The Television is Dead. Long Live Television; other Tech Support moments.

Dear World,
No. No! NO!
Grandparental people do not, Not, NOT want the latest electronic gizmos. They want things they understand. They want things that work the way they are used to interacting with technology. They may or may not CARE about learning a whole bunch of new buzzwords with each iteration of technology.

Cases in point:
GrandMaFF and RantMom

RantWoman has been spending this week listening to someone RantWoman has permission to refer to as GrandMaFF. GrandmaFF is a buddy from RantWoman's faith community, slightly younger than RantMom. RantWoman has been observing GrandMaFF interact with her new Mac and tech support, and email now organized into "conversations" and a whole blizzard of other terms worthy of a New Operating System. Many things are not working. GrandMa FF has talked to tech support many times.
GrandMa FF is linguistically intrepid enought to wade into Spanish at a quite advanced age, and to wade far enough in to knowa good bit of what goes on with her son-in-law and his extended family; RantWoman has given herself permission to wonder why computerese does not seem so relevant but it does not.

GrandmaFF reports that she has talked to tech support people based in several locations, but GrandmaFF is relieved that everyone she has talked to has somekind of North American English speech patterns.

GrandmaFF needed to replace her new computer at some point after she had already invested substantial time in things like transferring contacts and deciding on new file management options. Last night RantWoman was visiting and there were still issues. Even worse, long ago in a grad school far far away, RantWoman Tech Support goddess could sometimes heal computers simply by listening to tales of woe and turning her attention to the offending device. RantWoman is far from confident that several iterations of operating system later, without current fingers on experience, that devices in RantWoman's orbit will be similarly intimidated. Instead RantWoman and GrandmaFF needed just to take a walk and rest up for more tech support conversations in the daylight.

Along comes RantMom. With RantMom, RantWoman is mourning the apparent electronic demise of the hand-me-down television someone gave RantMom 8 or 9 years ago before one of RantMom's time consuming medical matters. RantMom would SAY she can live without the television, but RantWoman is not so sure.

First RantMom vacuums in all sorts of local news that RantWoman otherwise would bypass completely. The RantMom news digest service is idiosyncratic, but of all the things to distress RantMom, RantWoman thinks ranting at the television is one of RantMom's more benign options. Second there is the matter of Dancing with the Stars, Chopped, Wheel of Fortune. Somewhere in here are the options for the Before Bedtime nap and all the commercials advising the public about how to cope with all sorts of geriatric leakages and seepages. The main point: it works for RantMom.
RantMom has rediscovered Classic King. RantMom can tune her radio to public radio for news. RantWoman has gone so far as to suggest the POSSIBILITY of streaming television content via DSL on RantMom's computer. RantMom acted mystified at the mere suggestion. RantWoman admits to complete lack of desire to play tech support goddess let alone to go near the thought of television content on RantMom's spiffy new but still woefully underutilized Smartphone.
At this point RantMom plans one key foray into the 21st century: she is looking for a flat-screen television!