Like Mandi, I spent the last week with family, cruising around an area decidedly more "wooded" than NYC. But while she avoided the Internet in Vermont with one relative (click here for her report), I slurped my way through California wine country with three. This is just one way in which Annie Barrett is a little cooler than Mandi Bierly (WHOA: We should have an ongoing tug-of-war in this vein! But digitally, on PopWatch…ix-nay on any sort of physical effort, obviously.)
Anyway, on our flight back east, the noise level was so intense that my dad needed to use my mom’s iPod Nano to avoid having a breakdown. But like a frazzled PopWatch editor trying to dissuade Slezak from writing another post about Fantasia, it just wasn’t that easy. Enter…this:
HANDWRITTEN NOTE
It’s the HANDWRITTEN NOTE my mom passed to my dad across the expansive, two-foot aisle of row 16. I just thought it was amazing and had to post it on my first day back.
What’s the most basic technological instruction you’ve had to explain to the tragically unhip? Quick, scribble your story down on a scrap of looseleaf paper and pass it on!
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I had to show my then-80-year-old mom how to use an electronic calculator.
Mom, when you download something, make a mental note of where it is you’re telling it to save to. That way you don’t have to go hunting for it afterward.
My co-worker “to send a text, select SMS text”
+ I once had to walk my dad through attaching an email to send me my homework. It took about 20 minutes, because I couldn’t picture where the “Send” button was and he couldn’t find it on the screen.
+ My friend’s mom triple clicks instead of double clicks and nothing ever opens, so she screams at the computer in Chinese.
When we bought my grandmother a new tv/dvd/vhs combo, I had to write down the instructions for how to play movies (which are on a piece of looseleaf paper, taped to the inside of her tv cabinet…too bad I don’t have a picture). For the VHS, the instructions are “Push in the tape and it will start playing on its own.”
She still only watches movies when we come over because she thinks it is too confusing.
My personal favorite is trying to explain double-clicking to someone who’s never used a mouse before. The first couple times they try it, it’s always like an eternity between the clicks. They never understand that you have to do the clicks in quick succession, even though it seems so obvious to anyone with a remedial knowledge of computers. Then once you explain that you have to do it fast, they grip the mouse way too tight to gear up for their double-clicking adventure and inevitably end up moving the mouse all over the place, which results in either icons being dragged across the screen or them clicking on empty spaces or something entirely different from what they were trying to click on. It’s frustrating/funny every time.
I had to explain to my mother last week what a blog was, even though she reads them all the time. It was hard to define it without using blog in the definition as either a noun or verb.
I had to put down instructions to my mother and father on how to work the DVR for DirecTV. It included instructions like, “Push play (big, round, black button).”
My mom is a lot more technologically hip than most, but sometimes she gets frazzled. When trying to play something on our DVR, every once in awhile I have to remind her how and that the ‘big triangle button means play.’
I always have to type detailed instructions for my mom to work the tv/dvr/dvd when we leave town. The list also includes the channel numbers of her favorite channels so she can find her “shows.” However, i always leave off the religious channel she watches and tell her we don’t get that channel, even tho we do.
Oh Lord…every time my in-laws visit my husband has to tape little handwritten instructions to each of our three TV remotes so that they can actually watch TV. We tried explaining the TiVo remote, but it was just too much. The bad part is that we have to leave the little notes on the remotes until they leave to go home, so anytime you use a remote there’s an annoying little piece of paper dangling from the bottom.
Hubby used to teach a beginning computer class for senior citizens. Among the hilarity, attempting to differentiate “click” from “right click” and issues with “click on the (blank)” when mice inevitably were moved to the screen for clicking.
My mother calls me with computer issues all the time, so we’ve gone through it all, but the time I had to walk her through checking all the connections on the back to make sure the mouse was attached was no easy task.
The worst with my parents is alarm systems. At my previous place, you had to stand still when turning it on because of the motion dectector and my Dad would always bob and weave trying to read the numbers. Worse was when my sister-in-law was about to birth a couple of months after moving into the new place. My parents drove down to watch my niece and they called me to get the alarm code for the house (‘how am I suppose to know? I never been there!’)
