Idiotech

i walked into the den the other day to see my father rubbing the mouse on his head i asked him what he was doing and he said "trying to get better reception for the internet"

Today my mom called sounding very excited. When I asked her what had happened, she replied "I know what I'm getting your brother for christmas. The computer just told me that I won a Wii!"

I was bringing my boyfriend home for the first time to introduce him to my parents. We were talking and he said to me, "Oh wait, did you see my picture on FaceBook?" And I was about to reply when my mother jumped in and said, "Facebook? We have a Facebook! One second hold on!" She ran upstairs, leaving all of us in confusion (everyone knows my mother is horrible at... Read More » technology, as you'll see in the following stories). She runs back downstairs holding a photo book in her hands, and proceeds to show my boyfriend the many photos she took of me and my bare butt when I was a baby. This was the same woman who refused to get a computer when she heard it came with a mouse. And once she did get her computer, she called me in to ask why Safari wanted her to file and edit her view of history, and why the bookmarks in the window need help.

I went to my parents house for a visit to find that my dad had put an aluminum pie plate over the wireless router "to stop the neighbours from stealing the internet"

My dad refuses to use the "Get Directions" feature on Google Maps. He types in the address he is looking for and then tries to figure out a way to get there.

My step dad thinks that his hotmail account doesn't just log him into hotmail, he thinks it logs him into ANYTHING on the internet that you need an account for. You can guess how that ends up...

I convinced my mom that the lighter app on the iPhone actually heated up the phone. She was skeptical at first, but after 10 seconds of the top of my phone on a light bulb when she wasn't looking, thoroughly convinced her the iPhone can do anything.

Often, my parents text me while I'm in class. One day, we were doing a dissection lab and I had to text my dad 'I'm busy atm'. My dad came home later that day and, very angry, told me 'I'm NOT an ATM, I'm your father.' I had to explain to him that atm was shorthand for at the moment around three times to for him to get it.

The other day I saw my dad try and use the screen on his blackberry curve as a touchscreen. He's had it for 3 months.

My mom is generally ok with the Internet, and tech stuff. However, when she bought some plane tickets for me and my husband a while back as a gift, I noticed something odd in the itinerary. My husband's ticket said it was for Brian Danger Lane. I kept staring at it, completely baffled, because, obviously, that isn't his middle name. So finally I called her. She told me she... Read More » put it on the ticket because that was what his Facebook account said his middle name was. Yes, really. She had to call the airline to sort that one out.

My otherwise very sharp 96-year-old grandma informed me that I should be careful when using computers at work because they could transmit diseases. I thought she was speaking about germs on keyboards. Until I realized she had seen an item on the news about computer viruses.

I was on the bus ride back to my apartment one day when I noticed that I had gotten a missed call and a voicemail from my dad. Since it was too loud to call him back on the bus, I listened to the voicemail and decided to call him back later. In the voicemail he sounded winded, and said "Call me back right away." The last time I received one of these calls from him my uncle... Read More » had died. So I panicked for the duration of the bus ride and when I finally got a hold of him he explained: "I can't figure out how to send this email..."

One time my family and friends of the family were gathering for lunch and pinochle. Their teenage daughter and I (I am also a teen) went to play Monopoly, not knowing how to play pinochle. We overheard my mom and her mom saying how the term "fugly" is so cute. The teenage daughter and I had to explain to them what "fugly" really meant.

I recently visited with my aunt who is almost 90 years old. I took a picture of me and her and I told her I was going to send it to my wife who was in another city 300 miles away. She looked at me sort of puzzled and said "You can do miracles". I had a good laugh, she is the cutest Aunt to have!

Three weeks ago, my mother called me complaining that the internet was broken. So, I went to her house on the weekend to try and figure out what had gone wrong. Turns out she had plugged in the router incorrectly. Problem solved, or so I thought. Two weeks later when she complained again about the internet "being broken" again, I did my best to describe where the cords... Read More » should go. She swore up and down that wasn't the problem. Today, she called me with an update. Apparently someone had dug up the DSL line next to the power transformer in our front yard, and physically CUT the connection.

My mom is under the impression that whenever something is wrong with the TV, it is automatically my 360's fault or in her words "game boxes" fault. When I say that something is wrong with the TV, I mean it is either, muted, has the video display screen and even one time, been turned off.

My step-dad used to be very knowledgeable with computers... that was ten years ago. He is still stuck in 2000, running windows NT. When I was buying a computer for myself he convinced my mom to buy me a used laptop of Craigslist with 1GB RAM, I am a chemistry major needing to do high definition molecular modeling. When I told him that I needed a GOOD new computer, and I... Read More » showed him a laptop around the specs that I needed and he flipped out saying it was "way too expensive." I had found a great deal on a computer with a new i5 processor 4GB RAM and a nice NVIDIA graphics card for around $500. The laptop of craigslist was $150.

My freshman year my mom would call me every weekend. She wasn't worried or anything, she just wanted to check in, see how things were, and oh yeah - my dad was out of town and she wanted to know how to record a show on the DVR.

My parents are the most computer illiterate people you will ever meet. My dad refuses to even attempt to use a computer, which is actually preferable to my mom's fumbling efforts. Any time she tries to do something, I have to be there in case she needs help, but it is physically painful for me to watch her. For 6 years, any time I told her to click on something, she asked "... Read More »left click, or right click?" It took her even longer to master the art of the double click. She will only use Internet Explorer because she thinks it's "the real one." She actually READS software license agreements. I could go on for hours about every way that she has failed with technology, but the most frustrating thing is that she absolutely CANNOT deal with change of any kind. If a website she visits frequently has been updated, she freezes. By the time she becomes comfortable with it again, it's been updated again. That is why her computer still uses Windows 98, Internet Explorer 4, and an ancient version of Microsoft Office.

In English Comp. my professor was complaining about how "the mouse wont reach over there" when he was using the computer connected to a projector, I asked him if he wanted me to help, he said sure. I walked over and he shows me how the mouse cord only went so far so he cant reach the link on the screen. It never occurred to him to physically pick the mouse up and move it,... Read More » when i showed him how to do this he stated "oh see you know how this technology stuff works".