That F'ing Technology

Ahhhh.. The third in the trilogy of the infamous (no, really it is not famous) chat between alextrex, roxxy and myself. They both tell the story sooo well, in their blogs, but we each must have our own point of view.

Background:

Roxxy is 18, and she set up a way to chat on her blog. She has a picture of a frog that comes up with her posts to another blog or her own, and she has a background to her blog...

This tells me she is pretty darn savvy at this html stuff and could blow the others in the chat away with one sweep of her keyboard.

Alextrex is 37, claims to be technologically challenged, or in my profession he would be labeled "Special" as in "Special Education" when it comes to technology, and yet, he has the coolest techie toys and a think pad and IT guys to help him *spruce it up, when he needs a little help.

This tells me that it isn't the lack of technology or the lack of brain power that he is capable of exuding, it is that he really doesn't want to know all the techie stuff, he just wants the computer to do what he wants it to do and he doesn't care why.

Then there is me, Bennu, 42, in education, having been around computers for over 18 years now, I still know less than my 18 year old that I have at home, who, like Roxxy, could do all that cool stuff to my blog for me, or show me, but I won't tell him I have a blog. *he doesn't need to know how cool, bad, gross, sick his mom is all the time. I do, however, continue to teach others, including adults, in large settings how to do things that are educational for children to learn and the basics of a computer.
That is me. Staff developer, computer science, critical thinking, so why is it so hard to tell someone something... online?
Well let's see...

Roxxy's chat box is pretty cool, but I noticed there was some lag time in the refreshing, so I asked her how long it took to refresh. I thought she said 11 seconds, and I see by his post that Alex thought she said 1.1 seconds. However we could refresh the page anytime and it would be great.

Alex doesn't know how to refresh without using Febreeze apparently. He has this state of the art think pad in his sisters house that has wireless connection so he doesn't have to "plug in" and yet he doesn't know how to refresh the page. So, I should help, shouldn't I? I mean that is how I usually respond to others, if I can help, I should help.

Now I didn't know a thing about his operating system or what his desktop or menu bars at the top of his screen were, so I was describing the ones on my screen, which I believe must be universal unless you are using a MAC, which NOW I do believe he is... I have worked with those also, but it has been awhile so I don't remember the buttons...

Roxxy teaches me that you can refresh at the click of one button... the F5 button... wow, that's cool, thanks Roxxy, now I don't need to use the mouse, and then she tells me I don't need to use the mouse at all. Terrific, then I don't have to take my hands off the keyboard to chat, wonderful isn't it.
In the mean time, Alex is trying to find the button at the top of the page that I described, yes, it does look like a page, or a piece of paper and it has two green arrows going around in a circle, one on top and one on bottom.
So... then when Roxxy says what she did about F5, Alex typed in F5, but didn't click on the F5 button.

Now I don't have a clue what he is like in person, as far as a conversation goes, but I think he does talk to himself more than he does others. Perhaps he worries too much about what he is going to say next, I don't know.

In the mean time, Roxxy and I are laughing, and using rothflmao and lol, and lmao, and then we have to explain them to Alex, AGAIN.

When Alex finally got the concept of the F5 button, he told us that he was scared to push it because he thought F meant fornicate. (of course I thought, man I want to know what country he went to school in, if that is what they teach you in kindergarten... and P is for Penis, and V is for Vagina)

I was dying, I was laughing so hard, I could see the faces of my IT guys and how funny they would think that was, and then he put me over the top with this idea.

Alex said he thought if you pushed the F1 button you would get one person to fornicate with and if you pushed the F2 button, welll you get the idea.

SoI think Roxxy said that if you pushed the F12 button twice you would get 144 people to fornicate with, and I don't believe Alex would turn that down but he might. Anyway, I made a joke about that being *gross because 144 is, in counting terms, a gross.

Then Alex asked if it was a fornicating rating system, and if so, he didn't know if F1 was the best or if F12 was the best... honey they didn't have rubrics where you went to school?

Somewhere in the middle of this, Alex said he was going to write about it in his blog, which he has, and he threatened to use our names, so I made a joke about it being a threesome, and he really jumped on that idea, wanting to be in the middle... Alex, always has to be the center of attention you know...lol

Anyway, LSS,
He found the comparable button for refreshing the page, saying it was an orange arrow... whatever, just push it, was basically my response. Thanking my lucky stars he wasn't the leader of the free world.

Alex tried to write lengthy responses and didn't like it that Roxxy had set it to 200 words or less. Man I am glad i don't have to read his application paragraph where you have to write about yourself, he probably asks for additional pieces of paper... oh yeah, he has those, they are right under his feet...

It was fun, and it was about 20 minutes, but geez, it felt like hours... someone hire Alex a tutor... and in the spirit of my basketball coach from way back, as he would say,

If you can't run with the big dogs Alex, stay on the porch.

I never thought I would laugh so hard at someone's ineptness, and I did it because I thought he was faking it, and now, I am not so sure...

Roxxy does rock, and I will go back and chat sometime, however, I don't think we can top that last one at all, it was great, but yes, it was probably one of those...*you had to be there* stories.