I can not, however, do much in regards to technology.
We all have skills. Mine just don't fall along the lines of the latest tech gadgets.
I have a smart phone, but there are icons on it (are they even called icons?) that are foreign to me. I thought it was the coolest thing ever when I learned I could turn my camera sound off. I still haven't figured out how to look at contact information without calling a person at the same time. I occasionally install apps I think will be useful and then delete them when my eyes cross trying to understand them. I thought I was oh so organized when I started using my phone calendar until I missed a dentist appointment. I very quickly went back to the paper calendar sitting on my desk, and as long as I remember to turn the page on Sunday, there have been no more missed appointments or reminders.
Apps like Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, and whatever the hell RSS Feed means make me bang my head against whatever screen I'm looking at. I really, truly, do not understand these things. I know, I know, EVERYONE uses one or all of them, and having teenagers, you would think I would get with the program. But what do these things do that I don't already do? (Did I just use the word "do" too many times there? Blame the espresso) I know everything I've learned about blogging says I should also link this blog to Twitter and Instagram accounts, but I'm wondering WHY?
Start with Twitter. From the little I know about it, it's just random status updates with hashtags. Isn't that Facebook? Minus the hashtags, unless you like hashtags. With cheese and onions. I prefer mine with hot sauce as well. Wait...hashbrowns.
Then Instagram, which if I've looked over my daughter's shoulders enough times (I can't keep track of all these apps she's showing me), it's a photo feed. I think. I know I see photo after photo scrolling by. But then I see the same photos on Facebook. And it seems you can link your Instagram account with Facebook, so you could see the same photos in two places. Unless I'm totally wrong, because like I admitted from the start, I'm a complete moron when it comes to this kind of thing.
And then SnapChat. This is the one my daughter keeps bugging me to get. I keep asking her how this compares to just sending a photo with a text message, and I admit, I tune her out when she starts babbling about why it's so much better. But all I hear are pictures delete once you've viewed them and then I think, if the picture's worth viewing, why isn't it worth viewing more than once? Or for more than ten seconds, or however long it's set to?
What ARE these things? And why do they confuse me so much? Why do I just do all of the above on either a text message or Facebook and say "good enough"? What kind of fantastic benefits of technology am I ignoring or just not seeing?
I feel pretty accomplished when I can manage to program our thermostat for the week. I recently did this at work and I felt like throwing a party when I arrived at work the next day and didn't have to adjust anything. Have I done this on our home thermostat? No, but that has more to do with my hatred of closing windows, which is an entirely different thing I may rant about some day.
I know how to operate about five buttons on our remote control, and even though the TV remote should operate several other pieces of equipment, I just feel better grabbing that old DVD remote and hitting those buttons. And this is where the problem of technology seems to be coming to a head around here. Living in the sticks limits our options as far as TV viewing goes. Satellite is the only thing available, and we had it for quite some time, but I noticed that our favorite channels would require paying for hundreds of channels we didn't want. I dumped that shit, after getting tired of the "nothing's on" and the endless rotation of channel flipping.
I made the switch to streaming video, with Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon, which in my doofus tech brain meant alot of trial and error trying to figure out how to register devices and a bunch of gobbldigook I didn't understand. We're stuck with DSL in this godforsaken land, so there have been moments of kicking kids off the WiFi, but in general, I was happy about it.
Until the TV complaints started. I guess our TV is old. Because it doesn't have an HDMI input. I have absolutely no clue what that means. I do know that more often than not, our streaming gets interrupted and seems wonky. See how tech savvy I am? I use words like "wonky" to describe it. I'm almost to the point of not being able to use Hulu at all, and Netflix hiccups on me quite a bit. I chalk it up to living in the boonies, but my family seems to think that a new TV with HDMI input will help. But these are the same people who try to explain things like Twitter and SnapChat to me, so obviously, I have my doubts.
What I do NOT doubt is that my TV holds pretties. Because it's a big behemoth dinosaur with a flat top.
So of course, all that runs through my brain is where do the pretties go? And then, second, and what's probably more important, is wondering how in the hell a TV that took the huffing and puffing of two grown big men to get in the house is going to get OUT of the house? Even if it's free, is anyone really going to WANT this dinosaur? Because really, with no HDMI input, which everyone seems to know about but me, what's it really worth other than entertainment of shoving it out the front door like and unwanted dead mouse corpse? And let's be real, it's HEAVY...there's no shoving of anything, no entertainment in watching it fly off a curb, and for the sake of all that is holy, it HOLDS PRETTIES.
So, here I sit, trying to ignore the TV dilemma. Maybe I'll just go find myself an ancient VCR and hook that sucker up to the brontosauraTV. And try to figure out the VCR remote without having to use the universal remote. Or not.
I think I'll just go read a book instead.
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