Friday, March 27, 2020

Google User Interfaces Now In Human Trials

A little over a week ago my laptop computer experienced a disk crash.  After a prolonged scan and repair, most of my apps and data were still available.  The Start feature did not work and the Search feature in the Task Bar did not work.  A couple icons on the Task Bar did not work, returning a "Class not registered" error message.

I ordered a new laptop.  While I waited for the new one to arrive, I got along with some work-arounds.  Ctrl-Alt-Del got a workout.  To open applications I had to use Task Manager\File\Run New Task.  That works well if you can remember the application name that the System expects.  There was one application, a scanner manager, that I never did figure out, even after a long search of the registry. 

Wednesday the new laptop arrived.  I was pretty good to myself:  1Tb Solid State Drive and 1Tb conventional hard drive.  Plenty of memory.  The graphics card is not the very best, maybe in the tier just below because I don't want the kids coveting this laptop for gaming.

I made a mistake during the set up which resulted in my C:\Users account name being different than what it had been on the old machine.  Fixing that in the registry took a lot of time because that file path appears in many registry entries.  I wish I could have found an easier way to change that.  I can't be the first person to have that problem.

I have spent two days migrating into the new machine.  I used an external hard drive to move files.  I audited the files to ensure the same number of files were on both the old and new machines and in all the same places.  Setting up email was not too difficult.  I checked and double checked all my connection settings.

Most everything went well until this afternoon when I tried to get into my Google Adsense account.  The Google Login security raked me over the coals.  Being on a new machine probably raised some flags.  It doesn't help that I have two Google accounts; that part of the problem is my fault.  I ended up in a loop that started with Google Security wanting to verify my account by re-entering my password.  I submitted  the password; it gave no indication that there was a problem with the password.  It looped me back to the screen where Google Security wanted to verify my account again.  And the loop just kept repeating.  So I selected the "Forgot Password" option to try to get out of this loop.  After I changed the password, it put me through the same verification loop as before. 

I futzed around with Google Security for over an hour.  If Google Security ever steers you toward an option to use your phone with a screen lock to sign into your account, please, please please don't do it.  It just put me into a similar loop and when I found the setting to turn that feature off, Google had warning messages designed to add fear to my loathing.  I was so frustrated with all the rigmarole Google was marching me through.  Has the testing of Google's Security user interfaces reached the level of human trials?  Was I in the human trials?  Was someone at Google getting paid to torture me, take notes and laughing about it?  I was in such an internal storm that I don't even know what I did to finally get into Adsense. 

This was not my first Google goat rodeo; probably won't be my last.  I need some wine.