Slab and Chiesel (Blog #1)

I used to think that the best approach to communicating with anyone, to the concept of being able to search and find anything stemmed from the Flintstone approach.  I mean, who wouldn't want to have their own monkey, with a chiesel and slab in hand, banging out your message and then making sure the intended person got it.  It made perfect sense to me....when I was younger, of course.  These days, 2012, a lot has evolved since those Stone Age Days when maybe it was dependent on monkeys and stone slabs to get messages across.

The technology age has certainly helped us to evolve and speed things up a great deal.  I mean, sometimes before you are even through with submitting your search into the address bar, what you are looking for is right at your fingertips.  It is so fast and painless! 

In class,  I liked that things on the computer were easy to "search and find".
Secondly, I disliked that I struggled with not know what to do when I was stuck within a certain page and couldn't move forward from there. 

In an article writtten by Mike Pepper of Pawlings:  Public Radio, entitled:  "The Computer Guy:  Easy Ways to Find Stuff on Mac or PC;, he writes:

First things first:  where to look:  These days all computers come with an automatic indexer built in. Every document and file that you make on your computer, or download to it, gets indexed.

To find things in your computer’s index, look for the search tool icon, which is always some version of a magnifying glass.  On Macs, the search tool is called “Spotlight”. On Windows the search tool usually appears as a blank field with the magnifying glass icon next to it. When you click on the Mac icon a similar blank field will pop open for you.

Often when you type a little, you get more than you wanted or really even needed but the bottom line is that your computer gave you what you needed, when you needed, more than you needed,  and best of all,  faster than you needed it.  All because of just a few words that gave a machine a hint that you were looking for something.  We've come a long way since the monkey with the rock slab and chiesel.


Secondly, what to do when stuck within a page and unable to get free?  I guess the easiest thing would be to merely turn off the computer, but I vaguely remember a sister who thinks she knows a little something about a computer telling me that you only harm the computer when you do that too often.  And, so, I refrain from having to do that at all.  I guess, too, that it would be relatively easy to just click the "X" box at the upper right hand corner of the page.  This is another great tool to use.  In some instances, maybe these are the only two tools to use.  But, I can't help but think there might be more and maybe I am merely reading way too much into this.  Thus, the best thing to do is just do what comes naturally and that is click the box in the upper right hand corner...until someone tells me that there is something else that will better suit my need for speed...but how can things possibly get any faster on the computer?