holiday parental i.t. dept, reporting for duty (part 2)

Ah fuck me, what a great way to start the new year, having to show the idiot again how to use his dvd program to watch the dvdrs again.

Last year I introduced my dad to Bittorrent and this year he is ranting about dupes, bad uploads and how great axxo is and how it's a shame he seems to have disappeared. wtf?

fixed mom's printer

also bought her a new universal remote AND programmed it

son of the year here, folks

Wireless now up and running again, 50-odd un-resized photos of nephew taken by his grandparents now emailed to bro & sis-in-law, time to begin another season.

try to introduce parents to flickr, y/n? i bet i'd set it up and they'd never use it again.

i am going to pitch Apple Remote Desktop to my family tomorrow; if they front the money, I'll troubleshoot their computers from the comfort of my own home.

― gbx, Monday, December 24, 2007 3:56 PM

o man i need to do this

Okay, just set up at least two different satnav rigs for family members.

Get ready for another round

Is it wrong to come here only this time of year?
I remember this thread from the sandbox.

not looking fwd to this

http://www.sentience.com/num50bp.gif

yay, girlfriend's parents being computer literate!

So far, only had to run the NOD or whatever scan it is, and completely updated the parents' Garmin rig and my sister's Wii.

"The laptop has got really slow"

"I'm too old to learn Apple"

AND had to explain repeatedly and in great detail why you couldn't have a fax machine(that answers after the 2nd ring) and an answering machine(4th ring) on the same line and have both work properly

didn't have to do this!!!!!!!

"how do i paste a picture into my email" using gmail was the worst of it, i think they are learning
got an annoying gps for the car though despite not really having a problem getting lost

we couldn't work out how to get the wii to connect with the wifi; i'm not sure what the guy who installed them did, but I can't seem to get it to accept a wireless connection even w/pswd

they didn't ask meto do anything but I had to set up mu xbox and that lead to a tv wiring autopsy. whoever set up their system left some monster cable hanging there, connected to nothing. pretty lol.

set up dsl with wireless router for them; dad wants to know if that means he can now print his sudoku puzzles from the internet at home, rather than having to go to work to do this.

I made the (possible) mistake of getting my dad a laptop with Windows 7 installed. He's never had a laptop before, nor has he used Windows 7. I've been on the phone to support him twice so far.

roku netflix box setup lols

"can you put a movie on itunes?"

Hi, dear son.
Thank you so much for the purple print. Now I get it that these pixels are not text. Kept thinking one should be able to just click on it... When you come, maybe show me how to pixel. Also, are these now ONLY purple, or can I print them any color?

reporting for doodie

- firefox upgraded
- safari toolbar brought back

Ha just posted one of these on the 'home for the holidays' thread. My dad said he had emailed the makers of a dodgy toolbar he had unwittingly installed to ask how to remove it. Last Christmas
with the family I had to un-italicise all browser text. I have no idea how they do these things!

• relative #1 wants to buy an iPad. I don't own one and know nothing about them and have said so. Not getting involved.
• relative #2 has problems with the battery on their mobile not keeping a charge for more than a couple of days. Not getting involved.
• relative #2, again, has problems using e-mail, specifically remembering which button to click on to reply to an e-mail. I prompted them with the suggestion that, er, could it possibly be 'Reply'? Minimal involvement.
• relative #3 has problems finding stuff online, but their pride means they won't ask anyone for help. Don't have to get involved.

Fortunately vital network settings on Win7 are buried so far down in a labyrinthine menu structure that it's not possible for the casual user to even find them, never mind change them.
New router seems to be holding up as well. I'm not going to tell them that all kinds of funky NAS shit can be achieved with the USB on the back though.

My mother's i.t. requirements are actually pretty low, considering she's 80. Occasionally I have to load new images into her jigsaw puzzle game. When I brought her TV back to life a few months ago (firmware update) you would have thought I'd performed a successful exorcism on it.

"Your mother sucks co-ax in hell!"

Relative #2's Kindle also seems to be working out OK. It's one of the simple ones (the Kindle not the relative), but I was concerned that it would be a whole load of problems. Configuring it for the wireless network was a pain, but once that was done all there was was a brief "what does the battery indicator look like?" "a battery" "oh" conversation.

Rob Hyde ‏@rob_hyde
'Why the fuck did you install Yahoo toolbar?' - millions of people using the computer at their parents' places a minute ago

I really need to update OS X on my mom's laptop, which I may tackle this week.

I am really asking for trouble in taking them an Apple TV, aren't I?

i have heard the nutcracker on public radio at least three times in 48 hours

o wait, this is it

haha my mom had the nutcracker on yesterday too, just once though.

I thought I'd avoided IT dept holidays duty, because my mom has gone mac, but no. Just the usual re: every tiny thing that doesn't work perfectly is understood as a disaster rather than a blip to figure out. I'm more patient than I used to be, at least.

just removed 2 aol toolbars powered by ask jeeves

mom realized the beeps she heard were indicators she had received text messages on her iphone

mom only takes 3 minutes to figure out how to delete messages

My relatives are divided into those with practically no interest in technology, aside from maybe an e-reader and a PAYG mobile, and those who have owned some kind of computer for over 30 years, yet still don't know WTF they are doing, but won't ask anyone for help. In the latter group is a relative who's had a new Win8 laptop for the last 4 months but still hasn't got to grips with it, despite buying one of those thick Dummies 14-in-one books on Win8. So they're still using, at the same time, their 3 year old Win7 laptop that makes a noise like quadcopter. Refurbishing laptops is a big part of my actual 9-5 job. So I'd get to work on that with a can of compressed air, perhaps more RAM, swap out the HDD for an SDD maybe, reinstall Win7, maybe dual boot some flavour of Linux. But no, because this person will not admit to not knowing everything. Although in this case I dislike them intensely, so wvs.

Also, the Win7 laptop has so much adware and other crap installed on it, when IE is running, the top half of the screen is toolbars.

Oh and said relative keeps putting off running Java Update for some reason, even though it would take five minutes at most.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/e6fpc3/i_do_believe_this_fits_in_here_as_well_happy/
https://i.redd.it/5tlz7615rs241.png