"No, it's SHEET music!" (Butting heads with technology, Part 34,322)

The BBQ Pit
41

I was once on a phone call to a friend halfway across the country. I was telling her about this cool new game I had gotten, MS Flight Simulator. I started playing the game while we were talking, and I said I would fly from my airport to hers (Logan to Ocala, FL). While I was playing, we kept on talking. When I finally “got to” Ocala, I told her that I was looking for the airport there.

“Can you see my house?”
“Uh… Wha?”
“Can you see my house? It should be right below you.”
“No, it doesn’t really work that way. It’s just a simulation.”
“Hold on… I’m going outside to wave at you.” sound of screen door slamming “Can you see me waving? Ooh, I see a plane! Is that you?”

42

Alright already…a mom (or mum) checking in here! Thanks to all of you who have helped us get even marginally tech-literate. Remember we are the ones who just had pencils and paper in grade school! :eek:

When my daughter left for college I knew I had to get email at home. Until then I had only used it at work…and I kid you not, had no idea how to make it work at home. Hard to believe now, but true.

My husband had a friend from Ga Tech’s IS department come over to our house and “fix me up” and when he finished and had gotten a good grasp of my “tech skills” or lack thereof, he sent the following email to my daughter:

“Hey Amylizz, your mom is now on the super-information highway! Be gentle with her…she is riding a bicycle!”

Here’s to all the moms (mums) and dads…and to all of our smart progeny who help us out!

:slight_smile:

43

My father has been programming and networking for as long as I can remember. He started programming when they were still using punch cards (he still has few of them). He knows what he is doing. He knows how computers work and does very well with them.

He works a lot with mainframes and has a rather severe case of “MyTechnologyIsDying-itis”. He will not even attempt to find an answer for any problem he has in Windows that is not blindingly obvious. He is a very computer literate man, but will not change with the times. He refuses to search knowledge bases or FAQs. He would rather call me everytime because he knows that I can generally answer his questions or fix whatever problem he may have. I love my father dearly, and wouldn’t mind helping him once in a while. But he is very intelligent man and has vast computer experience. He can fix these things himself. I just hate having 90% of all of our phone conversations revolve around his PC problems.

44

Most modern businesses still call to confirm receipt of faxes. If you’re sending an important document over, it’s best you have an actual human name to bring up when they later claim the never got your memo or invoice or advertising copy.

45

Psst…Miller, your serial port is open…

46

What I mean is, someone who uses a computer a lot doesn’t really think about how to use a mouse because it’s ingrained. When the buttons suddenly do the opposite of what you expect it takes time to get used to it, because all the other ten thousand times you used a mouse it did what you wanted it to.

47

Hey, if it works for Underoos…

48

My mom loves taking pictures. I’m sure you have one of these in your family - the one who drives everyone else crazy by insisting that we constantly pose for pictures instead of doing whatever it is we’ve actually come to do. Somebody convinced her to get a digital camera and a PC with a CD burner. It actually makes sense, as she spent thousands of dollars a year in photo development fees. Her first experience using the digital camera was on a 10 day trip to Alaska. She took 576 Mb worth of pictures. She called me to help her transfer the pictures to her hard rive and then to a CD. No biggie, she’s close by and I don’t mind helping. I laboriously took her step-by-step through the process while she manned the PC and made notes. The next week she called me at home. Seems she had lost her notes and had another card full of pictures she wanted on CD. OK, I drove over and repeated the proces. The next week, same thing. She just can’t catch on to moving files from a card to her hard drive and then to CD.

The bad part:
She wants to tell me about each individual picture while we go through the process.

The good part:
I usually get pizza put of the deal.

The bad part:
That I’ll be there long enough to decide what kind of pizza, order it, receive it, and eat it.

49

Doctor Jackson, have you considered setting her up with batch or macro automation, so she could just put the card in, insert a blank CD, and click one shortcut? Or do you need the pizza? :smiley:

50

When I’m getting ready to fax something, I still sometimes find myself thinking I should make an extra copy for myself.

My kids, who have been raised on VCRs and DVDs, seem to have the reverse problem. They just don’t see why I can’t make the oldies station play “Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog” one more time. (They also occasionally ask me to pause a song so we can finish it after we get out of the grocery store.)

51

Ah…still, I shouldn’t have to tell them 3-4 times in a 5-minute period, though.

Well, I guess I do. :slight_smile:

52

I walked in on my older sister ‘teaching’ Mum to use the internet - all I could hear in an exasperated tone was “LET.GO.OF.THE.MOUSE!”
Apparently, Mum, who is very open to technology, if not quick to learn how to use it, was clicking willy nilly on just about everything, all these screens were opening up and she had no idea what was happening.
Mum has always been a little heavy handed, and assumed that if nothing seems to be happening, you just click again. When we were teenagers, she used to come in our rooms, push every button that she could find on the stereo to turn the noise off. I think my sister did well to get her this far with internet use, she is 74.

53

Actually I still have to explain to my mum that she doesn’t need to double-click everything. Although now I’ve got her onto XP, her multiple windows are slightly more manageable.

54

My Mom has a long and storied history of computer mishaps. She’ll say things like “I put my RAM in my C prompt”. Every time she crashes her web browser, she gets herself a new ISP. I can’t keep track of her email 'cause her name switches so often.

She was complaining that the Word knockoff (Notepad?) that came with her computer kinda sucked. So I told her to go to msn.com & download Word, figuring it might well be free & would probably be cheap. It worked fine, she called me the next day to celebrate her eureka moment, only she kept referring to it as “Loading Down”. “I was loading down the software!”.

55

Whatever you do, don’t make this page her home page:

Shut off the Internet

56

Heh, that’s funny. I made that my homepage for my SD profile.

57

Are you my long-lost twin? Is there something my dad needs to tell me?

58

Haha - that’s HORRIBLE! :smiley:

And of course my boss happens to come over towards my computer just after I did it… :eek:

59

I noticed that the effect doesn’t work so well in Mozilla when I tried it at home. First you have to enable popups on that site just to see anything after you click the button, and even then the message shows in a window, which kinda ruins it.

60

My mom cannot grasp the concept of a montage sequence, in a movie or a TV show.

Scene: My sister’s house, 1990. “Dirty Dancing” is one of my sister’s favorite movies, so that’s what we’re watching. The montage sequence comes on, with “Baby” learning to dance so she can fill in for Penny. So we see her in different outfits. We see her in different settings and at different times of day. We see her dancing alone, and with Johnny, and with Penny. And most importantly, we see her display an increasing level of grace and proficiency.

My mom: “I don’t see how she’ll get good enough to do the act if this is all the practicing she’s doing.”

I begin to do a slow burn. I’ve been through this before, you see, all the way back to the Brady Bunch episode where the kids went on the talent show, and my mom said the same thing then.

Me: “Mom? Do you think this is taking place in real time?”

Mom: “What do you mean, real time? It’s a movie!”

Me: “I mean, can’t you tell that we’re looking at days’ worth of rehearsing? Do you think the whole movie is going to be about her practicing? Can’t you see that she’s getting BETTER as they go along?”

Sis: “You saw her in like six different outfits so far! And when this started, she could barely do the moves—”

Mom: “But we’ve only seen five minutes of this! LESS than five minutes! You can’t learn to dance in five minutes!”

Me: “Mom…In ‘Gone With the Wind’, don’t you think it took longer in real life for Sherman’s army to burn Atlanta than it did in the movie?”

Mom: “…Well, I don’t care. I still don’t see how she’s going to be good enough to do the act.”

Me and sis: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: