Dell on Getting It

Blogging is actually quite enjoyable this time around. Last year I tried to blog on farming. After a month my grand-daughter, Shelley, informed me that my bounce rate was ridiculously high.


"Either there are too many similar blogs, Grampa, or you're not able to find your niche followers. A high bounce rate is basically your potential follower saying, "I came, I saw, I fu**ed off!""

I knew she was trying to tell me nicely that my blog wasn't very interesting.

Taking a five month breather, I returned to blogging to find a whole new set of tools available. I must have learned more than I realized last year because I had retained enough basic skills to adapt to the changes. I was definitely getting it.

Now, I want to take a pause here and share a little wisdom I've picked up along life's way: if a person stops to worry about getting it, chances are he isn't going to have the same experience as the person who is willing to jump in, both feet, and have a little fun. Computers and the internet are not rocket science: my only advantage, in the beginning, was I knew how to use the keyboard from having typed years ago. Ten year olds teach themselves this stuff and do an easy 20 words a minute.

Even the original keyboard I used has changed. Shelley brought me one of those wireless ergonomic Microsoft keyboards:  takes some getting used to, but I find my hands don't tire as quickly as they did with the older style. Once again, I was getting it.
You should have seen me learning to use the little ball type mouse on the lap-top when Shelley took my hard drive away for an upgrade. She said it would be no problem to hook up a mouse for the lap-top, but I thought if this was something that might be around a bit, I had best try to get the hang of it. [you have my word I shall never twitter or tweet]. I felt I should at least try the little rolling ball. If I found I wasn't getting it, well then I'd go back to the more comfortable method.
The first few days, I was all over the place, clicking on things I didn't want to click on, having to close out things that opened on their own. I just made sure to click the little x in the upper right hand corner and things went away. The lap-top keyboard was just different enough to be a challenge, too: got it, no problem.

My worst mistake happened not long after Shelley brought my hard drive back. I typed in a wrong letter or something and up popped one of those porno web pages.

I found myself looking at the biggest breasts I had ever seen [not completely natural looking, either]; all sorts of boxes started to pop up, asking what I wanted. What I wanted? I wanted the breasts to go away. I clicked Yes, No and x'd everything out and still the breasts were there.
Not getting it, was not an option. If I couldn't figure this out, I was going to have to call my grand-daughter Shelley and confess. So I shut off the computer and restarted it. Breasts! I unplugged the whole shooting match, disconnected and reconnected all the cords, did a manual start-up: breasts!

Shelley finally drove all the way out from town to fix it, saying a single keystroke error shouldn't normally lead to a porno page. Then she gave me a refresher course on how to reset my home page, explaining that many downloads and some sites will sneak in a question along the lines of do you want to make this your home page?

"They're trying to be in your face about advertising Grampa, but that site was over the top."

I couldn't remember a top, just those huge breasts. Even if you had a top over them, they still would have advertised the whole works.
"Always click No, Grampa, and you won't have any more problems checking out bopping breasts! "

The lesson is this: If I had let those breasts intimidate me, I would have missed out on the most fun an old person can have these days.

My advice to the senior: Not getting it isn't nearly as important as giving it a good go.