I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Technology Horror



Letting A Certain 'Fruit' Into My House

I really don't know what happened to me. I used to be one of those people fearless around technology. I could take apart two or three computers and put the best of the parts together into a better working computer. I fixed things, lots of things. Of course I was kind of an idiot-savant about it. People would say "Wow it works, how did you do that?" I had absolutely no idea. I just knew that if I tinkered with it, it might take an hour or two, but it would work. Then came age, new technologies, certain electronic items with fruit on them, and, the greatest horror of all, fibro fog.

I can't fix a damn thing now. When we got a new modem system for our current computer, my hubby had to put it together. When something's wrong with it and it won't 'go', yup, he fixes it. He says 'Didn't you used to...' and I always just put up a hand 'cause he should know by now that my brain is pudding and anything that plugs in is no longer in my brain capacity.


Why am I whining now? Ah, there's the rub. My very kind mother has been searching for the right 'gadget' to help her with listening to books she can no longer read very well (fibro runs in the family I'm afraid, and eyesight and being able to concentrate on printed pages goes quickly) and hasn't quite found what she needs yet. That means I've been able to acquire, thanks to her generosity, a micro, uh, something that's supposed to do all kinds of neat stuff (still working on the 'turning it on' part) and now today, sigh. Yes, a certain fruit is now present in my home. We won't speak of brands and debate pluses and minuses, she got it, can't use it and now I have it, okay?

So I look at this... gadget. My hubby and I have tried hard to pass by the new generation of 'gotta have 'ems' - we've even kept our dumbphones (which work just fine) for over six years now. We don't WiFi, we don't take our, uh, portable tablet on vacation to hold it out of the sunroof to video the nature we refuse to get out of the car for (actually saw this happen), we don't Facebook from our phones, no Twitter, heck, I wouldn't have this simple blog if a very nice young man hadn't shown me how to get it started (thank you again Tim). What I'm trying to say is that it is almost 2013 and we are technologically in the 1990's. And want to stay that way.

So, how does one open it? Not in the instructions. Children, it took me, no exaggeration, at least 20 minutes to figure that out. I touched it and it turned on. Eeep! Now it wants me to set up a WiFi account.... NO NO NO!!! OFF OFF OFF how do you turn it off? Instructions stupid. Oh yeah, touch this, slide that, off. Whew. That's the extent of my lessons on that particular item for today. Setting up accounts at a certain store to get certain apps will have to wait... a while. I'm still afraid to try to turn it on again...

Oh and by the way, thank you mom - I'm not being ungrateful, just very, very confused.