Moving right along
Nov. 21st, 2004 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susandennisAfter my last entry, I lost my free network. TMobile kicked the cash register in. They have a variety of deals but the one that suits me best is $6.00 an hour - min one hour. I am now in the Atlanta airport - yet another TMobile hot spot. But I think I'll hold off for now.
The flight to Atlanta was ok. I didn't get as much sleep as what I would have liked but otherwise it was fine. I pulled into a "Southern Food" stall in a food court here when I got off the plane and had a delicious breakfast. I mean delicious!
Now I'm and hour and a half into my 3 hour layover. On to Charleston. Polly is picking me up at airport.
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The news of our governor's race is out. Our two candidates are 192 votes apart. The funny part is hearing all the various pronunciations of the last name of the Democratic candidate. Her name is pronounced gregWAR. CNN just said Gregworry. NPR yesterday said Gregiare. I think they are all just waiting to see if they really have to learn it or will get off the hook with the Republican - Rossi.
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Now it is Sunday night. I'm in a nice room at the Hampton Inn typing on a nice little laptop lap desk they laid on on my bed. It also had a nice little tent card on it saying that they have free wi fi... My mini does not believe it. Searched and found none and wouldn't even be convinced when I gave it the specific SSID. So Treo is acting as my modem right now and doing a fine job. Plus, it's charging off the mini at the same time. Now, that's efficient.
Mom is fine. She's old and smaller but fine. And oh so happy to see me. I asked her if she wanted the computer first or the Tivo first and she said she didn't care. So we went with computer. I had the DSL modem and two ethernet cards my brother had sent (one and a spare) but turns out, she already had one in her computer! The rest of the installation was a mess. I ended up spending two solid hours on the phone with a BellSouth woman who was wonderful. We tried everything - all systems looked like a go but no internet love. She kept putting me on hold to do research. I kept rebooting and removing old software. FINALLY, we decided to do a step by step through all the software and then a step by step through all the hardware and if that didn't work she was going to send me an expert.
We took a collective deep breath and started with the machine's IP. No IP. what??? The fucking net card was disabled!!!! who disables a net card and why???? Enabled it an Bob was the best uncle in the world. Mom watched the whole operation in terror. When it was done, she said she wasn't going to touch the computer because she didn't want to break it.
I went out to get us some dinner and bring it back and of course when I got back she was deep into a long, involved email to her cousin in Texas. So much for conquering fear. She has a huge list of stuff she wants to look up. I think she's just beyond delighted. And so am I.
But tomorrow the first order of biz is a new monitor - flat panel. The CRT she has now is horrible and huge. She needs a crisp screen and more desk real estate.
Then it will be on to Tivo. This has me a little nervous because of her Comcast set up. But, nothing ventured...
Now I need to get my shit organized for tomorrow and hit the hay. I'm about red eyed out.
And, p.s. before I let the Bellsouth woman go, I gave her my email address and asked her to send me the email address of where I can write to ensure her management team knows that she is the best. She happily obliged.
The flight to Atlanta was ok. I didn't get as much sleep as what I would have liked but otherwise it was fine. I pulled into a "Southern Food" stall in a food court here when I got off the plane and had a delicious breakfast. I mean delicious!
Now I'm and hour and a half into my 3 hour layover. On to Charleston. Polly is picking me up at airport.
---------------
The news of our governor's race is out. Our two candidates are 192 votes apart. The funny part is hearing all the various pronunciations of the last name of the Democratic candidate. Her name is pronounced gregWAR. CNN just said Gregworry. NPR yesterday said Gregiare. I think they are all just waiting to see if they really have to learn it or will get off the hook with the Republican - Rossi.
--------------
Now it is Sunday night. I'm in a nice room at the Hampton Inn typing on a nice little laptop lap desk they laid on on my bed. It also had a nice little tent card on it saying that they have free wi fi... My mini does not believe it. Searched and found none and wouldn't even be convinced when I gave it the specific SSID. So Treo is acting as my modem right now and doing a fine job. Plus, it's charging off the mini at the same time. Now, that's efficient.
Mom is fine. She's old and smaller but fine. And oh so happy to see me. I asked her if she wanted the computer first or the Tivo first and she said she didn't care. So we went with computer. I had the DSL modem and two ethernet cards my brother had sent (one and a spare) but turns out, she already had one in her computer! The rest of the installation was a mess. I ended up spending two solid hours on the phone with a BellSouth woman who was wonderful. We tried everything - all systems looked like a go but no internet love. She kept putting me on hold to do research. I kept rebooting and removing old software. FINALLY, we decided to do a step by step through all the software and then a step by step through all the hardware and if that didn't work she was going to send me an expert.
