Ahhh… I put my feet up to enjoy catching up on the latest anime series I’m hooked on: Delicious in Dungeon.
And what better time than a drizzly Sunday afternoon?
We’re at the crucial point of finding out if the elves of the West are going to invade the dungeon or not, when…
I’m startled by a call.
Huh? It’s Jinny. What’s she calling for? She was supposed to be in touch in a couple of days time, so I can go and look at her email problems.
Jinny, by the way, is an Anglican priest. (You’ll see why that matters in a moment.)
So I swipe up…
“Hi Jinny!”
“Hi, Chris. This is an S.O.S. call. I can’t open my funeral service document. And I’m meeting with the family in 25-minutes!”
“Oh dear! … Uh… I’ll be there in 5-minutes!”
So, fold may laptop screen down. (Netflix isn’t going anywhere.) …
Jump into our half-naked car (the rear bumper is currently missing. That’s related to the car issues you might’ve seen an email about a few weeks back.) …
And zoom up the road.
In our small country town, just about everyone’s a max of two-minutes drive away. Very handy.
I fly into her house. And park myself beside her. With her shiny new laptop open in front of us.
“Show me what’s happening.”
“Well… if I open my document this is what I see…”
She double-clicks her “Funeral Service.wps” document. And Microsoft Word opens with garbage EVERYWHERE.
“Yeah… it’s not liking that file too much,” I say, “let me try a couple of things…”
I poke and prod a bit. Then am like…
“It looks like it’s in an old format that your new version of Microsoft Office doesn’t seem to like.”
That WPS file is for using with the old Microsoft Works software. But looks like Microsoft gave up on supporting it or something.
It was working fine with the Word version on Jinny’s old computer. But not so much on this new one.
So… thanks to the wonders of free online converters. I was able to get the old format into a DOCX. Now Word is as happy as Larry.
And, seeing I was there, I took a couple of minutes to sort out her email thing too. Some oddity was preventing her seeing the last two weeks of email. (Computers!! 😠)
“Thank you!!” Jinny called while I’m dashing off.
Even with fixing this as well… she wasn’t going to be too late to her appointment. Nice 😎.
It’s jolly handy to have a geek friend to call on.
I like having friends with different skills to me…
Because sometimes I have to give my own cries for help. Especially when it comes to editing my … err … “creative” grammar.
And if you’re ever getting friends, clients, or anyone together, the pain of finding suitable times — especially across time zones — can be eased with good booking software. I use SavvyCal for this.
All the best for this Memorial Weekend, if you’re in the neck of the global woods that celebrates it!
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Chris Milham