My mother-in-law is a sweet and wonderful person, and I love her dearly. She's also a nearly perfect anti-geek, a technophobe at a level most people would think was surely extinct in, say, 1950. They would be wrong, as they haven't met Kate. She is intimidated by toasters, and I am neither exaggerating nor embellishing.
Kate lives in an old farmhouse outside of Liberty, Indiana – as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get without living in South Dakota. Until earlier this year, she'd made do with rabbit-ear antennae for her televisions. She could just barely pick up signals from Cinncinnati, Ohio or Indianapolis, Indiana – the only television she knew was intermittent and filled with static. So we got her a satellite system as a gift earlier this year. For weeks, Debbie and I spent hours with her on the phone, usually with her crying in frustration – but finally we were able to get her to the point where she could actually use her new system. And now she loves it! There was much pain getting her started, but now we're quite happy we got her this gift, as she clearly is enjoying it.
The number one problem she's had with the system is something most people are very used to. The remote control is “modey” – at any given moment, it's either in “satellite” mode or in “TV” mode. She just can't get this concept into her head, so she's forever trying to do something that requires the remote control to be in a different mode. We got Kate past this roadblock by teaching her some rote instructions, namely to alway press the satellite mode button before she did anything, and to never, ever press the TV mode button. Once she pressed the TV mode button, then she was sure to change the TV channel – and then she'd lose the satellite signal. The next step after that would be to call us, crying. But, as I say, we'd gotten past that.
But last night Kate called us with a new problem. She wasn't upset – the system had been working well for months, and she'd gotten much more comfortable with it. But it wasn't working last night, and she said it stopped working when she accidentally sat on the remote control. Thinking that she had somehow managed to put the remote in TV mode and changed the channel, I talked her through putting the channel back to rights. At one point, I told her “Now press 6, and then 0.”. A few seconds later, I got two touch-tone beeps in my ear, and then Kate came back on and told me that nothing had happened on the TV. Much laughter ensued, which confused Kate until I explained it to her – and when I did, the rest of the people in the room on my end got the joke as well, and there was even more laughter. Kate was quite embarrassed, but finally she laughed at herself as well...
The problem turned out to be more involved than usual. Somehow in sitting on the remote control she had changed it's programming – it no longer knew what brand her TV was, and consequently it was putting out the wrong infrared remote control codes (that is a totally non-standard world). Talking her through entering the proper codes was one of the more difficult support tasks I've ever undertaken, but we finally did get it done, and the TV worked fine after that.
Kate would never forgive me for putting this on the Internet for all to see, but, then, she has no idea that the Internet exists, so I'm safe...
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