Here’s a little “Post-Mother’s Day” strip for all the moms out there (including my own) that rely on their children for tech help! As many of you mothers know – once you’ve made even the slightest computer error in front of your sons and daughters, there’s no escaping the ridicule. It’s easier to just accept it. The scenario presented here actually did play out a few weeks ago between me and my mom, and by immortalizing it in the comic strip, I’ve fulfilled jefbot’s promise of eternal ridicule. Happy Post-Mother’s Day, mom!
So how ’bout you ladies and gents? I know we have some awesome moms in the BOTreadership, so let’s hear how your kids have tortured you when it comes to tech help. And just to be fair, let’s hear it from the daughters and sons that have their own experiences with their mom’s tech-unsavviness.
As the grandson, I am the go to tech person for a few generations, and while it isnt anything too bad (changing printer cartridges and wireless batteries) it gets old after a while. I have now stipulated my grandad looks through the post it notes I leave after every visit. Has cut down my work time considerably 🙂
i’ve tried making cheat sheets for my dad, DeeD, but to no avail! it’s gotten to the point that his laptop has been collecting dust for years (which is why Mombot has appropriated it in the strip – and in Real Life, actually.) he has expressed interest in the iPad, though, so we’ll see how that goes. if nothing else, it should be good fodder for JEFbot!
and check you out – you just achieved the Shades of Firsting! your first Firsting, no? regardless, wear them well: there’s a built-in, wireless keyboard you can use with your eyeballs embedded in the lenses:
😎
It is indeed my first firsting, and after a scant few comment offerings too I believe.
Maybe my success has been due to the desktop, so whenever he encounters one of his problems the notes are to hand.
I have no parental worries thankfully, my mum only uses the computer to order the food for the house horde and she has become very good at that.
Google shades?Shiny B-)
wow, she orders food over the internet? that’s pretty progressive, DeeD! i rarely do that. well, unless i’m craving pizza or the nearby shawarma restaurant. 🙂
I knew before I finished my sentence, that there was no way to erase my error! It happened exactly as depicted…. however, I do now change my printer cartridges and batteries for my mouse (to facilitate my games).
it’s true – this was the most egregious tech-crime you’ve committed in quite some time, Mombot! heheh. though i do have to pat you on the back for the way you’ve transitioned to the laptop, and don’t need me to change your cartridges or batteries, anymore. *pat* *pat*
the only thing i think was different between the strip and real life was that, instead of “Never ever,” i replied with, “This is totally going in the strip.”
😀
Of course, I would ask your son why the keyboard isn’t plugged into the laptop. A good son would purchase a docking station at least! *GRIN*
actually, it’s a wireless keyboard, so all i had to do was switch its bluetooth dongle from the desktop pc to the laptop, and my mom could (and still does) use that keyboard, TPC! so, see? i AM a good son! 😀
If I could like a comment I would like this one.
aww, thanks, TPC! thought about implementing a “Like” system here in the comments. i’ll have to look into that again. too bad there’s no “thumbs up” emoticon or anything in the system.
Not the nicest mother’s day present there JB!! I have to say though, I do totally see my mom in this strip 😛
heheh. don’t worry, Slave1 – this isn’t Mombot’s only Mother’s Day gift, but this is her Post Mother’s Day gift! 🙂
and glad you could relate. you should send the strip to your mom and see if she gets the hint…
My mom has always had problems with technology and gadgets. We bought a digital SLR camera for her one year, and she complained it just took blank pictures.
ME: “What do you mean, blank?”
HER: “The picture is just a black square.”
ME: “Show me what you’re doing?”
HER – she holds up the camera and takes a picture.
ME: “Uh, yeah. You know how an SLR camera works right?”
HER: “Like my old one?”
ME: “Yes, and like your old one, you still have to take the lens cap off.”
ha! luckily, Mombot just has a point-and-shoot camera (which actually broke when we were in Hawaii last year now that i think of it) so no lens cap shenanigans for her. but, yeah – if she did that, it would so be documented in a JEFbot comic, McClaud!
I am supposedly the tech wizard in my family but because my parents never bother buying up to date technology, my tech savvy is quite limited. Which has accustomed me to working in the dark (ages).
A couple of years ago my mother asked me to scan a book so that she could copy/paste its contents. I was baffled because, up to that point the scanners I knew, only scanned bitmaps and were too dumb to read.
It turns out she learned of this magical feature by Adobe that actually scanned words (as in editable text) in the university’s library where they had new, state of the art scanners.
