Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Emerging Ever So Briefly From Technophobia

I am not a techno-genius by any stretch of the imagination. It takes me awhile to catch up, I'll admit; however, I'm not last in line at some of this stuff, either. OK, OK, forget for a moment that our son Ryun had to tell us that we had call waiting on our home phone, and that we had 60 messages when we figured it out or that the "beep, beep, beep" sound when I pick up the phone means I have a voice message waiting. Forget that I have to call Blaine every time my iPod mysteriously stops working to get instructions on how to reset it (of course, the instructions are on the Apple website, but calling one of the kids is just easier...for me). I do have a video conferencing camera hooked up to my computer, but I hate to use it: there's just something , well, invasive about watching somebody talk on a computer.
So it is that when I get to appear tech savvy, I relish every moment. I have leaped (finally) into the world of text messaging since emailing my students and children and wife is SOOOOO last year. Today, I actually showed an educated adult how to solve a problem when trying to send Word documents to me via email. That sounds easy to most of you, but it was a bit complicated. On my Word 2007, I simply type a document and hit "send to" which brings up my email program, and away I go. Apparently, the university system here doesn't work that way with student access so when a student tried to send me a paper last night for perusal, neither he nor his coach could figure out how to do it. I did manage to solve the issue in something of a roundabout way, but then I was able to simplify the process, et voila! new respect comes my way as a "computer geek." I'll admit that there was a little swagger in my walk as I left, but secretly I knew that this was a VERY simple problem that any grade school kid could have solved, so I'm not getting too cocky since I still have to get my wife to help me set up and use Excel in Microsoft Office 2007.
It's just nice sometimes, not to be the last to know something...which reminds me: I'd never heard of or seen the acronym "MILF" before hearing Tina Fey use it last week on "Saturday Night Live" when she was doing her Sarah Palin rip job. The audience all laughed so I figured not knowing was just a Midwestern thing, but everyone I mentioned it to with the exception of my wife seemed to know about it already. Needless to say, when I found out it's meaning, I was somewhat taken aback...but also a bit sheepish that here was yet another piece of current culture about which I had no knowledge.
Back to feeling like I'm the last to know anything...living in a black hole isn't easy.

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