Some people are totally clueless when it comes to technology. My friend Pat is one of them. She has no ability to describe a problem, nor does she know when NOT to supply superfluous information when it is not called for. I often hate helping her out, as she is a person who has no aptitude to manipulate the simplest of technical ideas.
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Recently, Pat asked me for help with two things: to install a printer on her new computer, and to fix an undefined problem with her TV. So, I attacked the problem with the TV first. When her daughter from California last visited, she gave pat both a new TV and a new Apple computer. The daughter helped Pat cut the programming cord with the local cable company, and set the TV up to use her daughter's shared YouTube TV and Netflix accounts via a Roku device. Unfortunately, Pat had no understanding of what the daughter did with the TV, nor did she have any of the fine manuals (I normally substitute another word for "fine" here) that came with her equipment.
Since Pat did not know where the TV's remote could be found (she uses the Roku device to turn on the TV and to control the volume on the TV), I had to experiment with the buttons on the side of the TV to get at the settings for the TV. I was doing this blind, and Pat kept telling me that one of her friends fixed a problem like this with something on her cable box's remote. Pat was getting quite annoying, there was nothing about the cable box remote that could be the cause of the problem, and it took me a while to get Pat to stop offering me help with distracting, useless information.
Eventually, I found the TV's remote, and I was easily able to reconfigure the TV to use its original working configuration. Somehow, the TV was accidentally switched to use HDMI2 for input instead of HDMI1. Once I updated the settings, there was another problem. Pat didn't know how to get to YouTube TV. There are two similar icons in Roku that access YouTube related services, and I had to figure out which one to use. Again, Pat got in the way of this when I told her which icon NOT to use before finding the correct icon to use for her to get the TV programming she wanted. She wanted to know WHY she shouldn't use the icon and wouldn't stop trying to get an answer when I was telling her to simply not use the icon. AARGH! As much as I'd be a bad teacher, she'd be a student that I'd flunk because she can't master the material. A minute later, I found the icon, and Pat was happy.
Next, leave it to Pat to get totally confused when using Netflix. After one logs into Netflix, one is presented with a featured program, a description of it, and the option to select other movies/shows in its library. When I tried to explain what is on the screen, she couldn't find anything - and she was looking at the screen. For example, the phrase "now trending" (or something like that) was in the middle of the screen on the left, she couldn't find it - even when I walked over to the screen and pointed it out. After scrolling down, I'd say: "remember where 'now trending' was found?" and she couldn't remember where it was to find the next topic. She is totally hopeless with technology, and needs someone with infinite patience to guide her in its use.
By the time we were finished with the TV, I was in no mood to help Pat install a new printer on her new Apple computer. Pat would be less than helpful with the installation process, and even if I were able to install the printer on her Apple, I'd likely have problems that I couldn't diagnose or repair remotely. (I use a PC, and can use tools I have to fix things remotely if needed. Unfortunately, they don't work with Apple equipment.) The last thing I need is to get sucked into being Apple tech support for her. So, I'm glad that this didn't happen on this visit.
PS: On an unrelated note, I found out that I wasn't receiving notifications for comments needing moderation. I've done so for about 20 posts. Sorry I missed so many of them over the months!