My parents are getting pretty good at handling the software but fail to understand the limitations of hardware. Which strikes me as strange ‘cuz my dad is an Electronics Engineer!
interesting, Diego. so your parents are the opposite – they’re tech-savvy beyond their hardware limitations! sounds like a great opportunity for you to ask for a new computer… so you can help your mom out with all that scanning, of course. 😉
My moms fairly tech savvy, but after so many years she still can’t remember how to run the DVD player.
my dad’s the same way, 52pickup. although i must admit, the way i’ve set up his entertainment system, i can see how he’d be confused getting the right settings to switch from his DVR to the blu-ray hooked into the receiver plugged into the TV. he usually just waits ’til i come over. 🙂
I’ve been the go to tech guy for years now for both my parents and occasionally grandparents. The worst part is I live in WA, my parents are in CA and my grandparents are in AR, so that means everything is over the phone. Which of course means that I’m having to do it essentially blind. My mom has gotten better through the years and calls less often, unless something really does break on her computer. Unfortunately my dad still has the very annoying habit of forwarding everything in the World to me, and often it’s some link to something. Well 99% of the time it’s not a link I’d personally ever click on in an email, but he does cause he “trusts” the guy it came from. What he doesn’t get is that often they hold viruses and that’s why they’ve had to get their HD reformatted and the files saved 3 times in the past 3 years! And of course they had to pay through the nose for it. The worst part is, he THINKS he knows technology cause he installs and maintains fiber-optics for the phone company, but he only knows that small portion of technology. I out grew his technology knowledge back in middle school.
i feel your pain, Jereme – trying to explain tech solutions over the phone with non tech-savvy people is one of the greatest exercises in frustration one can experience! fortunately, i live close to my parents so it’s generally not a problem. and my mom is really good about not clicking strange links or opening files her friends and neighbors send her all the time, which helps tremendously.
Tech support for my Mum, that’s me too. Can I just say that digital cameras and 60+ year old parents are “challenging”?
I bought them a new camera recently (their old Canon was stolen), I got the question “if I delete the Canon software will I still be able to see the old pictures?”…. they are JPGs (rolls eyes).
The whole support over the phone thing too “click tools, settings, what can you see?…No, ON the screen?” grrrr….!
I feel your pain.
Mark
i’m happy to share the pain, MarkC! (and glad you can feel the “challenge” of it, too. heheh.) since her digital camera’s been non-functional for the past several months, my mom has been taking pictures with her new iPhone recently, which i’m sure will open up a whole new set of “tech support” calls soon. 😉
Took me years, I mean years, to convince my mom that she didn’t need to open AOL to get online once she got her internet through her cable provider. We would argue about it and even after I showed her Internet Explorer, a program she hadn’t ever seen before, and I showed her that she could check her AOL mail without opening AOL she would still start up AOL when she logged in. Then she could go to Internet Explorer to check her e-mail!
I think she gets it now, when she was over my house she went to AOL.com to check her e-mail, but I’m still not 100% sure she understands why she can do that.
And don’t even get me started on trying to explain wireless to her! She thought she had to have to have her PC next to the wireless router in order to get connected, it wasn’t until I was able to connect to my iPhone from across the house that I think she understood what ‘wireless connection’ was.
funny that she thought proximity to the router affected her access to the wifis, TPC. hope you don’t have to explain bluetooth to her anytime soon! 😉
HA! i’m surprised your mom still has an AOL account, TPC! i actually wasn’t even sure if AOL still existed. i’m just glad i’m not getting pounds of AOL CDs in the mail every week. fortunately, Mombot only started logging into the internet after the whole AOL/EarthLink/CompuServe stuff, so she never had to deal with that craziness. 🙂
I can see my mom somewhat in this strip. She can adapt to technology somewhat well, but still needs my sister or I to help her every so often.
yeah, except for strange cases like this one, my mom’s pretty okay with technology too, GB. my dad, however, is another story.
At least your mom figured it out. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve winced looking at my mom on a computer.
heheh. yeah, if my mom hadn’t caught on to what she was doing right away, i don’t know how long i would’ve stood there, waiting for her to realize it, Saeed.
Courtesy of heart disease my mom isn’t around to post about some of her tech mishaps, but as the resident computer guru in my house I can.
