My First Foray Into ChatGPT

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published September 28, 2026] 2026

I personally think that it's not too much to ask that computers do what you want, not what you say.

Not long ago, I was just typing along, minding my own business, when my computer suddenly began spell checking in German, cheerfully morphing my prose into variations of Ich bin ein Berliner. I officially dispute my engineer husband's allegations that I had anything to do with it.

My husband will try to insist that I obviously did something as computers are, in fact, simply machines cycling ones and zeros, and not malevolent spawns of Satan as some might maintain. But he will concede that when, for example, a tool bar suddenly disappears, I might not have done it intentionally.

"So what exactly went away?"  he'd query patiently, knowing that this conversation was as doomed as many that have gone before it.

"Well, there used to be a tool bar thingy and now it s gone."

"What was on it?"

"I don't know. But I know I need it."

My techno guy pressed on. "Would you recognize the thingy bar if you saw it again?"  he'd say patiently. He recognized the value of not getting overly technical with me.

Now there are those who think the Undo command fixes things like this. But they would be wrong. Undo fixes the text mistake you just made microseconds ago but the second you even breathe on the machine, it s already moved on. The Undo command has a very short attention span.

Ditto, on-line help. Totally, completely useless unless you know the technical term that some eighteen-year-old acned techno geek gave it. For example, I lost an entire day of work unable to edit a document until my husband observed, "Oh, you switched to Overstrike Mode."  A keystroke and it was back to letting me insert text.

I did not switch anything! I'd whine. Why would I switch to something that keeps me from editing and whose name I don't even know? I can assure you that you can't get out of Overstrike unless you know you're in Overstrike.

If a software company had asked me, and inexplicably they never do, I would help them design a computer that real people, especially aging non-technical but really nice people, could actually use. The Clairvoyance Model. Your computer would get to know you, realize that those nasty keystroke commands that are the boon of techno types, but the bane of the techno-challenged, should be ignored at all costs. The Clairvoyance Model would quickly learn that you have the frustration tolerance of a gnat. It would sense when you are so aggravated with your computer that you are ready to drag it out to the driveway and run it over with your car.

And that would quickly prompt it to ask, fearing for its miserable mechanical life, the question that every computer ought to have poised at the ready: "When you were last happy?" And you'd say, :Just before you ate my toolbar."   And poof. It would reappear.

While I'm still holding out for the Clairvoyance model, we may be closer than I think. I recently had my first experience with ChatGPT. 

I have a blog on which I like to post photos from my computer. This worked seamlessly for years until recently when my efforts to transfer photos was met by a message that in order to do so I would need to grant Google access to my computer. I honestly had no idea what this meant and just how much access I was granting, never mind why it was suddenly requiring this. Could it transfer my retirement funds to Nigeria?

So I (ironically) Googled this and surprisingly, a very nice AI bot from ChatGPT showed up (how?) and informed me that others had reported this problem and it would like to help me fix it. I'd never used ChatGPT before for problem solving. Did I trust it? Often I can't understand the instructions I get on Google so, in fear of truly messing up my computer, I don't even try. But nobody else was offering, so I cautiously agreed.

As my first foray into AI, I was genuinely impressed. And that s the thing: ChatGPT is endlessly patient. Much more so than certain husband people who, over the years, have become positively surly when having to deal with a techno-disabled wife. ChatGPT was happy to let me take all the time I needed to painstakingly, laboriously, write down notes on my lined yellow legal pad. 

Historically, whenever my engineer husband tried to explain anything technical to me, he'd say, "I think you might want to get the yellow pad"  knowing I'd want to document what we did just in case I needed to fix this again in the future. But my notes tend to involve details like "go to the three dots in the upper right corner of the screen next to the two little intersecting boxes."   It takes a while. And in Olof s case, often several Scotches. He has always asserted that when I die, he was going to insert a multi-pack of those yellow lined pads into my coffin for my use in the hereafter. In his dream of the hereafter, somebody else is helping me with my technical problems who is not him. And now it looks like it could be ChatGPT.

ChatGPT and I spent many hours partly because it had to instruct me on how to do stuff like send it a screen shot of various windows I was looking at so he/she/it could see them. I didn't  know from screen shots but now I do! Ultimately, ChatGPT concluded that the solution was that I had to go multiple levels down into Settings and disable Google as a third-party permission site. And yes, that fixed it!

But as with anything technical, according to Universal Perversity Postulate no. 400: Every setting you change that fixes something disables/breaks something else. So far I haven't found out what that something is but I know it's coming. Because technology is inherently malicious and likes to torture old people.

One thing I found fascinating about ChatGPT is that it remembers you even if you accidentally click out of the page which is easy to do when you have two pages open at the same time. So, nice that you don t have to start all over again. But also profoundly creepy. It never forgets. Even if you'd like it to.

But here s the thing that still worries me: why did Google suddenly decide it needed access to my computer??? I know I didn't do anything to make that message and requirement suddenly appear. So I'm still holding out for the Clairvoyance command. That's your next assignment, ChatGPT.

