So tech is not for everyone, especially people who are not tech savvy or know little about what things are or how things work in the tech world.
I did have my fair share of encounters with both fellow students whilst I was at college and grownups who all wanted to be tech savvy. So here’s me recollecting a few gems.
It was first day in our engineering college and we all were in the computer labs. The computer were running Window OS and usually to login, Windows displays a message like this:
Use Ctrl + Alt + Shift to login
My fellow student thought he needs to press the + as well so he managed to hold the Ctrl key, 2 plus keys and then the alt key but he ran out of fingers to reach for the shift key and was calling me so I can press the shift key for him!! I couldn’t control my laughter but still, politely I said, you don’t have to press the + key, just hit Ctrl Alt Shift keys and it will work. And you will have enough finger movement to hold all the keys at once
Then I had this friend from Mechanical Engineering branch who bought a computer. When I visited him, he told me that he turned on his computer in the morning and the mouse did not work. Then he left it like that for an hour and it started working again. He said that during that hour, the mouse might have got charged, hence it started working again. And yes guys, this was not the time period of BlueTooth and rechargeable mouse units. This was an old school mouse connected via cable to the computer.
Next, computer jargon is quite catchy and when adults try to come up with their own versions on how to pronounce, it gets really interesting.
Like my friend’s mom asked to email her on “hotcom dot mail” Really catchy name right..? Why no one thought about it, especially in 2020 where you can get any domain extension — hotcom.mail is possible right?
Then my own mom calls whatsapp as “what’s up” .. cool right? App name and the basic introductory question rolled into one.
Once my friend’s mom wanted to use the pc but my friend was on a phone call, so his mom asked me, “I can only see this paper channel, how can I get to internet channel.” I had to check what this “paper channel” was on the computer. It was Microsoft Word!! I, once again, politely explained that they are called programs and to access internet, you need to click on this ‘e’ icon which is called as a browser with which you can browse the internet.
Now my dad is the coolest, especially when he is trying to get up to date with tech. Every time he posts a picture on Facebook he puts “Public” in the comments. At first I thought he was doing that because he thought he had to add some comments. It was not until he posted a silly picture and commented as “Private” on it that I realised what he was trying to do. Immediately, being the responsible son that I am, I called him and asked his to remove the silly picture as everyone would see it even though he typed in “private” in the comments .. and the next thing he does is post the same picture again with a comment on it saying “delete”
I once got a call from my landlord’s wife saying that her husband broke the computer and she wanted me to take a look and sort it. I went her place and booted the PC, the disk was corrupted so I stared restoring it to a safe point. I knew they just bought the PC so there won’t be any important files as they wanted to use it only for internet and didn’t know much about anything else. I asked her how this happened, she replied that the day before when she came home from shopping and fond my landlord in his room. She opened the door to enter into the room and this startled him and he yanked the power cable out the power socket. This obviously caused the PC to shut down abruptly and it would corrupt the disk especially if the system was performing updates in the background. My aunt say he did do this before as well and his explanation to her was that it was getting stuck so he is turning the power off. I did meet him alone next time and showed him how to minimise or close down browsers and installed anti-virus as he is clicking on everything.
This one is bit more modern. My friend installed Amazon Alexa speaker system and connected it to his Sonos Home Speakers. And told his wife that she can just ask Alexa questions about anything, like play songs, read news, turn on/off lights, ask for weather, ask for recipes, etc. She thought that was very helpful as she doesn’t have to reach out for her phone all the time to do those things, especially whilst cooking. My friend left for work and when he returned home on the evening, his wife tells him there is something wrong with the new speakers as she did not even respond once to her comments. My friend was truly surprised as it worked for him. So he went and checked all the Wifi settings and asked Alexa a few times and it worked. He then went to his wife and said he just tested and it worked and took her back to the room where the speaker was and asked her to say something. His wife goes, “Elektra, what’s the weather like?” … So all day she’s been calling the speaker “Elektra” instead of “Alexa”.
Now here’s another interesting person I came across in my life. Very nice guy but his knowledge with tech and related is very limited. He upgraded to a new WiFi router so he can access internet in any room as he used to have an old wired connection before. I helped him set it up and few days later, he got a new iPad and wanted to connect that to the WiFi. I send him instructions as I was out of country at that time. I returned after few weeks and checked with him if everything was alright. He said WiFi was great but he couldn’t get the new iPad to connect, no matter what he did. I was truly surprised so decided to pay him a visit. I went to his home that evening and checked his iPad only to be confronted by the fact that he was trying to connect to the WiFi of the pub across the road from where he lived. The pub’s Wifi signal was strong and was showing on top of his own WiFi connection in the settings. So he was selecting that instead of his own.
Then, there is this kind and polite gentleman living next door. He was retired and living all alone and his only daughter lives abroad. She once sent an iPhone to his dad via someone who was visiting. He was all super excited and told me about this when I ran into him whilst returning from work. He asked me to help him setup email on his iPhone so he can email a picture which he’s taken from the phone to his daughter. When I visited his home, he offered me tea and said the lighting was better so he would take a picture against a giant family portrait. Surprisingly, he turned the phone backwards and was trying to take a selfie. I thought he wanted to use the rear cameras of the iPhone as they usually are better so I offered to help and took his picture. He then tells me wish the rear has some mirror so he can look at himself whilst taking pictures and was thinking about sticking a tiny plastic mirror piece to the rear of the phone. Something didn’t sound right. I opened the camera and showed him the flick icon which opens the camera at the front and told him that he can take his own picture by using this. He was surprised and super impressed at the same time finding out that there were cameras in the front as well. Bless him.