She’d frequently forget her user account passwords, which wouldn’t be too hard to figure out, but had to ask for my help every time. She once tried to connect a USB mouse in a printer port on her laptop. She bought a used laptop for 600 dollars once only to find out that it was from the windows 2000 era, and that a newer one that is several times better would be 150 dollars cheaper. She once tried out my (older model) kodak digital camera, found it to be really interesting, but an explanation of how SD cards work took two and a half hours, required 3 demonstrations and ended with her asking, “but where do the pictures go?”
Around 2008 I started using an antivirus software that opens a voice clip telling you when a virus was found or it had updated, I figured this would let my parents (who had to squint to see the screen) what was going on. My mom took to this much better than the old text prompts, but would regularly talk back to it.
Of course I couldn’t do much teasing about anything or I’d get called Elf-Lord for a month. 😀
condolences about your mom’s passing, Descolada, but i’m happy you still keep so many awesome (and hilarious!) memories of her with you. i especially like the “but where do the pictures go?” and talking back to the antivirus software anecdotes. not sure how i’d respond to either of those things. 🙂
My mom’s pretty good with electronics, though I do get called up to troubleshoot sometimes. I’m not great with equipment, but I can usually figure out whatever the problem is if I have enough time to tinker. My dad, though…dear God, he’s practically useless on any computer. He’s barely figured out how to use e-mail, and only because his business requires it and I refuse to do it for him every time. Navigating on the internet is slow and painful, and Mom usually winds up working eBay for him most of the time. Siiiigh.
funny how our moms are better with tech than our dads, Tiana. kinda bucks the stereotype of guys being better with computers. i gave my dad an email address years ago, and have even set up the account on his Android phone, but i don’t think he’s ever even checked it or sent mail from it once!
Ive had times where my parents would do stuff like that, Plus my dad used to be a computer technician for 5 years, now he barely even knows how to use a cellphone, let alone a desktop. we have a desktop that is literally from 1990’s and he still cant use it properly so now instead of being able to fix computers he breaks them with the press of a button. I swear I don’t know how he does it but anything electronic he touches breaks. which is why I’ve let him absolutely NOWHERE near my laptop. I even lock it away when Im not at home so he cant get near it. He actually touched it once but it was only the exterior of the laptop when it was closed, my computer somehow actually started running slower after that. i had to do a checkpoint restart to fix it. none the less. I am more tech savvy than both of my parents currently.
yikes! my mom has a weird way with small electronics, like watches and stuff, Heavycannontank, but she’s pretty safe around computers. needless to say, if my dad shorted out gadgets and tech, i’d do the same thing as you: keep him far away from any of my stuff!
My incredibly confident, poised and capable, every inch a lady, mother on the subject of computers.
“Those are BOY things.”
ha! i think my mom got over electronics being “boy things” when she discovered Tetris on my original GameBoy, Samuraiartguy. 🙂
Actually, my mom’s pretty tech-savvy. My dad is like Gibbs (from NCIS) when it comes to tech. Wait, I take that back, Gibbs can sort of use a cell phone and computer, for work at least. My dad can’t. All he can do is manage to play games. So, my dad is even WORSE than GIBBS! How’s that for scary?
it seems that there are many more readers with moms more tech-savvy than their fathers, KB! that’s kinda cool. anyway, i don’t watch NCIS so i’m not familiar with Gibbs, but i’m sure Mombot would get the reference!
NCIS is one of the KEWLEST shows out there! Abby is my fave, followed by Gibbs and Ducky. Ziva, then Tony, McGee, Jenny, Kate and Gerald are my next faves. Palmer and Director Vance are at the bottom. I don’t really count Mike Franks and Agent Fornell, since they’re recurring instead of regular, but both are pretty awesomesauce too.
jeez, sounds like it has a big cast, KB! i’ll have to check it out when i have a free afternoon. 🙂
Hahah! I do that too!
~
Something’s up with your website! I keep refreshing and refreshing, and it only shows the post before. Minor website maintenance?
glad you could relate, ShadowShuffler!
and i’m not getting the glitch you mentioned with the site. anyone else experiencing this?
I’m gonna sound really stupid, but can you explain the comic? I’m not so good at other tech stuff than the internet and games and other things like that.
generally, once a joke is explained, it’s no longer funny, DAS! but, maybe this will help: see what the setup is – Mombot’s explanation for why she can’t use her keyboard, and jefbot’s query. then see panel 3.
thanks jefbot! I LOVE YOUR WEBCOMIC!
no prob, DAS. thanks for the webcomic love!!! 😀
My freshman year in college, my mother called me up in a panic because she had to return a video to the rental place (hush, I know I’m old) and was convinced if she hit the rewind button, she would erase the tape.
