When computers make easy stuff almost impossible!

Do you ever have one of those days where you spend hours trying to get your computer to do something that should be possible in a single click?!

All I wanted to do was copy a single file from my Android phone to my PC. Simple, right? Ohhhh no it wasn't!

What would you do? I thought I'd email it to myself. But GMail says the file is "too big" to be attached. So I found a few cloud services. The first one crashed when I started uploading the file. The second one worked... phew.

Oh, hang on -- it's going to take an hour-and-a-half to upload?! WTF?! Fine, I'll wait.

Two hours later and it's stuck at 99%. Two-and-a-half hours later and it's still stuck at 99%. I start to despair.

Right. I'll use adb -- an Android command-line utility to transfer files via USB cable. I just need to remember the syntax... After playing around with the commands using examples online... I finally realise that the version of adb I have requires an output filename to be specified, unlike in all the examples I've been looking at, which explains why nothing I'd been trying would work. Argh.

But finally I see the progress meter appear! One percent! Two percent! Oh it's stopped and the phone is "connected" but not "detected"... :-/

Another hour later and I remember that I could only ever get adb to work with the phone plugged directly into a USB port on the motherboard, rather than via the hub I was using. Oh yeah. D'oh. Works fine now.

So today, I spent several hours trying to figure out how to copy a file. cwhack:

Anyone else have days like this? :-/

No, I don't because I'm too stupid and uninformed to be able to do what you do, so kudos to you, though you certainly had to jump through a lot of hoops. My frustrations come from trying to memorize all the Chopin heinous runs when I learn a new Chopin piece on my piano. Where you worked all day, I might have to work on the same run for months, though that doesn't speak very well for my skills or lack there of. At the end of the day, we both have something that finally gives some degree of satisfaction, so it's worth it.

tiny said:

Do you ever have one of those days where you spend hours trying to get your computer to do something that should be possible in a single click?!

All I wanted to do was copy a single file from my Android phone to my PC. Simple, right? Ohhhh no it wasn't!

What would you do? I thought I'd email it to myself. But GMail says the file is "too big" to be attached. So I found a few cloud services. The first one crashed when I started uploading the file. The second one worked... phew.

Oh, hang on -- it's going to take an hour-and-a-half to upload?! WTF?! Fine, I'll wait.

Two hours later and it's stuck at 99%. Two-and-a-half hours later and it's still stuck at 99%. I start to despair.

Right. I'll use adb -- an Android command-line utility to transfer files via USB cable. I just need to remember the syntax... After playing around with the commands using examples online... I finally realise that the version of adb I have requires an output filename to be specified, unlike in all the examples I've been looking at, which explains why nothing I'd been trying would work. Argh.

But finally I see the progress meter appear! One percent! Two percent! Oh it's stopped and the phone is "connected" but not "detected"... :-/

Another hour later and I remember that I could only ever get adb to work with the phone plugged directly into a USB port on the motherboard, rather than via the hub I was using. Oh yeah. D'oh. Works fine now.

So today, I spent several hours trying to figure out how to copy a file. cwhack:

Anyone else have days like this? :-/

Click to expand...

Dropbox????

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It's software that is the problem, nothing is fool proof

I've had my moments with linux where I would want to rip out my hair

That being said that's minor compared to Windows XP bloody driver issues lol.

Compared to US geeks, i've seen people have trouble installing chrome without getting 250 viruses in the process than go blaming the computer for being shit lol.

But yeah I've had simple shit take hours I guess it's just the way of life for the geek

I just like to act computer illerate around people, It's fun, had one person at the job network think that a slow and laggy computer is a botnet attack omfg *giggles* I'm like yeah seems like a global botnet attack, while cringing on the inside.

A computer from 2003 running a pentium 3 and word at the same time as well as windows 7 it's gonna be laggy lol.

Personally I wish I was living in the early 90's where nobody knew how to use a computer, simpler time, I grew up in the early 2000s and was the only person in my class who knew how to use a computer. (or better yet had her own compaq in her small room)

Good Ol' Windows 98 *drolls* had a 56k modem too, good ol' days. when life wasn't shit. I dunno how long ago this was, but I remember windows XP coming out, so it would of been 2002.

Same with GTA 3 I was dying to get a PS2 to play it, sadly It was many years after I got the game, to this day, it's nostalgic.

I think I convinced my dad to get a PS2 cause I said it could play pS1 games and the PS1 was going bad.

Ah, sorry for the nonsense blabbering xD, just dem memories.

I've had many days like yours, where it took me 3 days to solve a issue, with PXE booting it took me a whole three days to work it out, and it turned out it was my edition of frickin' windows.

