French Technology

Minnie Cooper

     Just a short update today to tell you of my latest technology debacle. My husband and I have discovered that on our comes-with-the-car satellite radio (for one year), we can get stations that play music entirely in French. Normally, this would be of no interest to me, being that I do not speak any French other than oui, croissant, and petit. But after spending some time with my sister in the fall, I was able to develop a new appreciation for the French.

     Why would that be? Well, my sister loves anything French. A fun thing she planned for us was to watch some French movies, some with subtitles and some with nothing. Despite her comment that we would be able to follow most of the action and would find it very humorous, we did experience a bit of a culture gap. But I digress.

   Once I found that station on the radio I had to see if she knew of it. 
     "Diana!" I enthusiastically phoned her from the car. "Do you know of the station L'Oasis?"
     "Well, no," she said. 
     "Well, we have been listening to it. Either all French songs have "dum dum de dum" in them or they keep playing the same one." I then told her that we had recognized an Elton John song in French.
     Then I had a great idea. I turned up the radio, held the i-Phone to the speaker and let her have a listen. After, I asked her, "Could you hear it?" 

     "Well, I heard something. A little bit like music."
     Then George interrupted my conversation to tell me, "You were holding it up to the A/C vent, not the speakers."
     'Twas true. Embarrassing but true.

Drums of War

     Today, I have discovered how techno-useless I truly am.

      “Not true,” you say. “You already know that. We all know that!”

     Well, today I reached the true depths of techno-despair. George and I  tried out our new Tom-Tom, instrument of torture we received as a gift from my eldest son Jeff and his fiancée Shannon.

     The first problem we  had with said Tom-Tom is that I wanted to change the voice to a manly one with a British accent.  I was not able to accomplish that feat. We settled for the robot woman voice that was installed in it already. Some things are just too much work to change.

     We were set for our little journey across town. As a precaution, I had looked up our destination on MapQuest and had the map with us. Once in the car, I took charge of the Tom-Tom and tried to input our destination address.  The realization that it would have helped to read the directions did not deter us from attempting to use it.

     I finally got it together and sat holding this little wonder of technology that was going to get to our desired location. George looked at me with irritation.

     “Can you put it on the windshield so I can see it?”

     I was annoyed. “But then I can’t see it. The sun is blocking it out from my side.”

     Nevertheless George had his way and we put the Tom-Tom on the windshield. It fell down. We both scrabbled to get it off the floor. Once again he put it up. It fell down.  I did not mention that it had been just fine when I was holding it in my hand.

     He finally got it mounted on the windshield but now the screen had gone blank. My husband was now done with the Tom-Tom.

     I took the little thing and reset it, amidst a few colorful words.  Voila! It worked. It actually was pretty amazing. We were fascinated with our new toy.

     After our errands,  George asked, “Can it get us back home again?”

     Common sense told me that it could. Jeanne-Sense told me that I did not know how to make that happen.

     “Can you just get home yourself?” I asked him.

     “Yes,” he answered. He drove us home, minus Tom-Tom help. Next time we will use it for both ways. Baby steps.