Coping with new technology is hard. Seems like everyday, there’s a new gadget, a new “essential” app, a new website you just have to subscribe to. It’s hard enough keeping up with the times. You want to know what’s even harder? Trying not to look like a total buffoon while using new tech for the first time.
I’m sure everyone has a story like this. Not everyone would be brave enough to share theirs though so here’s mine.
The first time I saw an iPod screen freeze
Ok, so my first encounter with an iPod was in Uni. I was hanging out in my friend’s room and his roommate had the second generation iPod. Nice guy like he was, he let us play with it for a few minutes, even leaving it with us as he went to grab a bite with his girlfriend.
After a few minutes, my friend slept off on the bed leaving me with all that mp3 goodness. The only problem? After rocking out to Jimmy Eat World for about 15 minutes, the iPod slipped out of my hand and hit the ground hard. Nothing broke, but the screen froze and all the buttons stopped responding.
And so began the most terrifying 30 minutes of my life. I tried everything to get it to work to no avail.
Eventually, and I still cringe whenever I remember, I got the “brilliant” idea to drop it on the floor again, maybe that will get it working. I think I dropped that iPod like three times just to get it working again.
Luckily for me, the owner of the device came and delivered me from my folly. He simply held the central circle along with another button and the device reset itself.
Yeah, I’ve never used another person’s i-anything since then.
The first time I tried to steal games on a diskette
Let me give this some context. It was 1999. We just got a PC at home and I had played through every single game that came on it. I was bored and looking for more games to play. A friend in Apapa had loads of games on his PC and I told him I was coming to “raid” his hard disk. This was before we had consumer external hard disks. I made a two hour journey to go collect games from him. I went with only a 3.5” diskette.
Upon getting to my friend’s place, when I showed him what I brought, he fell down laughing. He said it wasn’t big enough, that I should have brought an empty CD. I told him it was big enough, as I even had some games on the diskette already. MS DOS games. He waved me off. By this time, I was angry. “What’s wrong with this guy? Does he think I’m stupid or what? He should just say he doesn’t want to give me.”
Anyway, I kept my cool, played it low. When he stepped out of the room to go talk to his mum, I quickly jumped on his computer, slid the diskette in and opened his games folder. There were about six icons in it and I just right clicked, and sent each one to my diskette. Immediately I finished, I removed the diskette and stashed it away, feeling like James Bond.
When I got home, it was game time. Only problem was, I kept double clicking those icons for almost three hours. None of them worked. They were all shortcuts!
The first time I got a virus
This was back when you could use an iPod as a makeshift external hard drive. All that 32GB of space was being put to good use. I remember there was this particular iPod we used on the regular to transfer entire dumps of software and games.
So, it was my turn to take the drive home and transfer the goodies to my PC. Only problem was, the person who used it before me had been to a cyber cafe and had gotten the iPod infected (yeah, that was a thing back then). Unfortunately for me, I had an outdated antivirus that didn’t pick the virus. It was a virus called New Folder, I’m sure some people will remember it.
The really funny thing about this virus is, it asks you, are you sure you want to install this, to which I answered yes. And Voila! I got infected and lost everything on my PC. From a virus on an iPod.
See why I’m not crazy about Apple products?
The first time I used email
I had some really terrible teachers on how to use the internet. Like, the person who taught me how to send email (I’m not calling names but I still remember you o). Anyway, he said, just put in the person’s address and type in your mail. I said, that’s it? He gave me a thumbs up.
So, I did just that. I typed in a bunch of my friend’s real world address in the address bar and, sent them emails.
Even more embarrassing is the fact that when Mailer Daemon started sending me my mails back, I thought he was an actual person working at Yahoo (I was using yahoomail at the time).
The first time I got on an escalator
Okay, technically, this isn’t me. This is a colleague in the office here but it’s just so funny I had to include it.
“My first time on the escalator is an experience I hate to remember. The elevators were out of order and the stairs, can’t remember now, I think they were being repaired as well. So it was myself, my older brother and the escalator.
He had gotten on the escalator easily and was on the upper floor before he looked back and realised I wasn’t behind him. I was still downstairs, watching kids jump on and off the escalator, all the while thinking to myself “I’m not getting on that thing!”
Well, I finally got on it. I slipped back once or twice, held on to the moving railing (that also creeped me out, I thought it was going to be static) and held my breathe till I got the top floor. I held out my hand to my brother as I approached the end of the belt and jumped off the thing immediately my brother got me.
I kept hopping afterwards for about three minutes for some weird reason. My muscles were taut and I was sweating. But I survived.”
Do you have an embarrassing moment with new tech? Share the experience with the Radar community.
