A whole lot of begats

This story starts with Bible study, a whole lot of begats, and the question "what is going to be the internet equivalent of the 20-year-old Honda?

Once upon a time, there was a Bible study. The Bible study started on Zoom. They have been taking on various segments of the old Testament. They have gotten to one of the books that starts with pages and pages of who begat whom. RantWoman agrees with RantMom: Unless one is really, really, really into geneology and impossible names, this is definitely not the most interesting part of the Bible, but Mom wanted to stick with the whole group experience, until...

until, that is, mid-course the host decided to switch from Zoom to Teams. RantWoman imagines this is probably because the host did not want to pay for Zoom; RantWoman has no idea whether the group tried the exit after 45 minutes and then come back trick that RantWoman has seen people cope with.

Talk about begats.

First the switch begat confusion. RantMom tapped on a link in her email and was puzzled about  why noting happened. 

Someone suggested she could open her Zoom app on her phone and type in the meeting ID and passcode.

If it's a Teams meeting, RantWoman is not surprised that did not work. RantWoman encouraged RantMom to ask the Bible study host about whether the platform had indeed switched from Zoom to Teams. Yes. Okay. RantWoman has a policy of not attempting tech support after dark on nightly phone calls.

The next time RantWoman saw RantMom in person, RantWoman decided to tackle the platform issue. 

RantMom did not want to try on her tablet. RantMom got the tablet several years ago on some kind of a Verizon promo. RantWoman is pretty sure that when the Bible study was in person, RantMom was able, just like her peers, to whip out the tablet and look up the study passages there. RantWoman, on the other hand, has always found the tablet vexatious because many basic accessibility features such as auto-rotate are disabled. RantMom complained that, although she was able to do Zoom, she could never get a swipe working to switch from active speaker to gallery view. RantMom is frustrated. RantWoman has not confessed a slight temptation just to throw the tablet at the wall, but RantWoman is definitely not discouraging RantMom from thoughts of new devices. 

RantWoman has the Teams app on her Android phone but somehow that did not occur to RantWoman to try Teams while visiting RantMom. RantWoman did later try to send RantMom a Teams meeting from her phone, but the app wanted some kind of sign-in that RantWoman did not want to deal with. RantWoman still means to send a Teams link from her home computer, but the technology journey begat enough other things to look at that RantWoman will get to this.

RantWoman suggested cranking up RantMom's decade old VERY slow windows 10 desktop.

Just turning that on and running updates took more time than the RantWomen had at that point so RantWoman has gone home to think about it.

Oh wait. RantMom does facebook church sometimes on her desktop, but as far as RantWoman knows the desktop has no camera and possibly no microphone either. That probably works fine for Facebook church, but Bible study should be more interactive. Put a pin in the device comments.

SO RamtMom needs some new devices.

Recently, RantWoman packed up her laptop and a hand-me-down IPad to offer RantMom an in-person hands-on experience. RantWoman will spare readers lots of details, but a couple short notes.

RantMom really enjoyed watching RantWoman play on her old iPad even though RantWoman did not turn Voiceover off AND all of RantWoman's Kindle books, the main thing RantWoman currently does with the iPad have migrated back to the cloud since RantWoman has not been reading much lately. RantMom especially liked seeing things in landscape mode.

Little Sister thought RantMom might not like a laptop because reasons. RantMom it turned out really liked the size of the keyboard and the fact that it is backlit. RantWoman's touchpad sometimes misbehaves but we had a productive discussion about external mouse and keyboard and wired or bluetooth.

This begat next steps: RantMom wants to talk to more people and find a way to take more classes. This seems wiser to RantWoman than immediately hurrying into some store full of shrink-wrap and sealed boxes with little opportunity to try features before buying.

Rant Mom needs some new devices. She does NOT need more connectibity unless one can connvince her that something will be a lot cheaper.

Here we digress to connectivity

Dear Verizon

At some point RantMom will be making a buying decision.

DO NOT try to sell RantMom ANOTHER line. RantMom BADLY needs to replace the tablet she got a long time ago on some kind of promotion. The tablet has actually served her well and faithfully. It responds to her stylus taps. RantWoman is pretty sure she has been able to do email, maybe Zoom, maybe online Bible reading. 

RantWoman herself had an unhappy experience trying out Verizon home internet and has no opinion about whether RantMom's television and device preferences and impending move will add up to Verizon Home Internet being her best choices, ANOTHER reason to ask around and get more information before setting foot in a Verizon store.

See Home connectivity and ...

So stay tuned....