The Things We Take For Granted

I spent most of the day today teaching my mother.

Let me start by saying that my mother is by no means a stupid person. But this whole computer and Internet thing has confused her. This past January, she and my father bought her a new desktop computer. When they bought the computer, they did not buy Microsoft Office. As many people know, Microsoft was sued for hampering competition by having PCs come with Office in addition to the Microsoft operating system. So now, you have to ask whether the computer has Office installed, and probably have to pay for it as well. So her new computer came with Microsoft Works, rather than Microsoft Word. And the documents that she created were .wps files rather than .doc files, and almost no one could read them. My mother found this very frustrating.

Today, I went to my parents' home and installed Microsoft Office so that she would be able to create documents in Word - the same word processing software that most of the world uses. While I was there, I gave my mother a lesson in directories/folders, files, programs, the Internet, and surfing on the Internet. These are all things I use every day. They are things I take for granted. And they were almost incomprehensible to her.

What you don't know, you don't know. And sometimes what you don't know you don't even know you don't know.

For example, my mother didn't know what a bookmark was. She'd heard the term, but she didn't know what one was, much less how to create one. To me, it's easy. To her, it's not intuitive at all.

I've been running into this myself. For me, it's the next generation of electronic toys - digital cameras, smartphones, etc.

It took me a long time to adopt these new technologies. Or rather, I'm not an early adopter. I got a digital camera about a year ago and an iPhone last month. Like my mother, I know the basics of how to use these technologies. My mother knows how to create a basic word processing document. I know how to take a basic picture with my digital camera. But as she doesn't know how to use styles in Word - because she's never had to - I don't know how to set my digital camera to automatically use the anti-red eye function. I didn't even know it was possible, like my mother didn't know about styles in Word.

So I spent the day explaining about bookmarks, and styles, and hyperlinks, and a bunch of other things that my mother has used but didn't really understand.

Now I need to find a 15-year-old to teach me how to use my iPhone....

Achieving Balance

Am I the only person left on earth who balances her checkbook every month?

A corollary - am I the only person who records every transaction that I make?

The reason I bring this up is because many of my friends and family members do not seem to record all of their transactions. I still do. But I keep running out of space in my check register. And getting another one seems to be more trouble than it should be.

In the old days, I wrote a lot of checks. I have never been one to carry cash. So when I shop, I would write checks. Usually, you get one check register per box of checks. That's 250 checks. When I was writing a lot of checks, one register for 250 checks was enough. The check register would fill up about the same time as I needed new checks. A balance was achieved.

Now, between online bill pay and my debit card, I write very few checks. But I still record each transaction. Except now I don't have enough space in my check register, since the check people are still only providing one check register per box of checks and, since I write very few checks, I have no reason to reorder checks and so I don't get more check registers. The balance has been lost.

I have picked up a few check registers at the bank - well, actually the mini-bank at the grocery store - I haven't been inside a real bank in a long time. But it's annoying to have to keep getting check registers from them. Can't I just order more online somewhere? Apparently not.

Maybe I need to move to using Quicken or Excel or some other system to record my banking transactions. Except that I'm not always in front of my computer when I buy things. So I would still feel like I wanted to write down the transactions as they happen. Hence the need for a check register. Or two. Or three. Or four. Per box of checks. Because I almost never write checks.

And I need my balance! (pun intended)