Tech Support

            “Why are you beating your head against the wall?”

            “Because it feels so good when I stop.”

            Kim finally bought a new camera. After a lot of shopping, reading reviews, talking to photographers, etc., we decided on a Sony a7R III. We bought it from a local camera store, not online, because we figured we would need some live personal help in setting it up.

            Before committing to the camera, we had to make sure that Kim could download pictures into her Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, where she organizes and works on her images. This is where I stepped in as tech support. If I am tech support, we are in trouble . . ..

            I started out by trying things on my computer, as I was afraid I might destroy Kim’s photos if I experimented on hers. My next level of tech support, Miguel, told us where we could download an image taken with our Sony model to see if it would go into my Lightroom and thus into Kim’s. In order to do that, I had to update my Lightroom to Kim’s more current version. I did so, not realizing that my new one was just a bit more current than Kim’s. This took me about an hour. Then, when I tried to move the Sony image into Lightroom, I was told that I needed to install “Adobe Camera Raw Plug-in 10.5.” My computer was already plugged in, which confused me, but I looked around on the internet and found what I was looking for, so I installed it. All good.

            Then I moved over to Kim’s computer. When I tried to install the Camera Raw Plug-in on her computer, I was told I had to update her Lightroom to 6.14. An hour or two later, after checking with a number of YouTube sites and Adobe’s help forum, I thought I had done so. I downloaded the photo into Lightroom, but when Kim tried to move it into Photoshop, she was told she had to update her Photoshop. An hour later, that was done, and I was relieved that her photo library was still intact. When I tried to move the photo into her newly updated Photoshop, I was told that in order to do so I would have to download and install “Legacy Java SE 6.” I had no idea what that was, but I was encouraged by the word “Java” as I am good at making coffee.

            An hour later I had not figured out how to find it and download it, so I called Miguel in New Mexico. He did a good job of weeding through my “explanation” of what I had done and forwarded me the link to Legacy Java SE 6. I downloaded and installed it. Apparently, everything is working now, and Kim is good to go.

            I say “apparently” because the new camera is still in the box. It’s been sitting in the box for about two weeks, along with the 250-page instruction manual. We have been busy getting ready for Christmas, which includes a week with family guests coming and going, and we know that when we start to set up the camera we will want to see it through, and that will require a stretch of uninterrupted time – probably a long stretch – which we are expecting to have in January after washing sheets and towels, writing thank-you notes, and assembling a clothing rack whose instructions were poorly translated from Chinese. That’s why the new camera is still in the box and all the Lightroom and Photoshop changes untested.

            Of course, it might be that we are simply afraid.

            Still, I experienced this great feeling of satisfaction once I had apparently gotten Kim’s computer squared away. That great feeling was most likely not due to the questionable quality of my work, but rather it was because, for a while, I could stop providing tech support, and it feels so good when I stop.