Bytes and gigs and mpegs

Growing up it was always a standing joke that Dad never read the instruction manual for anything. Our first video recorder (betamax - we didn't always make the right technology decisions!) broke after a few years and only at this point did anyone realise that half the instruction manual was missing. He was always a whizz at figuring out how technology worked. This is not, however, a skill I have inherited and I am a slave to the instruction manual. In fact, so hopeless am I that when I had to replace the last phone that Eve had munched through and broken, I had a list of things I wanted the helpful salesman to change on my phone before it left the shop, fully aware that I would never figure out how to do it myself. It took him half an hour.

Eve, however, seems to be a little like her grandfather in that she has taken to technology like a duck to water. She can find functions on my laptop I didn't know were there and regularly, when I am working at home, opens my company online chat tool and merrily types away to people. This afternoon I had a conference call and, in a severe error of judgment, I gave my phone to Eve to play with just beforehand. It was impossible to get it off her without a lot of shouting from us both, and it was my own stupid fault that I gave it to her so I left her with it while I did my call - all locked and in the capable hands of H.

By the time I came off my call Eve had managed to download me some ringtones (goodness knows how much that will cost me) and changed my standby setting completely. I have sat here for half an hour and for the life of me can't figure out how she did it and, therefore, how to change it back. Thank goodness she didn't change the language setting to Chinese.