THE WIZARD OF THE WEB

365 Days of Thanksliving — Day 254

"ERROR!"

"Huh, why am I getting an error code?” I quipped aloud. Not like anyone was there to hear me, though, unless Siri was listening. Siri, are you eavesdropping now? Hey Siri…

I paused the 80s mixtape playing in the background, closed all the programs, opened the file again, meticulously went through the print settings, and clicked the print button again. But then? The beachball of death—you know the one: that notorious spinning ball of light that tells us something’s amiss.

My PC’s light bar went back and forth, back and forth, looking exactly like that red eye on a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica. “What the heck! Why am I getting an error code?”

All’s I wanted to hear the computer say was, “By your command.” But I wasn’t getting it. Just that stupid ERROR CODE. Thing is, it wasn’t telling me what the error was. Just “ERROR.” I was beside myself and felt like my time was being wasted. I needed help.

I opened Chrome, and in the search sought an answer from the wizard of the Web. I queried: “My PC isn’t connecting to our Canon copier to print. Never had a problem before. No settings changed.” Google told me to restart my PC and power cycle the printer. Well, it was worth a try.

Yah… neither of those worked. Google gave me a third option: check the network connection. That didn’t make sense to me; our internet was cranking and turned up to eleven. I was totally baffled. But, I did it. Nope, not that.

I like to think of myself as tech-savvy enough, but truly I was scratching my head. I mean, nothing had changed. Everything was fine yesterday, but today, it’s like something in the ether was severed. I went back to the wizard for help.

Google said to “clear stuck queue” and, if that didn’t work, delete the printer and reinstall. Argh, I thought; that was the last thing I wanted to do. I didn’t want to go through that headache again. The first time around, it took me over an hour to install the printer. Where was a local tech when I needed one? Sometimes you just want to talk to a real person face-to-face to figure this stuff out, you know?

No matter what I did, nothing was working. Nada. Zero. Zilch. It was like overnight a bug had crawled into the system: a power outage, a hiccup, an unknown update, a micro-EMP, or perhaps an alien or demon was interfering.

All’s I knew was while Google search was helping, I really needed its younger sibling: the smarter, faster one to get 'er done. You know his name: Skynet; Genisys: the brains beyond the Terminator; the one everyone’s afraid will take over the world—the one that just might be the second beast in the Bible’s closing chapters of Revelation. I figured, why not. He’s already taking over the world.

New search bar: gemini.google.com. “Hey G, I need your help. Here’s my issue….”

Twenty seconds later, Gemini suggested the issue might stem from a change to the copier’s IP address. I’d checked everything else, might as well try this suggestion too. G gave me detailed instructions on how to do that; and lo and behold, THAT was the issue. How did it know, I wondered. I followed its instructions to make the necessary changes to both my PC and the printer, then crossed my fingers.

Test print. Good golly Miss Molly, I jumped for joy. The solution worked. Next thing ya know, I was printing Sunday’s bulletins like a champ. What should’ve taken just a minute took over an hour.

Oh, the joys of modern technology. I swear, things were simpler in the days before Cyberdyne came online. You remember the promise: “Computers will make our lives easier and everything will go faster.” Not sure about that. What do you old fogies say?

But ya know, tonight I’m going to thank the Lord for the wizard of the web. While AI (Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot) could be utilized for nefarious reasons—and I’m sure it is, and might truly be the death of us all—these tools can also be used for good… like today.

While I could’ve called our new copier company and asked for a tech to come out and look at the issue, I figured I’d consult the digital tech before bringing in a living one. Gemini helped.

Honestly, it helps me most nights. It spell-checks my blog and makes grammatical changes unless I tell it otherwise (to leave my bad grammar in). It also provides most of the post images you see accompanying these posts.

That all said, using tech like AI requires wisdom: to know when it’s working for you, and to know when it’s replying with wrong, misguided, or intentionally, misleading information. While I have not witnessed the latter, wisdom says tread carefully.

Anywho… tonight, I’m thankful God has given this planet smarter people than me, those souls who’ve created AI to help us solve problems. Thanks G, I appreciated your help today.

What are you thankful for today?