Family Tech

[fixerkitty.livejournal.com]

(X posted to my LJ)

So Mom's on vacation. Ok, we all know this. So she calls me up tonight from God knows where in the Midwest and starts to cry because her laptop seems to have a bad power cord, she called tech support and they told her to take out the battery, and now she can't put it back in. This was beyond whining, she actually broke down in tears. :/ Dear God in Heaven. Then she starts saying that she needs to come home because the weather hasn't been nice (MASSIVE MASSIVE rain, but she wasn't caught in any floods) and because her machine doesn't work. :/

She managed to snap the battery back in after playing with it for two hours. It only fits in ONE WAY! How the fuck could she not figure this out? Oh yeah, she's lazy, and plays the victim so people will come in and 'save' her. No one's doing her a favour by doing this. I told her to take it down to the lobby and see if she could plug it in there. She did, and *voila!* IT WORKED! So she threw a tantrum because the wiring in her hotel room was bad. :/ And also because of this, she had to order in a new power cord because Compaq's techies are crap and told her she had a bad one. :/ Fortunately it's under warranty, so...now she has two perfectly good power cables.

I cannot tell you enough how much I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle her with that six foot CAT6 cable she's carrying.

GAAAAH!!!

*headdesk*

She makes me want to drink. Heavily. :/

Comments

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

I've had a year of Mom being over seas and now in CA, working on her masters. Had to talk her through cut and past of web address from browser to Word. I have no idea why it has to take 20 minutes for this.

[fixerkitty.livejournal.com]

You're serious. I feel for you.

here, have the virtual beverage of your choice. ;)

[jecook]

Parents, You can't sell them for experiments and they are too expensive to dump in a nursing home.

I don't know what Mother is going to do when I refuse to walk her through figureing out how to look up a book on Amazon...

[fixerkitty.livejournal.com]

Amen to that. Fortunately mine's not *that* bad, but she is a university professor (and teaches Internet courses at that!) so one would *think* that she'd at least know the basics. :/

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

I forget how long it took me to teach my Mom to NOT TYPE IN ALL UPPERCASE and
to stop
hitting a
hard return
at
what appeared to be the end of the line.

.....
....
...
..
.

[fixerkitty.livejournal.com]

:/
....

[omg-teh-funnay.livejournal.com]

My pholks are refreshingly tech-savvy. Not completely technical, but advanced enough to do some quick reality-checking before freaking out and calling me.

I recently did some work on my mom's lappy while she was visiting - it had been running slow and the tech at her day job defragged it and called it good. I checked, it was loading every service imaginable, including a buncha crap she didn't need. Turned it off, uninstalled some unneeded stuff, defregged, 1000% better

Oddly, no spyware. I was impressed for that one. Yay mom!