This morning brought into sharp focus why it is time for us to go back to the UK.
As I said elsewhere, I spent 4 hours yesterday verifying with CHATgpt what was happening with OH’s webmail. (No doubt those who understand technology would have got there much faster.)
His email has been blocked by Orange due to possible attempted abuse and I was faced with making a phone call this morning to Orange to start the process of getting it unblocked.
I was afraid to make the call. Because I was not sure I would be able to cope with French technical language. I cannot live like this.
In fact (of course) Orange are kind and have an English-speaking helpline and the man I spoke to was wonderful - talked me through everything slowly and carefully. I now know what to do.
It’s probably been blocked due to “unusual repeated activity” where a different IP address is trying to come into the webmail. I suspect, in fact, it was OH setting up his computer in Chichester and trying to set up his email account on that computer.
I have to send an email to the Orange abuse department to get his email unblocked. They will ring. I must ask them whether it could have been OH’s activity from the UK that led to the block happening. I just hope I can understand when they call.
Dear Sue, just go and don’t fret! No-one’s going to judge you, and those of us who “know” you wish you nothing but peace in the next phase of your life, in Chi-town
You have enough on your plate without having to tackle French tech companies, and worrying about what the next challenge might be.
If your OH tried to repeatedly access his Orange account from a French smartphone whilst in the UK, that will have be seen as suspicious as well due to a “foreign” IP address.
Is the Orange account tied to a broadband subscription? I’ve heard (unsubstantiated) tales of ISPs closing associated email accounts once the subscription ends.
If it was him, it would have been from his PC - he hates phones.
I don’t think there’s an issue re the email a/c being closed. It’s very much there and checking it yesterday emails from senders were still arriving into his webmail. I sent a test from mine. The issue is the a/c is blocked by Orange. So he can receive, but not send and the incoming mail can go no further than the Orange server.
No, he can’t send. Nothing can leave his webmail. We know exactly what the issue is from the error code [99] and the response from the helpline this morning. The abuse department are the only ones who can unlock it.
I know well that feeling. My French is passable but I find phone conversations have a different level of difficulty. Help lines especially, which introduce the possibility of accents (and pronunciations) you’re unfamiliar with. In short, phone calls terrify me!
I steel myself, take a deep breath… and dive in. I’ve been very lucky to date and have usually managed to muddle my way through, ending the call with a huge sigh of relief. I realise I feared the worse (I’m prone to that, many of us are I suspect) and it didn’t eventuate. Tbh, my feelings of relief outweigh any sense of achievement, I really ought give myself some credit.
Plus, I’ve found people on the other end are invariably patient with me, help me out. One guy I spoke with (North African at a guess from his name and accent) at SFR couldn’t have been nicer - and I found him crystal clear to understand (the accent around where I live, I’ve read referred to as the Geordie of France! So perhaps it stands me in good stead)
In short, and to cut to the chase, some things about our lives here are difficult, there’s no denying it. And we can reach a tipping point, having had a guts full. But you carry on, it’s what we do. There are no guarantees that there won’t be difficulties in the UK too (was it the technical language you feared, or it being French?) just different kinds of difficult.
It reads to me like you managed the situation well. I’d wager you’ll manage it again when someone calls. I get you, it’s daunting but we’re all metaphorically holding your hand. You got this, as they say!
I think what has changed for me is there was a time when I enjoyed the challenge. I was using my French, I was managing. I was proud of my achievement.
I cope still, but it’s become just another hassle, a level of complexity I can do without, a sinking feeling in my stomach when I know I must pick up the phone. Quite frankly, I’ve reached the age when I want my life to be enjoyable, not a punishment. And as I’ve indicated elsewhere, I think our technological world has become a punishment.
I’m not arguing that this is the final pebble on the seesaw, you know what you can and can’t deal with. But I’m not sure I would cope better in UK. At least here we have a nerdy IT geek who operates using CESU for when things really break down.