 

Inga And Olof Audition For An IKEA commercial

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published September 14, 2026] 2026

My husband and I had only recently arrived in Stockholm for a two-year work assignment when I saw a casting call announcement seeking several different profiles for IKEA ads posted on the American Women's Club website by a local ad agency. Among the profiles: White couple in mid-50s with American accents (i.e. white male, mid 50s; and white female, mid 50s).  Casting director has expressed an interest in blond woman.

I mean, did this have our names on it or what? (Please note it said nothing about thin.)

Now Olof and I might have consumed a bottle of wine at dinner that night before we decided to apply. At the time, I was feeling like I had spent much of the last 20 years not seizing the day. In fact, usually the days had seized me. I had too often felt like I was just rehearsing for death. More and more, I kept wondering, what happened to the fearless girl who, forty years ago, on two weeks'  notice, didn't think twice about heading off to the equator in Brazil for a year without knowing a word of Portuguese.

While still legally under the influence, we forwarded our photos and bios to the agency.

We pretty much forgot about the ad until a week later when a casting lady from the ad agency asked us to come in that weekend to audition. I started to really worry. Did all the other blond Americans in Stockholm know something we didn't know? Was this one of those ads where they make fun of you? I called the lady back. "It's not a TV ad,"  she explained, "it's for a DVD that will be shown in our kitchen remodeling departments."   I emphasized that neither I nor Olof had even the remotest acting experience. "Not a problem,"  the casting lady said, "we're looking more for type. The script is about a couple who can't agree on what they want in their kitchen remodel."

"Golly,"  I said to Olof, recalling the nightmare that was our kitchen upgrade several years back, "I 'm not sure we could identify with that."

So, wearing attire that any mid-fifty-ish couple would wear if they were going to go fight about counter tops at IKEA, we took the subway to the casting office, signed all manner of forms in Swedish, indicated our vital statistics (I lied), indicated that we would not require vegetarian catering at the shoot (if selected), would allow them to cut and restyle our hair (if selected), agreed to the salary (if selected), and were handed our scripts and profiles. The profiles were to help us get "in character." My profile was a Boston woman, age 56, grown son and daughter, who worked as a secretary for a large insurance company. I longed to live in the country but my husband didn't want the commute, so instead I was trying to give my urban home the warm cozy look I fantasized it would have outside the city. I was very, very particular about things, but also a relaxed person. ("We're dead already,"  whispered Olof, reading the "relaxed" part. My profile character was an avid reader of Jane Austen novels. My profile photo looked far older than I thought I did at the time, but then, if I were my correct weight, I'd have looked 90.

Olof, meanwhile, was my 55-year-old husband (why was he younger???) who managed a company that installed alarms for construction companies. But when he got home from work, he loved to relax by cooking ("Now we re really dead," I whispered to Olof, whose cooking skills consisted of boil-a-bags and deli take-out.) Olof s character also loved to read nature magazines and could expound for hours on butterflies. ("Pretend it's computers,"  I whispered.) Alas, I feared I had sat next to Olof's character at more than one dinner party in La Jolla.

The scripts and profiles were clearly written by Swedes. I took one look at my script and began re-writing it. I don't know anyone who says, "I want generous counter tops, big enough to bake on anyway."   Olof refused to rehearse with me, wanting to be spontaneous. Or, simply refusing to have to say his treacly dialogue one more time than he needed to.

We were summoned into the audition room and had head shots and profile shots and middle-distance shots taken of ourselves (you can suck in stomachs but not, alas, chins.) Then we each had to talk into the camera and say who we were, our age, what we did for a living etc. Then we rehearsed.

The casting lady (who was extremely nice, by the way) told me to slow down. "No one really talks that fast,"  she said. Olof stifled a smirk. Inga did not stifle a quick kick to Olof's ankle. Then we shot several takes, looking at each other, or at the camera. The script, as it was written, read:

Woman (inspired): I want it to be spacious and light. Only genuine materials, preferably oak,   even covering the washing machine! [WTF?] Generous counter tops, big enough to bake on anyway, cupboards with inside lighting.

Husband (looking a bit surprised): I prefer stainless steel. It's practical and modern. And good looking too. Why must we always be so traditional? (Husband continues dreaming:) In contrast to that, we could have some fresh colours? [sic]

Woman: But it has to be cozy! I would love to have a large dining table placed in the center of the kitchen.

Husband: No, no, a kitchen island! We've definitely got to have a kitchen island!

Woman (dejected): All right, you can have your kitchen island as long as you do the cooking!

Husband: No problem!

By the third take, we had taken considerable license with the script trying to make it sound like two actual human beings instead of Robo-woman and Chewbacca. Actually, Olof did really well in my opinion. I did far less well in my opinion. But we both had fun and it was not every day we got to do this. Could there be anything more Swedish than being in an IKEA commercial?

And no, we didn't get the parts. But I concluded I definitely had a future as an IKEA ad writer.

 The flagship IKEA store in Kungens Kurva near Stockholm

Being Thwarted by Swedish Appliances: Part 2

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published September 7, 2026] 2026

Last week I wrote about our first week of a two-year work assignment in Stockholm where we found ourselves completely stymied by both our stove and the apartment's bedding. But the real challenges were to come with laundry. 