I work with volunteers and each of them has to use Excel to put the number of hours they serve into the computer. We wrote a step by step instruction guide to do this (basically adding information into 4 cells each time) My favorite was
1. Double click on your file; double clicking is hitting the left button on the mouse two times, really fast.
I still get asked what double click means.
As a public librarian, I am always asked how to cut,copy, and paste on to a WORD document. I show the people whom have asked this question that the left button on the mouse is for highlighting and the right is to cut,copy and paste. They STILL don’t get it. :-\
My mother types up her quilting group’s monthly newsletter, and has called both me and my cousin more than once to be reminded how to save a document.
Also, I worked with a woman who had only used a computer at work, and was connected tot he printer in my room. A year later, she bought a computer for her home,and came in to my room’s printer looking for a doc she printed out–she thought that it was she, not the comuter, that was connected to my network.
My husband was recently asked to show an adult friend of the family how to use an iPod she had purchased months ago. During their tutorial, a window popped up, and he told her to move it to the side of the screen. She asked how. He showed her how to click on the title bar and drag the window around, and she went berserk – screaming in delight, and even calling her son into the room to show him what she had learned to do.
Wow.
My 83 year old grandfather got WebTV about 6 years ago and last year upgraded to a sweet desktop. So for the past year I have been helping him with silly little things like sending emails, uploading pics from his digital cameras (yes he has 2), and other basic things. He is so cute and hip! He forgets things and I help him write down instructions, but he keeps these things in an old planner from 1993. there is no order at all so he can never find the instructions!
My boyfriend’s mother just got a desktop and can not figure out the computer for the life of her. I set up a gmail account for her. She can not remember her username (her name) and her password (her birthday). I have written both of these things down for her numerous times. I have also had to go over capitalization with her (the shift key) about 5 times, the fifth being last night. She does not know how to search the web either and does not understand that if she wants to go to a website she needs to type it into the white bar at the top of the page. I don’t get frustrated though because I find it comical (as does she).
Hahaha. These comments rule! I think we can all relate to the long gap in between the double clicks, with a first-timer. It’s like watching a baby fall over again and again. STOP IT!
To get help with an application, use the Help menu.
I once was telling someone they needed to right-click something, and they started typing C-L-I-C-K. They wrote click. I was flabbergasted.
I showed my boss how to select the page setup in Microsoft word. This guy knows every keystroke shortcut known to man, but didn’t know you could convert page sizes from the European size to the American size so you’re not printing a press release on 11×17 paper. Not unhip, but this is the same person who refuses to use the menu bar for ANYTHING!
My 12 year old stepkid is really very tech-savvy. Sometimes she gets ahead of herself, though. Last night, she wanted to watch a movie on the computer and insisted that the DVD player wasn’t working. I wrote the following instructions: 1. Put in the DVD. 2. Don’t click anything! The DVD will start by itself! She gets so anxious to click on stuff that she ends up freezing the computer.
Bless my mother – she hilarious on e-mail. She writes everything like it’s a postcard, not wanting to use up too much space. In terms of teaching her things, it has taken years to master attaching documents. Or, understanding that once a document is sent, it does not physically leave your computer. And, the idea that you can access e-mail from an online account (Yahoo, gmail, etc.) can be done at any computer, not just your home computer. I had to draw a picture that symbolized e-mail world where there were many points to access it.
Right-clicking the mouse. My Dad kept saying “There’s nothing on the right side of the screen to click on!”
Explaining to my mother in VERY layman’s terms how to connect to a wireless hotspot over the phone while I was walking down the street without a computer infront of me. Good times.
to numerous co-workers: the computer has to be plugged in to work.
Every single time my mom uses my cell phone, I have to remind her to “put the number in first” and then “press the green button”. If I don’t, she will sit there with the number in the phone waiting for a connection. I’ve tried the “green means go” thing, but it just doesn’t stick. Oh well…I love her anyway!
Twice a year, at the beginning and end of DST, I have to reset my MIL’s digital watch. She’s fairly tech-savvy, but for whatever reason, she can’t remember the steps for changing the time.