Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Control Panel, Graphics and the Magic of Christmas

I am learning, I suppose. By necessity. Yesterday I somehow hit a combination of keystrokes while carrying my laptop form my chair to my sewing lair and turned the screen sideways.  For hours ..... at least four of them, I fiddled with it, trying to right it. Windows 8 is not user friendly. I hovered on the right side as instructed by my IT son. The icons would appear and then disappear quicker than you can blink.  The internal mouse is hard to control when the screen is sideways. I sent a frantic message to IT son and he offered to abandon his company and family to go in and fix it for me, but, being the good mother that I am, I declined his offer and tried to handle it myself.
He did tell me to get to the control panel and then graphics.

So, while my children enjoyed holiday events with their families and He Who tows was dragging stranded motorists, I spent Christmas Eve fighting with Windows 8. He Who tows suggested that I just turn the computer on it's side. Oddly enough, his son, the computer wizard suggested the same thing. Really. Now everybody out there, turn your laptop on it's side and see how very convenient that is. I was not amused by the men in my family.

So, all alone on Christmas Eve I sat, no blogs to read, no Jigidi puzzles to construct, no e-mails to compose. I am thankful that no hatchets were handy ....... I gave up in frustration and my fingers were idle. I closed the lid of my laptop, none too gently, I confess, took a shower and went to bed.

This morning, I awoke with my canines, took them out and convinced them to crawl back into bed. I snuggled into my warm spot and had just dozed when the jangle of the phone interrupted my sleep. It was the voice of my grandson, Gavin. Just what I needed to salve my soul. "Merry Christmas, Gramma". Sweetest sound in the world. I got out of bed to hear about his Santa loot and started the coffee to brew.

After having the spirit of Christmas injected into my soul, I decided to tough it out with the laptop on it's side. I read a even commented on a few of my favorite blogs. Please disregard any spelling or grammatical offences I may have made. I was resigned to tilting my head on it's side and trying to maintain control of the mouse when it happened.

It is the Christmas miracle!! My mouse arrow meandered to the right side and quite accidentally landed on the correct icon to send me to the control panel!!! Once there, I found graphics and was able to rotate my screen the necessary 90 degrees and  ...... voila!! Here I am with my screen in the correct position, my Christmas miracle!

Merry Christmas to all!

7 comments:

Kathy G said...

And Merry Christmas to you! Hope you have a wonderful day at the kampground.

Brian Miller said...

ha. dont feel bad...another teacher i work with did the same and could not figure it out...our tech at school fixed it for her though...

merry christmas!

mamahasspoken said...

Merry Christmas to you too Kathy! Glad that you got that glitch fixed ;o)

Anonymous said...

So glad you got turned right side up. The suggestion to tip the computer on its side is just crazy. Hope your next week, leading to New Years, is glitch-free.

Val said...

Sometimes the simplest suggestion is the solution, I guess.

Linda O'Connell said...

I am so techno challenged, I'd have been in a panic. Good feeling when it all goes right!

RVVagabond said...

Using my husband's laptop that has Windows 8 installed I usually find that an errant keystroke suddenly makes the entire page's font tiny, tiny, tiny. I swipe, I go to the corner and bring up the control panel. Nothing. Arrggghhh. I try suggestions from websites I google. And eventually I make the type size normal and then when it happens again I can't remember what I did.

And kudos for the proper spelling of voila. I cringe when I see folks type "Waa Lah!" or variations thereof.