My Son Shows Me New Old Technology

seems like whenever I but a new gadget I have to get a kid to hook it up..."old fart syndrome"

I lost my cell phone on the 4th, and it was the 7th before I new it was missing...again,O.F.S.

I'll be 69 in September, and I have been setting the time on VCRs since the 70's.
I can cable a data center, which is easy compared to a home theater system. Most young people pick this up as part of life, but people of any age can do it if they want to and spend a few minutes reading the manual. (RTFM!)
I was always frustrated by the people who worked on computers, (PCs and Macs) and never had the least idea of how they worked. They kept repeating dangerous practices as if these otherwise intelligent were incapable of understanding how to tie their shoes.
With HDMI this stuff is so easy these days. Hooking up an antenna to a TV is 1940s technology. Think electric can opener complexity.

I haven't had this particular problem with PC users, (they have different issues), but when I had my own consulting company 80% of my clients were Mac users.
I learned to make a copy of the System folder on every machine because they would invariably screw it up or delete it. The Mac users back then almost universally used a screen saver of aquarium fish (After Dark) that was always at least one version of the operating system behind in compatability. I would fix and clean up their machines and explain the problem in detail and caution them to never install the Screensaver again. I would show them how to use the built in Screensaver and explain why they shouldn't be installing play software on their business computers.
Invariably, I wouldn't even get home before I got a call that their Macs were broken again. "You reinstalled After Dark again, didn't you". "Yes". Productivity dropped 45% when companies changed from MS-DOS to Windows. With DOS, the machines were only good for work. With a Mac or Windows machine you can waste weeks "tuning" the GUI, playing solitaire, trying to find printer drivers, etc.
I made $40k in 6 months just from Mac users sabotaging their own computers. Later, when Mac users were about a quarter of my customers, they were still three quarters of my income. And there's no reason for it. You have to go way out of your way to screw up a Mac.
Users suck. That's why most businesses are moving back to the equivalent of mainframes. VMware is the greatest thing since sliced bread. People can just reboot their computer and load a clean copy of Windows. All business PCs are more like smart terminals now. It took 25 years to fix the Windows productivity problems.
Sorry for the rant that is probably way off topic. Someone accidentally hit my Red Button.

I had a user, a few months ago, that had to move offices. I told them to shut down their computer, so I could dismantle it. This is 2019. This person had NO IDEA how to shut down the computer. Not a clue. They asked if "this button does it", which was the power button on the monitor.

That's computer guy talk for Run like Hell

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This is the IT life!
I think if I had to do it over I would go into programming. You don't have to deal with people, someone else will fix your machine and the bar is really low because management doesn't know how to evaluate your work in most cases. Programmers are the best at convincing people that they are indispensable geniuses. I actually know one that's the real thing. Pure genius and his stuff always works great. Good enough to overlook the fact that he is a dangerous sociopath.

I am so lucky wrt storms where I live. I've had DIRECTV® for over 15 years, and have had less than an hour per year of outages.

Contract disputes can be nasty, but it's the local station (or its parent) that pulls the plug, not DIRECTV. They will always say DIRECTV is unreasonable, cut them off, etc., but that's a lie. They are always willing to keep the feed going until a new carriage contract is in place. 

That's what I mean and how it is at most places. The first programmer we hired took 6 months and $9500 to write a piece of code to adapt our software to be able to receive payroll transmissions over the internet instead of using modems. The owner and myself thought it was the best money ever spent as I was spending most of my time troubleshooting clients modems and testing phone lines. (not telegraphs, @psycholime). But the first time we showed the new guy our brilliant new hack, he smiled and rewrote in his first afternoon. He has enabled the company to triple the amount of clients and payrolls they can process while only adding 20% more workers.