Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Who Says Tech Stuff is Only For The Young? I Figured Out Two New Contraptions in One Week!!

Since the kids no longer live with us, I'm the resident techie in the house, but I generally avoid trying something new. 

Decades ago, I used to have a rule before using any new appliance, whether blender, stove etc to always thoroughly read all instructions, warnings and more.  I wouldn't turn anything on until I could pass a test.  In recent years, I've stopped doing it.  I rarely even glance at the instruction sheets.  There are three basic reasons. 
  • One is that I no longer understand what's written in those booklets or multi-lingual, when lucky, sheets of paper.
  • Two is that many high-tech things have "menus" that pop up displaying what to do, or the buttons on the machines are pretty simple, simpler than the written instructions.
  • Three is that machines are so complicated there's no way to memorize what to do.  It's best to just "guess" and get used to it.  I think it's called being an "intuitive" user, using intuition, rather than actual knowledge.
I've had a collection of appliances to "plug in" and get to know.  They've been sitting around collecting dust.  We haven't watched a DVD for ages, ever since ours died, so we bought one in the duty free at the airport late June on our way to NY.  There's also a new modem and a second-hand printer/fax/scanner.  A couple of weeks ago, my husband was given one of those "media-listening devices" by someone after he led them on a tour.  I claimed it as mine, since he had one which he got as a present for his 60th. 

As I wrote, they were all gathering dust, that is until I began trying to figure out the Q3.  I couldn't use the instructions, because they were in Korean only and couldn't find any on the internet, but I was determined.  Yes, I succeeded!  I can now listen to my Matan shiurim, all the free ones.

And encouraged by that success, I plugged in the DVD and must admit that it took just a few minutes.

There's more here waiting for me, but I have to go now.

Hah! Watch out kiddies!  I'm not dead yet!!!

2 comments:

Chanalesings said...

I say always be two steps ahead of the kiddies but never let them know it!

Batya said...

At this point, they can't keep on dropping things to help, so I have to do it myself.