I had it 100% correct, did everything right, you know why it wasn't working, that's right because i wasn't using a professional version of windows. so it worked on my desktop -.- what a pain.

LittleJess said:

Personally I wish I was living in the early 90's where nobody knew how to use a computer, simpler time, I grew up in the early 2000s and was the only person in my class who knew how to use a computer. (or better yet had her own compaq in her small room)

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Sigh. Those halcyon days... I studied computer science in college in 1993... :-/

I worked for a few companies that used Win98 on some machines. It was so funny -- they were supposed to be "locked down". And they were. With absolutely no way to prevent the user from removing those restrictions. Oh the fun that could be had... :biggrin:

I grew up in the 80s... where you could show someone a "hello world" program and they'd accuse you of witchcraft. It was amazing. I was officially a "computer whizz kid" until I got in to (arguably) the best university in the country and realised how shit my state education had really been. Argf.

tiny said:

Sigh. Those halcyon days... I studied computer science in college in 1993... :-/

I worked for a few companies that used Win98 on some machines. It was so funny -- they were supposed to be "locked down". And they were. With absolutely no way to prevent the user from removing those restrictions. Oh the fun that could be had... :biggrin:

I grew up in the 80s... where you could show someone a "hello world" program and they'd accuse you of witchcraft. It was amazing. I was officially a "computer whizz kid" until I got in to (arguably) the best university in the country and realised how shit my state education had really been. Argf.

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Yep, these days, you borrow a friends phone and they don't log out, your a 1337 hacker lol.

Ironically I know "actual hacking", network / computer security, just makes me cringe every time though I'm not too good at it, It's just a side effect of learning network administration and linux

I generally just use my knowledge of hacking to develop bulletproof PHP / MySQL code which surprisingly isn't hard but most web developers don't even bother. (ie a programmer who uses MySQL should usually be aware of MySQL Injection attacks (well I am, not sure about the rest) so you generally learn how to do it, to protect your own ass from it)

Most of my computer security knowledge is mostly rooted in web applications, but I know a thing or two about other things

I come from a C background, so obviously you code for security in mind (ie buffer underflow, overflow etc) and for some reason that translated to web applications, i haven't met one proper web developer who knows how to escape mysql code or use prepared statements, which mind you isn't hard to do at all)

That being said my C knowledge is extremely rusty as I moved onto higher programming languages, do plan to learn C++ as it's a more practical language for most things.

Server administration is also my thing too, I can manually setup most kinds of servers, nginx with php-fpm, apache2 with php-cli etc. (ssl, multi-domain sites etc)

The worst thing is email servers, I hate how a lot of mail servers blacklist shared IP addresses because your IP range was used to send spam etc.

Used to run my own IRC server with IRC-Hybrid used UFW and iptables to block specific traffic coming in and out from unwanted ports.

God, linux really makes it so you have no life aye the amount of crap I learned as soon as I started messing with linux 3-4 years ago

I started using college main frames in the late '60s (decks and decks of punch cards), and was the first in my company to recommend pcs in the mid-80s. I remember the joke about secretaries using whiteout on their screens from that time. When I left the company every employee had at least one pc (the operators had two, one for process control, the other for inventory, email, etc.). As for the op's problem, yes I have encountered similar frustrating issues over these many years - something seeming so simple becomes nearly impossible. Phones and tablets are the worst. After using a computer with a eight function mouse, using a stylus on a phone/tablet is like being in the stone age.

Oh, you funny Linux types. :rollseyes: Don't pretend you don't like pain. You wear it like a badge of honor.

I can't remember the last time I had a phone that didn't simply pop up like a flash drive when I plugged it into my PC. That goes for both Windows- and Android-based phones. I think I might have had to search for a driver once. :shrug:

On the other hand, transferring files between my phone and my Amiga has always been a bit tough...

Maxx said:

Strange. You would think a simple drag and drop via usb would work even if all else failed.

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Oh yeah -- that was the first thing I tried. But, in either MTP or PTP mode, Windows Explorer crashed as soon as I copy the file to the clipboard or drag and drop it.

I've no idea why that doesn't work... :-/

Cottontail said:

Oh, you funny Linux types. :rollseyes: Don't pretend you don't like pain. You wear it like a badge of honor.

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Hehe... That made me chuckle.

I definitely get pleasure when I make some techie stuff work. Ha, computer! You will obey me!

But that's balanced by moments of sheer despair and feeling like a complete idiot. It really shouldn't have taken so long to copy a file. :-(

I wonder why normal USB transfer crashes Explorer...? I should look into that... (damn computer, not obeying me and acknowledging me as its master, grr!)

EDIT: Argh! It's my useless USB hub. Everything works fine when the phone's plugged into the PC. Stupid crappy hardware! lol