Does anyone else have a parent or in-laws that are dumb about technology? This is just a little rant, I alternate between laughing at them and wishing that there was a class I could put them in locally.
My in-laws are SO bad about anything new, I'm not into all the high tech stuff but they drive even me up the wall. They put off getting rid of their analog bag phone until they HAD to, since all I've heard about the phones is complaining. At first my MIL yelled at FIL constantly because he would open the phone and mess with it, she was sure it was costing minutes just to open it. 
We had been hopeful that FIL would quit calling everyone he knew to find out who had called once he had caller id on it but he STILL hasn't figured out how to check it and it's been at least two years. 
The latest was my MIL complaining that she keeps forgetting her phone at home because she's charging it, I asked why she didn't charge it and then turn it off and stick it in her purse if she wasn't using it at home and she asked me "won't it kill the battery?" 
They've been upset because they can't find an older movie at the stores they've been to and I found it on Amazon, my MIL told me that she couldn't order from them because she doesn't want her credit card number on the web. What she does is find places she can call an order in and then checks their websites for the stuff she wants and calls. Last year I finally convinced her that it was okay to use her Penney's card on their website and now that's the only one she'll use online, she gets mad at FIL for paying for his hunting tags and stuff online with one. If they want something really bad from one of these places they'll give us money to buy it for them but that gets annoying so I've been discouraging it, it's not like they don't have credit cards of their own (when they want something in ebay it's horrible). My husband has set up her computer with firewalls, spyware, cleaners and stuff.
Neither can operate a computer well, my FIL once thought he had a virus but he'd really made an ad page his home page. My MIL thinks that to do a search she has to type www.whatevershe'slookingfor.com into the search box. Then she'll call to have me look at something and doesn't know how to give me an address, I'm supposed to do the search she did. She has a thing for an old print program (from the EARLY 90s) that's on her old computer, she wouldn't let us get rid of the old one when she got another computer and we periodically have to go over and set up the old one so she can go in and print out the stuff she has saved on it because she can't hook up her own. We bought her a copy of the old one for her new computer but she still won't just make up new stuff.
The sad part is they aren't what you would call old, my FIL isn't quite 61 yet and my MIL is 4 or 5 years younger. My parents aren't much younger than her and they know this stuff.
Well, I guess "similar but different" .... my MIL (who I love dearly!) embraces new stuff to the point that she thinks she's the only one who's discovered it.
They recently got satellite so now she has ALL these channels! She's constantly telling us about this new show ".....but I guess you haven't seen it because you don't have satellite" and hubby has to tell her, "mom, we have cable ..... we can get TNT."
My favorite is her "secret" news shows. She'll tell us about this news story she saw "..... and no one else knows this, but I saw it on satellite!" I guess she thinks each satellite dish broadcasts different shows. We're always telling her, "Oh, yeah, we saw that! It was all over the news!"
Well, I guess "similar but different" .... my MIL (who I love dearly!) embraces new stuff to the point that she thinks she's the only one who's discovered it.
They recently got satellite so now she has ALL these channels! She's constantly telling us about this new show ".....but I guess you haven't seen it because you don't have satellite" and hubby has to tell her, "mom, we have cable ..... we can get TNT."
My favorite is her "secret" news shows. She'll tell us about this news story she saw "..... and no one else knows this, but I saw it on satellite!" I guess she thinks each satellite dish broadcasts different shows. We're always telling her, "Oh, yeah, we saw that! It was all over the news!"
ok how about this one. My mom finally get a new computer, gets a friend of her's to set it up for her. So then I talk her into a dsl line (she did not want cable) drive 45 minutes to hook it up for her (wow its so much faster) a month later I say hows the dsl working and she tells me that she has not been on puter because its not working. Make DH drive me over there (I dont drive) to find out puter is bad needs to go back to HP. 3 weeks later puter is back have to go over there and rehook it back up. But the best was today. My parents needed a new kitchen faceut put in and dad is not up to installing it so mom picks me up to do it for them (cheaper than a plumber) So while I am there I asked my mom why she has not used any of her mypoints yet (just incase any of you dont know its a website that you get points for reading emails and you redeem them for gift cards) she says she does not know how to do it. So I show her and she calls my dad in to see which gift cards they want dad starts yelling at me saying he is not paying any money to get gift cards online. Took 10 min. to get dad to understand that its not costing him money. By the time she was done she got over $175 worth of gift cards.
Ha - my MIL still can't handle technology from 20 years ago! She just learned how to leave a message on an answering machine/voicemail (like within the past year) We used to get messages from her saying "Can you please tell Michael & Celeste.....blah blah blah" Did she think our butler was checking the messages or that the phone itself was going to type it up for us?!?! We got them an answering machine for Christmas one year and it took until the following October for her to let someone hook it up!!
Don't get me started on the DVD player somebody got her years ago!!! We sent her home movies of our children on DVD , so she finally had to let BIL hook it up. She made him stand right next to it while she watched the movies, then box it up and put it back in the attic the second the movies ended. You know, so it couldn't hurt her TV and VCR!!!
My MIL won't let my husband run everything with her TV through the stereo (she wanted to be able to run the sound through the TV or something else. But she complains because you have to use 8 remotes to get things going. It took forever to convince her to get a DVD player and she only did it because stores weren't really selling tapes anymore.
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