We took a collective deep breath and started with the machine's IP. No IP. what??? The fucking net card was disabled!!!! who disables a net card and why???? Enabled it an Bob was the best uncle in the world. Mom watched the whole operation in terror. When it was done, she said she wasn't going to touch the computer because she didn't want to break it.
I went out to get us some dinner and bring it back and of course when I got back she was deep into a long, involved email to her cousin in Texas. So much for conquering fear. She has a huge list of stuff she wants to look up. I think she's just beyond delighted. And so am I.
But tomorrow the first order of biz is a new monitor - flat panel. The CRT she has now is horrible and huge. She needs a crisp screen and more desk real estate.
Then it will be on to Tivo. This has me a little nervous because of her Comcast set up. But, nothing ventured...
Now I need to get my shit organized for tomorrow and hit the hay. I'm about red eyed out.
And, p.s. before I let the Bellsouth woman go, I gave her my email address and asked her to send me the email address of where I can write to ensure her management team knows that she is the best. She happily obliged.
bellsouth
Date: 2004-11-21 08:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-21 09:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-21 10:16 pm (UTC)You are a Good Daughter Susan :)
Mom Tech Support
Date: 2004-11-22 02:54 am (UTC)--------------------------
I love that line and I love reading your stories of Mom tech support.
My Mom is a complete technophobe. When we moved her to San Francisco, I discovered the Powerbook 190c I gave her years ago...Still pristine and unused...Carefully packed and lugged along. She said she was afraid to use it because she didn't want to break it. She did use the carrying case as a purse, though.
My Brother gave her another computer and a 30-minute lesson with Windows...But it was his old work PC and he wanted to keep everything on it in case he visited and wanted to use it. That thoroughly intimidated Mom, and she never used that one either because
1. Again, she didn't want to break it.
2. My Brother had a million icons all over the desktop which really confused the hell out of her.
3. She pretty much forgot the entire 30-minute Windows lesson by the next day.
Finally, I relinquished my old 5-finger severance Thinkpad 600e. Nothing on the desktop but one icon...Internet Explorer. I jacked up the fonts and icon sizes so she could see better. Set it to launch IE with the San Francisco Chronicle as the home page. Put on a popup blocker, antivirus and innoculated it with Spybot. Put windows maximizer on it so she would never have to fiddle with re-sizing windows. You know the deal...Mom-proofing.
Then I set it up in her day room, where it would glower at her while she was watching TV.
I sat down with her, showed her how to turn the machine on and off...Then went over browser basics. Then I did it again the next week. And again. And again. Every time she asked something I told her to look it up on the web.
The funny and sweet thing is that she treated this laptop like it was made out of spun sugar. When she said she was afraid she'd break it, I told her "Go ahead and break it. Throw it across the room. I'll fix it, so don't worry about it."
Mom's been on-line for about a year now. She reads the news sites and prints out recipes from the food channel. She has a list of favorite sites she visits. She googles up information while she's watching the tube, which I consider relatively sophisticated use for her.
My Brother wants her to get involved in on-line communities and use e-mail more. As for me, I'm just glad she's gone as far as she has.
One more Mom Tech Support story.
One time I noticed a layer of dust on her Stinkpad, indicating that it hadn't been used recently. Mom was off at the store, so I fired it up and the printer begins to spit out a recipe...And another copy...And another. I notice right next to the printer are about 50 pages of that same recipe.
I cleared the print spool of the rest of the jobs. This is a common problem in desktop support. At some point, the print driver seized up and my Mom...Probably assuming that she was somehow clicking on the "print" button incorrectly...Proceeded to click it a couple hundred times before giving up.
Fast forward to the next day, when she's pretty much forgotten the entire episode. She turns on the laptop and suddenly this demon printer starts puking up a zillion copies of a cornbread casserole recipe.
Her solution: Turn off the computer and keep it off for three weeks.
Why did she wait so long and not tell me? She said "I was embarassed that I wasted so much paper."
Re: Mom Tech Support
Date: 2004-11-22 04:14 am (UTC)Once I was on yesterday she said - from across the room - 'check the tennis score, please...' I had no clue - then she said with a bit of tone - just go to sports and then tennis - it will be in the headline... Her home page is MSNBC and she knows that site!