Make up your damned mind

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

My wife had some problem with her MacBookPro, so I suggested booting from the Leopard DVD and running DiskUtility. 30 minutes later, she's sitting in front of her MBP ranting "I can't find the keystroke to boot from the DVD anywhere! All I can find are pages that say `To do this, you should boot from the installation disk'. I pick up her Macbook, and change her google search from "How to boot from macintosh installation disk" to "mac boot cd" and of course the first hit is a list of mac boot keystrokes, including "c" to boot from the CD. Then she's ranting "You snatched it away from me just as I was going to click on that link". I hit the back button twice to go back to her google search and said "fine." Obviously that information wasn't anywhere on that page of google results.

Next time she says she's having problems, I'm just going to tell her I wouldn't presume to prevent her from finding the answers herself.

Comments

[mouser.livejournal.com]

They say they don't want us to fix their problems when they rant, just to be supportive.

Sadly, I know they only mean that when it's convenient.

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

Instead of being passive-aggressive and getting into another quarrel about it next time; why not just ask her what her search terms were, and suggest better alternatives? Seems a lot less potentially frustrating to me.

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

Agreed. If you knew how to do this, why not just tell her and be done with it? Generally speaking it's a little improper to consider a spouse/life partner to be a luser - says more about you than it does about them.

[fenrirvallin.livejournal.com]

Either teach them to fix it themselves, or cover whatever you're doing behind smoke and mirrors?

[hlwoods.livejournal.com]

Next time my hubby responds to my obvious mounting frustration by taking my computer away from me and mucking about with it without my permission, and without explaining why first ...

Well, let's just say that activities involving my hubby and my computer would never overlap again.

What I don't understand is your attitude. You've never been frustrated by something you know is so easy, but you just can't remember the right magic incantation?

(And for the record, the first time a tech takes my computer away from me while I'm trying to resolve a problem, he's through with my ticket, and I'll talk with his manager. Basic courtesy goes a long way.)

[teriwyn.livejournal.com]

When I know, or can find the answer to a problem more quickly than my partner, I do not shame him over it. Nor does he shame me when the situation is reversed.

It sounds like she was pretty frustrated, and it sounds like maybe you were frustrated with the situation as well.

"Next time she says she's having problems, I'm just going to tell her I wouldn't presume to prevent her from finding the answers herself."

Hope you'll let us know how that turns out.


Speaking seriously, I know we techies get enough stuff from users, and playing in-home-tech to family off the clock can be more than some of us can tolerate. But the "luser" gloves should generally speaking not be used with those you love. It's not that productive, and it won't make you feel that much better in the end.

While you didn't ask for advice, you did post in a public forum where unsolicited advice is common. Mine? Next time, if you're just itching to get involved, and she's frustrated... ask her if there's something you can help her with before you snatch it up and proceed to rub her nose in whatever she was doing wrong.

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Agreed, agreed, agreed. This would have been a shitty way to treat a random customer who'd done nothing worse than use a search phrase that didn't work. Much less your wife.

Saying "try searching for 'mac boot cd'" or saying "mind if I try?" would have been fine, but just taking the computer away from her? Uh, no.

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

what about just RTFM? because this is in the little user's manual.

[lillyflowers.livejournal.com]

Is she new to Macs or what? As far back as I can remember, it's always been the "c" key.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

Actually, with the Leopard (OS X 10.5) DVD, you can put it in and double-click on Install Mac OS X and the machine will reboot itself and run the installer within which you can use Disk Utility.

No C key on startup needed.

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about Macs... but off-topic, she's your wife. I've helped my ex-boyfriend with his PC issues, up to and including helping him with his resume, and teaching him the basics of copy/paste right-click/left-click, without complaint.

Jeez... if I were dating/married to you, that would not be a match made in heaven. :(