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<p>Moms and software! Gads!</p>
<p>My aunt told me that her email address was “Alice Suzuki dot com”. (Name changed to protect the clueless.) I tried gently asking her, “Are you sure there’s not an ‘at’ symbol or maybe the name of a service like Hotmail or Yahoo?” No, she insisted, obviously irritated with my persistent questions, her email address was “Alice Suzuki dot com”. Lordy.</p>
<p>D called, “Mom, what kind of steak should I buy?” “Why is it so expensive??” “How should I prepare it?” “Shall I just buy the cheapest cut? It’s so much less than the most expensive one!”</p>
<p>D also called, “My computer died.”
Us: “What are the symptoms?”
D “Black screen, nothing happens when you push the button to turn it on.”
We & S tried (unsuccessfully) to salvage contents of hard drive, but it really was totally fried. :(</p>
<p>Called S: "How do we turn on the shared contraption you got us that has the taped shows we want to watch?
S; “Did you turn it on? What happened?”
Us: “Yes, we turned it on but nothing happens with the contraption & it seems to have crashed.” Eventually, we just gave it up & used the jump drive plugged directly into our largest monitor to watch. None of us have figured out why the contraption crashed or how to fix it; will let S fix it when he comes home for Christmas.</p>
<p>I called S1 with a computer issue. He replied with this: [xkcd:</a> Tech Support Cheat Sheet](<a href=“http://xkcd.com/627/]xkcd:”>xkcd: Tech Support Cheat Sheet)
It is now affixed to my monitor. :)</p>
<p>D takes a photography class that uses SLR camera with this stuff called film. Using skype to explain how to load the film, pretty hilarious. Turns out the shutter was faulty, so she had a reason to be frustrated.</p>
<p>My sister called my house one night at quarter to midnight. I went to hear what was so important for her to call so late on a weeknight. She dropped an earring down the bathroom sink. This was not a family heirloom, the pair was worth like $30. My dad tells her about the nut on the trap but she doesn’t understand, so they wind up skyping. As I listen, I hear him instruct her to get a wrench to unscrew the nut, and then, “No, those are pliers.”</p>
<p>Once he hung up after she successfully retrieved her earring, along with several others that weren’t hers, I told him that he failed as a father.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Had to call my mom yesterday to ask her how to use the stove (I turn 17 in a week and this was my first time using it alone. The most complicated things I make are microwavable). It was hard boiled eggs and it took me over an hour in the end.</p></li>
<li><p>This is really sad considering I’m the techie kid in the family: Had to ask my dad how to watch our TV. With my little brother’s 5 million game consoles plugged in, it takes literally 5 remotes and 4 different box systems connected to the TV that I have to go through every single time I want to use that particular TV. I call my dad every time because I can never remember the combination of buttons and knobs to press.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Had to tell my parents that they need to push in the clutch in order to start my car. (They drove stick shift in Europe for 30 years and somehow forgot that you need to clutch in to start the car?)</p>
<p>Most American cars are automatics, so it was probably a surprise to them that you didn’t have one. I haven’t driven a standard for decades myself, tho that was what I drove in grad school, on the few times I did drive.</p>
<p>The alttext on that xkcd is the best part!</p>
<p>born2dance, if they have that much stuff hooked up you might want to look into them getting a Logitech harmony remote. I think I got mine for about 60 dollars on sale. Best universal remote of them all. I have a button that says Watch tv, I have watch blu ray, I have Play Wii, and I have Play PS3. When you push either of those three buttons it changes the inputs from what they are at currently to what they need to be at, turning off all the unrequired components in the mean time. Quite genious really. You plug it into your computer via USB and tell it what devices you have and then you just update your Remote via usb and it’s now programmed.</p>
<p>Well, we hail from SoCal. So we get the call from S in the dead of an Evanston winter. “Hey Mom, do you know how to unfreeze a bike lock?”</p>
<p>We had an earlier call when he was in the process of purchasing a the used bike.</p>
<p>Both of these calls were legit, especially the second as H is pretty knowledgable about bikes, so why not go to a good source? Plus, we’d agreed to pay a reasonable price for said bike.</p>
<p>College freshman son (700 miles away): “Mom, my laptop broke and I need to get it fixed, and I’m in the student union but I can’t find the room where you can go to get computer help. Can you look up the floorplan of this building online and then tell me whether I should turn left or right at the end of this hallway?”</p>
<p>Me: “Aren’t there people around? Just ask somebody!”</p>
<p>Son: “Yeah, there are people around, but I don’t want to look stupid!”</p>
<p>I was always having to call my kids or husband to find out how to watch TV/DVD. We have so many cables and remotes, it’s ridiculous. </p>
<p>Finally, they labeled everything for me. One of the remotes has a sticker on it that just says “Mom, don’t even touch this one.”</p>
<p>Crystal, don’t throw out the cheese, that’s expensive. Take it back to the store and get a new not moldy bag.</p>
<p>I feel so much better knowing I’m not the only one who has difficulties watching TV or a DVD or Netflix instant watch.</p>
<p>We have several “universal remotes” which don’t really make anything easier.</p>
<p>Just the other night I was able to get the picture on a Netflix instant watch, but no sound. Turns out I needed to turn something else on and get the sound through that, not the TV.</p>
<p>Very frustrating…I can imagine a cheat sheet being several pages long and not even covering every scenario.</p>
<p>Our sons still call us when they’re looking for something in a grocery store. It’s almost amazing (actually it’s reasonable when you think about it), that chain grocery stores are laid out in almost the same order. We’ve been able to get them to the right aisle, even to the point of telling them to look down for the item.</p>
<p>This isn’t a story about kids calling home for help, but it’s a pretty funny one about parents and technology:</p>
<p>My mom had recently gotten an iphone, which was a HUGE step up from her previous phone. On a long car trip, she still hadn’t figured out how to use it when we got stuck in traffic. So she takes her iphone and calls my Dad at home, asking him to “please google our way out of here” (we were lost in said traffic). When she hung up, I said, “Mom, you realize that you just used a small computer with a google maps app to call home, right…?”</p>
<p>She still denies it to this day :)</p>
<p>I will fess up to doing the phone call from the middle of nowhere, way before cell phones, in my just-post-college days. Going to visit my future in-laws for Christmas. They had just moved to AZ from NY, and we were coming from CA, having picked up now DH’s much-younger sister from school. We also had a cat in the car (long story). Apparently there were flash floods in AZ so our planned route was detoured; left us in the middle of the desert, late at night, no lights, no road signs, and no map in the car so we had no clue where anything was anyway. After much driving around we finally detected a faint glow in the sky, found a pay phone in a deserted rest area (still no maps). After calling in-laws to tell them we would be late, and establishing that they had no clue where we were either, we kept following the glow to Phoenix (we wanted to be near Flagstaff). I’m still boggled that we didn’t find any other towns along the way, and to this day I have no idea where we were.</p>
<p>Trying to explain to my 87-year-old mother where the “Reply” button is on her email. Also, trying to explain to her how to re-charge her ipod.</p>
<p>i have to coach my wife through the remote control to the TV frequently. We have direct TV that is routed through a multi-task receiver with 7.5 surround sound. A DVD and Ipod cradle are also included. There are 4 remote controls. The one that cuts the TV on looks like a dust-buster. I always begin by saying “Ok, do you see the dust-buster remote?” lol</p>