Electronic Gadgets

It’s a good thing I don’t keep track of all the time I spend sorting out electronic gadgets. If I did, I’d probably chuck them all in the landfill and go live in a cave.

It certainly feels like I wasted most of the day on them. Nothing is ever simple. A friend gave me a nice little netbook computer that’s perfect for traveling. It came with a version of Linux similar to the versions I’m familiar with. All I wanted to do was to install Skype on the computer as it’s a nice way to communicate.

Well, there was a software problem in the operating system. Fixing that took some time but I sorted it out -not exactly sure how. That’s the nature of computer issues sometimes. Once that was fixed Skype installed just fine. Then, just to make things interesting, the mike volume is way too low. That could be either a software problem or a hardware problem. The only way I’m going to know for sure is to pick up a cheap mike and bypass the installed one.

Moving on, I tackled trying to bring my Inreach device to full function. That requires a phone app and bluetooth pairing. Of course, I couldn’t just download the app. Nope, had to sort out some stuff on the cell phone first. After the app downloaded, it would not pair with the Inreach. Then I started to wonder if the Inreach was working at all. That required going outside and connecting it to the Iridium satellite system and running some test functions. Those were fine, so I can use it for preselected messages and the all important SOS feature. I’ll get back to other issues a bit later. No sense waiting until I hit the boiling point.

At that point, not having yet my fill of frustration, I decided to look into reactivating my Straight Talk hotspot device. We are going to need Internet while traveling. Installing the phone app went well. Trying to activate it, not so much. It gave me two types of errors, pretty much at random. One seemed to indicate the problem was on their end. The other error said I had a bad SIM card. Lovely.

So yeah, I’m done. A good part of the day went down the rabbit hole.

-Sixbears