Tech Support for my Beloved

It’s going on 32 years of wedded bliss and it has all come to this: I have been relegated to the role of Tech Support for my sweetie. 

The LOML (Love of My Life) is mightily challenged when it comes to technology and I think she would be the first to admit that dealing with system updates, forgotten passwords, and speaking with nice folks on the Indian Subcontinent is not her cup of tea. Clearing caches is not her forte, rebooting and reloading the bios is simply not high - no, scratch that, its not anywhere - on her priority list.

Still, about once a decade she bravely but grudgingly agrees to update her gizmos and gadgets to the modern era. This is usually preceded  with lots of angst and consternation commensurate with losing important files, documents, and/or priceless and irreplaceable family pictures. This is where I step in where others dare not tread. The technical support role, at least between two consenting adults who profess on a daily basis to loving each other, is one fraught with peril. Enter at your own risk.

Recently my LOML replaced her laptop, got a new IPOD (I know, IPODS are hardly on the RADAR of modern tech), and AirPods. The willing but naïve computer folks at our local Best Buy didn’t stand a chance. Still they gamely made recommendations assuming she grasped technical gibberish like RAM, Adaptive Thermals, Celeron versus Pentium versus AMD, and the wonderful advantages of SSD’s. All that may be music to the ears of any self-respecting Geek but alas it was all for naught. I mean, how is a highly trained professional member of the Geek Squad supposed to respond when asked “How do you turn it on?”

Fool that I am, this is where I step in. I’m no computer expert by ANY stretch but I do know the difference between ON and OFF though even I can’t keep straight the difference between the symbols “I” and “O” that seem to dominate the power switches of today. And I did gamely update my laptop from Windows 10 to 11 though I’m still trying to figure out even one meaningful benefit to having done so. Still, I made the effort to act as interpreter extraordinaire and eventually we left the store with my sweetie bemused and bewildered and substantially lighter in the purse. But hey, we got Best Buy points which seem to be as confusing and nebulous as the differences between OneDrive and Google Drive.

Mind you, we also left without the new laptop as it seemed necessary to leave it for a couple of days along with the old one in order to transfer files and settings and pictures courtesy of the ministrations of the aforementioned Geek Squad. You know you’re getting old when the young bright-eyed and trying to please Geek Squad member would appear to have been in diapers the last time the LOML and technology experienced their once in a decade cataclysmic shift. 

It’s been a couple of weeks since we brought the new addition to our family into our loving home. I continue to provide tech support to my darling wife and I have the scars to prove it. Not to make light of a world where War is tearing apart a free and sovereign people but woe to the man who steps in between the  LOML and her new gadgets. I now know more about Spotify than my pea-sized brain can handle but if you need your Bluetooth device paired then I’m your man. Maybe I should apply for a position with Geek Squad. Nah, what am I, crazy?

Can’t Win for Losing

Mr. Putin has already lost the war.

He just doesn’t realize it yet.

Vladimir is in that unique but awkward place where even if you win, you lose. We’ve all been there though the stakes for the Russian leader, any World leader really, are a scale of magnitude greater than they would be for simple folk like you and me. 

In underestimating the determination and resolve of both the Ukrainian people as well as most of the world community it may still come to pass that Mr. Putin does in fact physically control the land that was the sovereign country of Ukraine. In that sense he may think he has won what he set out to accomplish. But in doing so he las lost far more than he gained:

- The Ukrainian people will never accept the yoke of Russian tyranny. Any sense of kinship that purportedly existed between Ukrainians and Russians (part of the pretext for Mr. Putin’s action) has evaporated as rapidly as the oxygen in a Russian cluster bomb blast

- The Russian people will come to realize the yoke of Putin’s tyranny akin to Lenin, Stalin, etc. Maria Ovsyannikova, pictured left, interrupting a live Russian newscast may have sacrificed her life but it will be her image, not yours Mr. Putin, that will hang in the Halls of Freedom for eternity

- The World community (save possibly for China, North Korea, Bulgaria and a handful of other outliers) will consider Russia a pariah for at least as long as Mr. Putin draws breath

- Any legitimacy Russia had gained since Ronald Reagan told Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 to “Tear down this wall” and… the wall actually came down, has now been squandered to no one’s benefit

- For Russia to seemingly control Ukraine it seems as if it will have to destroy the country town by town, city by city. What will be left after such mad destruction Mr. Putin and what good will what remains do you?

- It is anticipated that as many as 80,000 Ukrainian babies will be born over the next several months to mothers who were already pregnant when the Russian invasion began. Many will be born as refugees who no longer have a home, many will never know their fathers as Russia continues to crush Ukraine’s brave defenders. They will grow to hate you Mr. Putin as their mothers relate what you did to their country, their homes, and their families. Your legacy will indeed long outlive you but it may not be the legacy you had aspired to

- President Zelenskyy may win the Nobel Peace Prize as proxy for his brave people; Mr. Putin will possibly face charges brought by the International Criminal Court joining a long (too, too long) list of global who’s who guilty of things like Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes, and Crimes of Aggression

It is the nature of the world that events must unfold as they will. In the short term the atrocity that is War will continue. Seemingly, Mr. Putin is impervious to anyone other than his own demons so those demons will have their day, their pound of flesh. But he will eventually come to learn a simple lesson most of us learned way before our 70th birthday - sometimes you can’t win for losing.

Joe Biden, speaking to Vladimir Putin in 2011: “Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.”

Mr. Putin’s response: “We understand each other.”