Fast forward to her last visit, when something beeped in her purse and she pulled out a smart phone. I was floored — a cell phone would have been weird enough — and she was smug.
But then she managed to erase all her messages by pressing the wrong number three times in a row, and I felt the universe right itself again . . .
She reads my blog, so this is going in my next novel.
i can relate, Sarah W – if this strip had been around in the 90s, i’d have a ton of Mombot strips relating to her tech problems with the VCR!
glad all is right with the universe again. 🙂
I have to say, my mom is not very good with a computer, but she never claimed otherwise. and she has gotten seriously a lot better in recent years. I say its all question of practice.
happy to hear your mom’s pretty computer-savvy, Maryz! it’s definitely a matter of practice – believe me, Mombot has no problems getting Bejeweled or Solitaire running on her computer!
I wish I could say that I have never done this but I honestly can’t. 5 minutes spent trying to figure out why it wouldn’t work before I copped on what I did.
ha! it’s an easy mistake to make, Liam, since we’re all creatures of habit. but, i did ask my mom if that might be the problem, which she thought was out of the question! 🙂
I’m not guilty of doing anything similar……. *shifty eyes*
of course not, TCG. me neither…
Um, yea. I’m not saying anything. Hopefully Taranchilla won’t pipe in with any stories.
As for my mom, she is reasonably tech savvy, but she does have problems with Skype every time we haven’t used it in a while. In her defense, she almost always gets them fixed on her own.
ha! i’d love to hear what stories Taranchilla might have about you, Shanna. 😉
that your mom even uses Skype is pretty cool! i have a comic strip in mind about that very thing that just might be posted soon…
Actually my father is the tech-unsavvy one, not my mother (not to say she’s great, but she doesn’t make the basic mistakes at least).
hey, another reader with a tech-savvy mom and a not-so-tech-savvy pop! thanks for joining the club, Razmoudah. 🙂
Luckily for me, my desktop uses a wireless mouse and keyboard with a USB antenna. When I use my laptop, all I have to do is just replug the device and not worry about embarassment! …. unless I forget to replug the device.
taking the keyboard’s bluetooth dongle from the desktop computer and plugging it into the laptop was exactly how i solved this one for mom/Mombot, Soul Man! 🙂
I spent Mother’s Day crying, because my Mother is dead, and I miss her. While there’s still time to be with your Mom – don’t just think about how lucky you are.
Act on that.
Believe me, that’s nothing.
My mom literally loses her ability to reason when sitting in front of a computer.
Let me back up. I have a computer science degree and was always the “techie” around the house. My mother is an English teacher, so she’s not stupid. Currently I live in Pennsylvania and she lives in Maine. So, when she has a computer problem she calls me on the phone.
This is an adult woman who teaches English for a living. But when talking about computer stuff she somehow forgets how to use nouns. “I pressed something and afterwards this other thing came up, and then it said there was some sort of error.” “Uh… you pressed WHAT and WHAT came up? And what was the error message?” “The thing on the first thing. …I don’t remember what the error was.” That’s so helpful, mom. (facepalm)
Last time we talked and she was having trouble getting her computer to boot up. I tried to talk her through doing a safeboot, but she got confused. So I told her I’d reboot my computer so I could see the same thing on my computer, that way I could help walk her through it.
Her response? “So should I hang up the phone?”
Me: “Uh… whaaaat?”
Mom: “Do you need me to hang up the phone for that?”
Me: “… Why would you need to do that?”
Mom: “So you can see what is on my screen.”
Me: (facepalm)
Turns out she thought that I was somehow going to see her computer reboot through the phonelines in a manner that doesn’t even make sense to me today.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, my friend.
Anyways, fun comic.
Your mom is too cute! I absolutely love her. (:
lol my mom does that too
Half my family uses me as tech support, plus a few people I’ve never even met. I’ll be watching youtube, and steam messages will start popping up…
I’ll point something out to my parents, they’ll deny they’re wrong, and then I’ll correct the problem…a bit like you in this strip, actually…
My aunt’s the tech support for my family in the states, as I’m in the UK most of the time. I think I have the most tech-savvy grandma, who has her own iPad and frequently uses it, thanks to her daughter’s help…
I almost peed myself when Jefbot told me. Hysterical!
And in autopilot mode, I actual can admit to doing this once or twice. Muscle memory types away, visual memory sees nothing happening. Then you look down and give your forehead a slap.
Wrong system… Reach up to your laptop on the desk, sitting in front of the other monitor and start typing.