Hey Geezers, do you know how to make your new television work? How about your new cellphone? Come to think of it, can you program the thermostat in your home, or the clock, or the TV remote? Do you need your teenage grand child to help you out? You are an analog geezer in a digital world. I’m proud to announce you have lots of company.
The first thing all geezers do is read the directions. We were taught that directions work. Of course if you are a LOM geezer, this rule might not apply to you. The other day I pulled out a set of directions and they were in Chinese. Gimme a break. There were outline drawings to help me along, but all the captions and all the lettering was in Chinese. This is not helping folks. Made in China has gone a bit too far. I'm a geezer not a translator.
There there are the directions printed on a piece of onion-skin paper the size of bed sheet. (You have to wonder how they folded the paper into a 1 inch square). After you carefully unfold the paper without tearing it, you are confronted with directions written in at least 17 languages. When you finally find your language and try to decipher it, you discover it’s written in "Chinglish" and you have no real idea what it means. (Chinglis is Chinese directly translated into English without regard to meaning.) And, who gave the print shop permission to use to light gray ink? We're geezers, we can't see light gray--heck we can't see dark black ink if the letters are written in micro-print.
My friend bought an Apple Watch and iPhone so she could keep track of her sleep cycle and heart rhythms. Pretty snazzy for a phone and watch. (BTW we are living in Dick Tracy’s world.) Apple products do not have directions. Somehow you are supposed to know what to do and how to do it because it's INTUITIVE. How do THEY know what is intuitive for ME. Julie calls Margie to set up her watch and me to set up her phone. It’s good there is help in the ‘hood. What happens when there isn’t help? Then it’s time to call that grand kid who says “gees Grammy that’s a piece of cake.” Anyway, we got her watch and phone working but it is up to Julie to remember everything we tried to teach her in our brief sessions. She’s an analog geezer in a digital world. It’s going to take time. Julie has to be given the gift of time along with our brief lessons.
I bought my LOM geezer a new iPad. Not much different from his old model but different enough to be a bit confusing. I started it up, put in a password, and set it up for him...that was good. Then he started to use the iPad and messed something up. My job was to try to figure out what he did and how to un-mess it. Oh Joy, what is a geezer to do?
Then there's the fingers issue. Geezer fingers are larger than the keys on a mini keyboard. You want to type Y and you get TYU? Of course nothing starts with TYU so you delete TYU and start over again and the smart phone thinks you want to type TYU. Again and again the wrong letters appear because your fingers are too big or you did not “hit” the key squarely. That's when you need to find the dictation button. Click the button that looks like a little microphone button near the bottom of your keyboard. Click and start talking. Beware...it will record everything you say and it will add things you did not say because "it" has the ability to "anticipate" your conversation. Before you hit “send" read what you said...you might be surprised at what your “smart” phone heard or thought it heard. There's a meme going around that says “I’ll see autocorrect in he'll". On another note, search for autocorrect failures if you want some good laughs.
Jim, a geezer friend of mine, who bought the latest greatest 85 inch smart television. It has 30 built in apps and is smarter than the average undergrad. It knows how to switch the set from DVR to DVD to Netflix to Hulu at a click. It understands voice commands. All you have to do is figure out how to turn the TV on. Jim searched the remote until he was green looking for the illusive ON button and there was none. There was a "push here" button...is that the same as ON? Voila—he clicked "push here" and his wall came alive with a bright colorful life-sized picture. The salesperson told him the picture would be wonderful with millions of pixels and colors. Jim is thinking, "I'm a geezer, I'm lucky to see 10 colors and why do I want to see all that detail?"
The salefolks also told him about the sound quality. We're geezers. Sound quality? Gimme a break. There is NO sound quality when you have to put your hearing aids on high just to hear yourself think. We want sound we can hear, the he'll with sound quality (note "autocorrect" doing its thing).
High tech does not just apply to televisions and cellphones. Have you bought a new car recently? My brand new top of the line pick up truck does not have a written manual. It's "modern." It has an electronic manual that available from the touchscreen in the control module (aka dashboard). Of course you can only read the manual when the vehicle is on...so if you are driving and something happens, you can't read the manual because the vehicle is moving and it's automatically blocked. The vehicle knows it's not safe to read the manual while you are driving. That makes sense, but the passenger can’t read the manual either. How can you find out what is making the noise or what the new warning light means? Do you pull over on the side of the road to read the manual or what? Where can you read the manual? The answer is simple. You can read the manual in the garage with the motor running (as the control module does not work unless the motor is running)—remember to keep the garage door open as I’ve heard that carbon monoxide poisoning is bad. The high tech manual is filled with those tiny buttons--you know the ones I talked about before? You try to push one of the buttons and something different than what you wanted comes on the screen. At the end it offers a little quiz. Did this answer your question? Yes or No. Nothing happens when you type either response. Why ask the question if it does not help you???
So geezers, what are we supposed to do? Buy modern high tech digital stuff that takes hours and patience to figure out or keep the old analog stuff we have that we know how to work? There's not a good answer. I still have my 24 year old washer and dryer because they work and can be easily repaired. I have a 21 year old analog vehicle because it works. I'm keeping these things going as long as I can because I’m an analog geezer in a digital world. Remember geezers, we're in this together.
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