My Buddy Gets Blogging
Yesterday, I helped my best buddy, Jim, setup and post his very first blog at the age of 63. That age is remarkable to me. It isn’t that Jim is old. It is that he waited so long to start blogging. He has always had a lot to say about a lot of things. Blogging is a perfect outlet for him.
It took us two hours to get things going. I have to admit that it was quite a challenge. Although Jim is a proficient user of technology, he is severely visually impaired. In order to have any success with a computer, Jim needs a really large monitor and some special tools that assist him in seeing what is on the screen. He also uses color schemes on his screen that look pretty strange to fully sighted folks. But, his is not a world of artistic beauty. It is a world of practicality. Changing the colors of text and backgrounds make it much easier for him to make things out. It also made helping him remotely over the phone almost impossible.
There were quite a few hurdles that we had to overcome during the setup process. One was that I could not work through the process on my screen as we went along. We decided to use the Blogger.com site. Since I already have a blog there, it would not let me create a new account. I could add a new blog to my account, but that wasn’t what I needed at the time to assist Jim. Then, I remembered that because of the Pandemic, I had a new tool in my box that would work. I created a ZOOM meeting, got Jim into it, and walked him through the steps of sharing his screen with me. Then, it was just a matter of my looking at his cursor and saying things like, "Go straight up. Now move to your left. Stop. Click on the big orange thing."
Unfortunately, we hit a snag right away. Every time Jim clicked on "Create Your Account" it asked him which Google account to use. He clicked on the one listed, as it is the only one he has. Then it would kick us right back to the starting screen with the big orange "Create Your Account" button on it again. I had to minimize the ZOOM screen and get some help in Google. The solution was to open a new "incognito" window and create the account there. The incognito window lets you work on the internet without any settings you have put into play interfering. It is sort of a "safe mode" for Chrome. Since Jim had never used incognito, I had to walk him through that, as well.
When we finally had the account created, I walked Jim through creating an introductory post, titling his post, and publishing it. Then we went through the steps for adding another post when he was ready. We totally closed out of Blogger.com and logged back in to see if he could do it on his own. This is when he switched the color scheme to what he normally uses. He was afraid I would have trouble with it, so he had changed it to the usual color scheme while I was helping him. Let me tell you that it really looked strange. It was almost like looking at those black and white negative strips from the old days. I have to admit that the bright white text was really easy to see against the black background.
After a few more glances at the places where he would put his titles, enter the body of his post, and finally publish it, he felt pretty confident. I told him that I was his round the clock tech support and would walk him through his future posts whenever he needed it. He was excited. As we were saying our goodbyes, he was already thinking of his next topics.
Early this morning, I got a text from Jim. He had written a new post for his blog and published it on his own. I went in and looked at it. It was very well written. I’m not sure if he wrote it in Word and pasted it into the blog, or if he just wrote it directly. Whatever he did worked for him. I’m pretty sure that his computer is set up to say every word he types out loud. Then, of course he lets it read the final product back to him and can tell when something is wobbly.
I really feel good about helping Jim get his blog on. He is one of the few people I would take a bullet for in this world. I am willing to do anything I can do to assist him with his independent pursuit of happiness in life. Some day, I need to tell the story of how I helped him choose and start using a smartphone. Fortunately, I was at his home in Kansas the day it arrived. I was able to walk him through all the steps sitting in the same room with him. That time, we didn’t need ZOOM!
By the way... As I was writing this, Jim let me know that he had added another post to his blog. I think I may have created a monster!