Here's more silly news.
My grandmother, Bubba, bought herself a portable DVD player last week.
Now, Bubba has a strange ability to break high-tech gadgets. The one time she tried using my PDA it stopped accepting input until I reset it. My family jokes that the CIA should employ her to visit enemy nations as a tourist and touch their computers.
So she was understandably nervous about using this, even though she can operate her car's CD player without problems.
She tells me about the purchase on the phone, and her plans to keep the DVD player in its box until a friend or relative visits who can show her how to use it.
I tell her a quicker plan: I'll find the manual on the internet and then call her again. With both of us looking at the same manual we can get it working.
So my grandmother goes shopping and gets her first DVD. The next day we talk on the phone as she sorts out which cords she cares about, how to attach and remove the external battery, and how to start, pause, and eject the movie. Everything works great.
When I was young and computers were new, who would have guessed that technology would work this way?