Like most Stockholm apartment buildings, ours had a laundry room in the basement. The important concept was that one doesn't just show up in the laundry room and start stuffing one's clothes into a machine. Unlike most U.S. apartment laundry rooms, which tend to be free-for-alls, the ever-organized Swedes have this down to their usual egalitarian science: you sign up for laundry time. During that time, the laundry room is yours, and yours alone, and should someone be so callous and depraved to dare to do their laundry in someone else's time slot, the building's residents are legally entitled to take him (and it would be a him) out to the woods and feed him to the bears. Well, maybe not legally entitled, but the polis would not only look the other way, but would probably be out rounding up the bears. 

So rigid was the laundry system when we were there that we were advised that "it's my laundry time" was a nationally-accepted excuse to get out of pretty much anything.

But we were fortunate - or so we thought - that our apartment came with small (very small) stackable washer and dryer units. Would that we could make any sense of them at all.

The directions on the laundry soap box said that for a "three to five kilogram load" (um, okay) to put in sixty milliliters of detergent. We had no clue how much sixty milliliters was. A cup? Half a cup? Half the box? Fortunately I'd brought a dual American-metric measuring cup from San Diego which I d intended for cooking. Turns out sixty milliliters is only about a quarter of a cup, which I duly measured out and poured in. You definitely don't want to dare a front-loading machine.

 Our Oko-Lavamat 62600 must have been the Ferrari of mini-machines. On the far left side was a dial whose options were: Blötläggn, Tömning, Förtvätt, Fläckar, Huvudtvätt, Snabbtvätt, Sköljning, Mjuksköljn, and Centrifug (must be spin?)

The next set of controls we figured had to be the temperature setting, as I knew kallt meant cold. We set it to 70 (Farenheit? Celsius?)

The third set of controls were labeled: Vittvätt, Kulortvätt (must be something about colored and white (vitt) stuff) but which?), Strykfritt, Fintvätt (maybe fine washables?) and Ylle (no clue whatever)

The FOURTH set of controls said: 1200, 1000, 700, 400, Sköljstopp. 

And (sob!) the last set is labeled: 12h, 8h, 4h, 2h.  Surely we can t be talking HOURS?

And finally a Till/Fran button which must (I hoped) be On/Off? 

My Swedish dictionary, which seemed to be missing half the words in the Swedish language, was no help. I randomly selected Huvudtvätt, pushed the Till/Fran and lo and behold, it began filling with water.

I should mention that we lived in Sweden in 2005 and 2006 when translation software was in its infancy. Now, of course, I could probably just take a photo of all these options and submit it to Chatgpt, which would not only translate and explain all the options, but recommend a setting. Maybe even fold the clothes afterwards. 

But if I thought the washer was a challenge, it was the dryer that totally undid us. While the washer had tons of word options, the dryer had almost no words on it at all, just lots of symbols. The first set was divided into two sections the first of which looks like a flower? Underneath it was a series of little rectangles notched in different ways with numbers next to them, then one that looked like an iron and another that looks like a teardrop. Next to it is a symbol of what? A water pitcher? Some more little notched rectangles were under that symbol too. The next panel has a Start button (oh, thank you! thank you!) but next to it were three more buttons with symbols: A sun setting behind clouds. A letter R. A bell (or maybe it's a nose?). This machine should be a graduate school entrance exam. Of course, I wouldn't get in.

Knowing that if all else failed, I could do timed dry, I plunked the laundry into the dryer and opted for the flower and one of the rectangles and hit Start. It started right up, but I noticed a short time later that it had stopped and the laundry was still wet.

No matter how many times I ran the dryer on any settings, the clothes remained soaking wet and about 500 degrees. Seriously, you could sustain serious burns just touching your own laundry. I longed for Permanent Press but all I could make my dryer do was timed fry.

I was finally able to accost a woman in our building to help me decode my dryer. I should note that our Swedish neighbors in the building were initially wary of us, Americans having a reputation of showing up at your door with muffins and intruding on your personal space. She kept asking me if I was emptying the "reservoir."   What reservoir? It turns out that the dryer could not be vented on the exterior because of its location in the apartment and hence had a small water tank which collected water from one's apparel as it dried it. But once it was full, nothing was going to dry any further until you emptied it. Which, by the way, you had to do a LOT. You couldn't just go out to lunch and leave the thing or you'd come back to wet radioactive socks. 

Thor forbid there should be any label on the machine indicating it was concealing a water tank inside the front panel. Accessing this reservoir was reminiscent of the hidden compartments of Nancy Drew books of my youth; you just had to know it was there. And when you pressed the magic (invisible) spot, voilà, the door popped open and you could remove the water tank and empty it in the sink.

But for the first week, we were drying all our clothes on a bunk bed ladder in our apartment and trying to avoid third degree burns.

Mastering the laundry facilities in our apartment was a huge boon to our quality of life. But we had no idea how much more we still had to learn.

Stay tuned for Sweden Stories Part 3 next week.

 

The hidden reservoir was finally discovered

But you had to empty it A LOT

Meanwhile, we were air drying our clothes

Our washing machine controls were a total mystery