I feel like an idiot

Want to know how to make yourself feel like an absolute idiot? Here's one way!

First remove yourself from the civilized technologically advanced country for about 3 years. The Island is a great place to do that. There is no need for technology there. Your basic cell phone will do just fine.

Second, move back to the real world and try to buy a new cell phone. I went to Best Buy for this but you can go to the store of your choosing.

That should do it. Or at least it did for me. I'm feeling mighty stupid this evening.

Yeah. Itchy needed a fancy new phone. He had a cheap pay as you go phone that works fine for making calls but he needed something that could connect to the internet. He needs to be able to look things up quickly for school. This is understandable. So we went to Best Buy.

We were swarmed by a very loud talking man as soon as we even glanced at the phones. Which is what we expected. Itchy explained what the phone would be used for and the salesman pointed him in the right direction (loudly). I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Itchy was confused too. We nodded and played along pretending that we had a clue but in reality neither one of us really knew what all the jargon was about. In the end we just grabbed a bunch of brochures and left.

Once we got home we looked at the brochures and goggled the hell out of them. We had to make a few assumptions (more memory? is it really necessary or overkill?) but we found a phone that Itchy liked and that we thought would work.

Then came the service providers and all of their plans. That was fun. You know why so many people just sign up for the unlimited plans? It's because they get sick of looking at that crap and just want it to be over with. We couldn't go that route since we've got the poor. Since we were a little rushed (Itchy wanted to get it done today) we figured that we'd ask the people at Best Buy what plan they thought would be best.

So we head back to the store. Tell Spencer which phone we want and then ask him which plan he recommends. Spencer doesn't really seem to know which provider would be best. Apparently they are all the same. Alrighty then. We'll just go with the cheapest one. After about an hour (It took a while for Spencer to get everything set up) we walk out of there with this fancy new smart phone.

Smart phone my ass. It didn't even have the right date or time. You'd think Spencer could have taken care of that for us or that the phone would automatically be set to the right time (even my $10 phone did that). It took about 20 minutes for me to figure out how to set the time and date. It has too many buttons.

After Itchy got done at school (he has a patient in the ICU) he played around with it. He seemed to like it but he couldn't get it to connect to the internet. Since that is kind of the whole point of having the damn thing, he was annoyed. He had to go back to school again so he asked me to figure it out.

Ugh. I tried. I goggled stuff, read the manuals, cursed at it, etc. Nothing was working. So I called customer service and explained that I was stupid and couldn't figure out how to use the phone. The woman I talked to was very nice and she talked to me like I was five. It took a while but we figured out what the problem was and now the phone can browse the internet. Ha ha phone. I won that round.

I feel so old. Between the fancy new phone, the cable box, and the wireless internet router I feel so out of it.