Why do techonological advances make my life more difficult

I have the latest version of Office on my laptop. That's what the University is currently running and so I get it for free. They've made a lot of changes and even though I do love that it keeps my references in a database for me, that's about the only thing I like at the moment. Last summer I submitted an abstract for a conference using the old version of Word. Now I'm trying to create the presentation for that conference. All I want to change is the labels on my graphs from my abstract submission. Just in case you didn't know, tables and graphs get a lot of attention at these conferences. Sometimes I think they're the only thing that gets paid any attention. By the end of the conference I walk through the poster sessions and if there's a bunch of words, but no table/graph then I have tendency to walk on. I'm just too brain-dead at that point to process what they wrote. Sad isn't it? However, this new version of Office won't let me change what I want. Nor will it let me make a new chart in Power Point. It links me to some internal excel file and then has crazy built in formulas that I can't seem to get rid of. Arggh!!!!! Not to mention that they're new way of selecting your graph format won't let me get rid of the internal axis lines. I can't have internal axis lines. Have they not read the APA manual? Grrr. I want my old version of Office back where you could click on the label and just type in the new name. Sigh.

Problem with getting appliances all at the same time

I think appliances are deliberately designed to have a certain life span. The problem with this is that if all appliances are from the same company and purchased at the same time then they can all die at the same time as well. As a result, on Valentine's Day, our oven died. The dishwasher had already been dying for a little while. The microwave followed shortly after the oven (when Mike tried to show his sister-in-law how it was starting to break and succeeded in completely breaking it). Just for good measure the garage door opener broke the next morning. All of this was preceded by our upstairs vacuum cleaner dying the week before.
Fortunately we hadn't already made plans for how to spend our tax return money. Now, after lots of shopping and Mike's haggling, we have a new range, a new microwave, and a new dishwasher. It's nice because they're all the modern stainless steel kind and it really updated the look of our kitchen. My favorite is our dishwasher splurge. We went up a level on the dishwasher and got the kind that is super quiet and can tell how much dirt is still in the water so that it only washes it as long as necessary and saves water and energy. Being kind to the planet always makes me happier. Plus I'm so happy when I unload the dishwasher and the dishes are actually clean. It's been the first time in my life that I've been excited to do the dishes and run the dishwasher. And as an extra bonus Mike's father came to visit and found a kit to fix our garage door opener and was able to fix our vacuum as well. For the time being all is well in the world of our appliances. We're going to enjoy it while it lasts.