Sunday, September 2, 2007

the reason for my existence

It's pretty clear to me. I exist for the amusement and edification of my family.
Not only am I dinosaur, I'm a dinosaur with four kids, two girls and two boys.
So I have a larger target group to amuse than most. None of them live with me now, but I still manage to amuse them with my exploits over the phone. I continue to fulfill my purpose in life, my raison-de-etre.
My children are not dinosaurs, they know/use most/all of the functions on their cell phones.
They are not challenged by their computers either. They can even select the files they want to burn onto a CD. I can copy CD to CD in toto, and feel very proud of myself.

Once upon a time I borrowed a DVD from the girls as my parents wanted to see 'Baghban'.
My parents settled down in front of the TV, I pressed the right buttons, and nothing......
Nothing on screen. Now I feel less challenged by VCDs somehow, they seem to be a little nicer to me. DVDs are not really my scene. So I called up the girls and asked them if there was some different kind of technique to playing DVDs. "Of course not,Mom, just try again, and let us know"- my wicked girls were certainly waiting from some entertainment from me, and were not disappointed.
Well, I decided to turn up the volume: I could hear some faint music. Which didn't sound like the opening bars of any Hindi fillum music that I'd ever heard. I turned it up some more- it was Rashid Khan, singing Raga Kirwani. Had the system learned the music last played on it? You never know with all this high-tech gadgetry- why, movies start off where you'd left them, sometimes. Anything is possible. Why wasn't the $@*# movie playing. In the meantime my parents were getting restless. Immediate solutions needed to be found. (The Occasionally Resident Engineer was non-resident at the time- if he'd been around there would have been no movie show that evening). I decided to take out the $@*# DVD and try a sensible VCD instead. I open the cover, take out Baghban, and find, to my chagrin, that I hadn't taken out the Rashid Khan CD from the system. I'd been trying to play Baghban while it was sitting on top of the audio CD!
Bah- how challenged can you get? I can get even more challenged: I promptly called up the girls and told them what I'd done.

9 comments:

the mad momma said...

ok that was a genuine mistake!! could have happened to anyone.

dipali said...

But would anyone have told their kids? That was the genius at work.

Sue said...

I thought you had two sons only!

On the brighter side -- at least you didn't use your CD tray as a coffee cup holder. We have a friend who used to do tech support for Dell who assures us that sych a customer did exist, that it wasn't just an internet joke.

dipali said...

Sue, since they are somewhat older and hopefully wiser than the boys they probably didn't figure in the few conversations we've had till now.
But I definitely do believe in the saying, "Insanity is inherited: you can get it from your children"
so you can imagine how much I've inherited from all four of them!

A coffee cup holder! Wow, I'm positively a genius.

Anonymous said...

hi dipali,
i'm the d who chatted with you on mm's blog. so nice to finally see you in blogging action. i just discovered by accident!
anyway am going to be a regular reader here - may not be a regular commenter.
you cant be all that technically challenged - you are blogging! i tried blogging - found the whole thing so challenging that i gave up!
d

dipali said...

d, glad you found me-I'd been most encouraged by your kind words on MM's comment section.
I had a little guidance from Sue which got me started.
(Stay with me- you will learn the true meaning of challenged)!
Methinks we need Blogging for Dummies.

Unknown said...

Come on Dipali. I donot work electronic items. I issue commands, I refuse to make a public fool of myself. I leave it to the husband to huff and puff. Or else, I watch television. Without complaining....

utbtkids said...

My dad did the exact same thing the last time he visited us.

But Iam not great with electronics either. I have aresident engineer too. So, after the first attempt things are promptly handed over to him under the pretext that i have to go watch teh kids :)

Anonymous said...

I've done that! I had my system playing Michael Buble while I sat wondering why Madonna suddenly sounded so different. Don't you worry, that can happen to anyone. It's certainly not an age thing... I'm 29 and not particularly an expert in technology either! :0)