I like the potential of tech but struggle to maintain the interest to use it. We got ourselves a new trail camera to put in the attic to watch the bats. Set it up fine, but it seems after a trial period we have to do something different to see the images. Which I really can’t find the energy to battle with the instructions.
I know I will, and already have when I was setting up all our IT/TV stuff in Chichester.
Not least, it’s still a world where face to face contact is possible (unlike, increasingly, in France).
I also play the batty old lady who needs help “par excellence”. So they finish up talking to me in words of one syllable. And even if the tech words go over my head, at least the words in between are in my native language.
I couldn’t agree more. And I say that as someone who worked in IT. I think there’s often an assumption that people know about such things. Heck, even have an interest in such things. You have to get to grips with a system before you can do what you actually want to do. Further, sometimes those systems are poorly designed, or designed by people who don’t realise they assume a conceptual understanding.
It’s not just the elderly that can struggle with it. Some people are just not tech minded - and that’s not a fault, despite what geeks might have you feel. My hope is that AI will be able to bridge that gap one day. It’s getting there but there’s a ways to go. Until then, yes, a punishment.
Sorry, I digress. There often comes a time where we accept it is time to move on. I think you’ve maybe reached it.
Outside of PC hobbyists, home networking nerds and IT specialists, the vast majority of IT users don’t have a clue how it works.
AI isn’t the answer unless it can teach organics the theory behind the IT equivalent of “Insert Tab A into Slot B”.
Teaching folks how technology work is vital, right after Home Economics classes get re-instated for all secondary school kids and the first part of the syllabus is “Compound Interest : The Enemy Within”.
I am a Luddite and also an anarchist woodworker and by that I mean an adherent to the contemporary version of Luddism as I see it. Historically Luddism was a protest movement against the use by employers of apprentice labour for skilled labour
My home town was Nottingham, so I was at home with Ned Ludd. I may once have occupied a workshop used by a frame -knitter…..and the Chartists rioted down the road…
I have hundreds of woodworking and metalworking tools, so I am not opposed to technology. However, when I pick up one of these tools to use it, or start a machine to cut metal or wood, I’m in charge of it, and in many ways it is an extension of my hands.
Using IT means fitting in to some non-physical format defined by someone or something else, not me. That’s not why I make stuff, and why I will never have or use a computer-controlled CIC machine. Also, I do not regard drawing via IT as Art. The walls of my home have framed plans drawn in 1890 by a fledgling French architect from Brittany. They are plans drawn by a human of a house to be built by human hands and lived in by humans and have Beauty as well as Utility.
When the IT process began, we began to lose control of our bodies and the way we think, and now with the advent of technofeudalism (as per Varoufakis) we are in danger of losing everything. We are just unwaged producers of data.
I think we have fallen on our feet in where we have chosen - quite by accident.
OH already been into NatWest re a replacement card
I’ve visited HSBC and discussed getting our joint names on my accounts
EE were wonderful setting up our internet - long gossipy session in their outlet
John Lewis TV guy talked me through the merits of a Samsung Frame TV
I can see how that might happen. To use current terminology, it’s like an out sourcing. Done suruptisciously, insidiously even, we’ve been made redundant. Even if that was not the intention, an unintended consequence of trying to make things easier or whatever. We have to take a prescribed path, not one of our own choosing. I’ve read that the increasing use of Sat Nav means people no longer engage with their surroundings in quite the same way, and are losing a sense of place, direction and orientation. Similarly, maybe increased IT-ification is making us blind to process, forcing us to be hands-off, we stop thinking and simply wait. Or fire off yet another snotty email to an AI bot. You don’t win, resistance is futile etc.
Art is defined by intentionality not the medium in which it’s created. Your architect’s drawings may be aesthetically satisfying and of a very high quality, but they were not created as art, they were designs and that’s a different category of visual culture.
These distinctions are usually very simple and straightforward, but lay people often make them over- complicated by conflating judgements of category with judgements of quality. There’s lots of weak art around and there’s plenty of high quality examples of craft and design.
