Dan, my troubles, he googled “File recovery virus”  and got instructions for removing it.  Halfway through the process it wanted $59 to continue.  We paid the money. Dan worked on my computer for hours.  Finally I came home and found my desktop looking normal  except for a different screensaver. Oh, happy day?  I clicked an icon. NOTHING!

According to Dan, he had worked in safe mode until everything was fine.  It turns out that when he rebooted all the icons came back but they didn’t work!  He told me I should work in safe mode for awhile.  Or maybe get rid of my dinosaur and get myself a new computer.  As Dan explained it,  the virus had added an H (for Hide) to all my programs, and then told my computer to hide all the programs with an H.  It seems they were there all the time and all he had to do was un-Hide them.

That’s where we are now.  Thank  God Katy gave me this iPad for my birthday.    But let me tell you, blogging on an iPad touch keyboard is for the birds.    At this moment I am working on my computer in SAFE MODE, fixing the errors I made on the iPad.  Neither method of blogging is at all satisfactory.  Isn’t it wonderful that the iPad will send my work to the Cloud and then I can access it on my computer?  Oh, marvelous technological world!

And, so, I am going to publish this post so everyone will understand why I am in limbo.  Provided I can do that in SAFE MODE.  Maybe I will get rid of my dinosaur (a Compaq PC I’ve had for about ten years) and go modern with a flat screen and all.  All this techy stuff is quite beyond my pay grade.  Please pray for me and mine.

A few days into iPad ownership, I began to feel confident enough to explore the unfamiliar icons it kept displaying, like Safari.   Safari looked like it might be a browser and it invited me to “write an address here.” How to write anything at all was a problem, with no keyboard, but I soon learned that if I touched the writing area, up popped a keyboard! Nice! I typed in “amazon.com” and pushed the lowest and farthest right key available, thinking it might be an “enter” key. Don’t remember what came up, but it sure wasn’t Amazon. What to do?

 
Just about this time my computer refused to go online and I was forced to try online procedures on my iPad. Much to my amazement I could access my blog and was quite pleased to see how nice it looked and how easily I could scroll through it. The little Word Press icons were all there and usable.  Typing on the clicky pad is rather slow and it seems to have an built-in  spell check that insisted that I wanted  to type “colicky,” not “clicky.”  As I become more familiar with it, I see that it anticipates my words and is sometimes quite right and I don’t have to finish typing that word.

Oh, there is so much to explore.  Since grandson Joel decided to travel in France, I have been looking up the places on the map.   Lo, and behold, I can get satellite photos and some of the sites have a little flap in the lower right corner and I can turn the page to see, and travel along, a street right in that city.  I like very much that the iPad is so portable and can sit in my lap.  I used it once at the doctor’s office where they had WiFi and I look forward to taking it other places.   I understand that with the growing popularity of tablets and pads people are demanding WiFi 30,000 feet up when they fly!  Now that I know how easy it is to go online (as long as there is WiFi) it is very handy for research.  It took me about ten minutes a few days ago to find out all I wanted to know about the “pink slime” controversey.   Believe it or not, there are two sides, as there are to most things.

I’ve also taken to using the calendar to keep track of birthdays, appointments, and such.  Of course, just like my computer, it knows what day it is before I do and displays the date in large enough figures so I can read it without glasses.

What makes me happiest of all is the FaceTime feature.  Just a few minutes ago Katy called me from Indiana and I got a little experience with how to use FaceTime and how to make the sound louder and keep my face in the picture and how not to cover up the buttons that make it work.  I took the iPad next door to visit daughter, Terry, and we had a very nice talk fest, discussing the upcoming wedding of granddaughter, Amy, this coming December, discussing (and showing) the dresses they planned to wear for the event and havng really enjoyable “girl talk.”   As any mother knows, it is always wonderful to see one’s children and even more wonderful to see them enjoy each other!  It was like a real “in person” visit!

I know I have not even begun to experience all my iPad can do (and probably never will) but, so far, I love my iPad.   And, thank you,  Katy.

It seems something has come over me; something has happened to my urge to go online and tell the world all about my thoughts and trials and triumphs.  To quote Shakespeare, “how weary, stale,  flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.”  I wouldn’t call it a depression.  I’m still perky and singing around the house and playing Scrabble and appreciative of all my blessings.  Lately, though, I’ve been staying up much too late at night to watch the conventions and posting about them on Facebook.  But the spinning is so crystal clear and disgusting and the prognosis not at all clear and it all seems like such a waste of effort and time and MONEY!

Just this very day my last Letter to the Editor appeared in our newspaper.   It was in response to a longish article which I won’t reprint but here is my reply:

Says ‘deliberate killings’ differ from natural deaths

 Published 4:53 p.m., Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Timothy Cardinal Dolan gave the benediction at the end of the Democratic National Convention.  Dear Lord, hear it!

Let us Pray.

Almighty God, father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, revealed to us so powerfully in your Son, Jesus Christ, we thank you for showering your blessings upon this our beloved nation. Bless all here present, and all across this great land, who work hard for the day when a greater portion of your justice, and a more ample measure of your care for the poor and suffering, may prevail in these United States. Help us to see that a society’s greatness is found above all in the respect it shows for the weakest and neediest among us.

We beseech you, almighty God to shed your grace on this noble experiment in ordered liberty, which began with the confident assertion of inalienable rights bestowed upon us by you: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Thus do we praise you for the gift of life. Grant us the courage to defend it, life, without which no other rights are secure. We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected. Strengthen our sick and our elders waiting to see your holy face at life’s end, that they may be accompanied by true compassion and cherished with the dignity due those who are infirm and fragile.

We praise and thank you for the gift of liberty. May this land of the free never lack those brave enough to defend our basic freedoms. Renew in all our people a profound respect for religious liberty: the first, most cherished freedom bequeathed upon us at our Founding. May our liberty be in harmony with truth; freedom ordered in goodness and justice. Help us live our freedom in faith, hope, and love. Make us ever-grateful for those who, for over two centuries, have given their lives in freedom’s defense; we commend their noble souls to your eternal care, as even now we beg the protection of your mighty arm upon our men and women in uniform.

We praise and thank you for granting us the life and the liberty by which we can pursue happiness. Show us anew that happiness is found only in respecting the laws of nature and of nature’s God. Empower us with your grace so that we might resist the temptation to replace the moral law with idols of our own making, or to remake those institutions you have given us for the nurturing of life and community. May we welcome those who yearn to breathe free and to pursue happiness in this land of freedom, adding their gifts to those whose families have lived here for centuries.

We praise and thank you for the American genius of government of the people, by the people and for the people. Oh God of wisdom, justice, and might, we ask your guidance for those who govern us: President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, Congress, the Supreme Court, and all those, including Governor Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan, who seek to serve the common good by seeking public office. Make them all worthy to serve you by serving our country. Help them remember that the only just government is the government that serves its citizens rather than itself. With your grace, may all Americans choose wisely as we consider the future course of public policy.

And finally Lord, we beseech your benediction on all of us who depart from here this evening, and on all those, in every land, who yearn to conduct their lives in freedom and justice. We beg you to remember, as we pledge to remember, those who are not free; those who suffer for freedom’s cause; those who are poor, out of work, needy, sick, or alone; those who are persecuted for their religious convictions, those still ravaged by war.

And most of all, God Almighty, we thank you for the great gift of our beloved country.

For we are indeed “one nation under God,” and “in God we trust.”

So dear God, bless America. You who live and reign forever and ever.

Amen!