Rockband

OK, technically not a computer issue, but still just as frustrating. I was trying to show my dad the game rockband. The only problem is that you use the instruments to start the game to play. I couldn't get him to stop touching the buttons on the guitar long enough to select a song and start the game.

Living in the 90's

My parents (and probably your parents too) first experienced the internet using America Online dial-up service. Even though they have since switched to broadband service, the AOL is still deeply entrenched.

For example, if I want my Dad to open up a browser (what's a "browser"?), I have to tell him to "open AOL". This is because he has never heard of Internet Explorer or Firefox. He only knows about the AOL browser, simply referred to as "AOL". And there is nothing more painful than trying to explain over the phone where to click in a browser that's different than yours.

"Dad, click on the address bar and type..." "What's that?"
"Let's just add it to your favorites for next time..." "What's that?"
[I hear chimes and "you've got mail" in the background.]

Also, even though they canceled the dial-up service, they still pay a monthly fee to maintain their AOL email addresses. I've had no luck convincing them to switch to one of the major free web based email providers.

Who Needs Antivirus Software?

One day after booting Dad's computer, McAfee Antivirus immediately popped-up warning that it detected a virus. After clicking "remove threat" (or something to that effect) the pop-up disappeared, only to reappear a few seconds later indicating that it had detected a virus. After trying a few things, I could not come up with an easy solution to make this infinite loop pop-up go away.

I mentioned this to my Dad. "Did you know that your computer has a virus alert?" He responded "Yeah, I wasn't sure what to do about that, so I've just been dragging the window into the corner and ignoring it."

Sigh.

Launching Applications

Dad wanted to know why every time he opened MS Word, it opened his old document rather than a new blank document. Dad didn't quite grasp that the icon he was clicking on was, in fact, that of his document, or that the small Word symbol in the corner was just a reminder that the document was a Word document. I suppose I could have put a shortcut to Word on his desktop and explained to him how to move his old documents to his My Documents folder to avoid confusion. But what fun would that be?

File Cabinet

Dad has a large filing cabinet in the office near his computer.  The cabinet contains 4 drawers of hanging folders.  The folders are full to the brim of printouts from his computer.

Printouts of e-mails.

The delicious irony is that his e-mail program has no folders, everything stays in "Inbox".  But his printouts are nicely grouped into folders such as "Virus Warning", "Youtube", etc.

I have already informed Dad that when he passes away we are locking the drawers and I will be personally carrying the file cabinet straight into the dumpster.

Somehow

My Dad's favorite word when describing something that happened on his computer is "somehow".  For example, the following is an exact story that he told me last weekend:

"Did I tell you about the problem I had last week with my computer?  One day my internet connection stopped working.  I called the cable company and they told me to try a few things, and then concluded that I must have some kind of virus.  What is the name of that virus that is going around?  Then I remembered that I had a few months of updates I had been putting off from Symantec.  So I accepted the Symantec updates, unplugged the router, and re-started the computer.  Somehow this worked and my connection came back."

Do Not Show This Again

We are all familiar with the little tips that pop up the first time you run a new application.  They tell you something that you need to know once, then you check the little box that says "Do not show this again".

This is a great concept.  The only slight problem is that Dad never clicks the little box.  Maybe he's afraid of losing the tip forever.  Maybe he doesn't see the box.  Either way, if you're working on Dad's computer, be prepared for annoying pop-ups.

The Tower

Although Dad's computer desk has a nice little alcove that is just the right size for a computer tower, you will always find the tower for Dad's computer sitting out in the middle of the floor.  To understand why this happens, let's review what happens:

1. Tower inserted into proper alcove

2. Dad loses his internet connection

3. Dad removes tower from alcove, temporarily placing it in the middle of the floor

4. Dad unplugs all routers and switches, plugs ethernet cable directly into back of computer

5. Dad calls cable company, finds out that internet connection will be restored in 1 hour

Now, here's the tricky part.  You are probably thinking that step 6 is "Dad restores all router connections" and step 7 is "Dad returns tower to alcove".  But in fact, step 5 was the last step.  This is why the tower is still sitting out in the middle of the floor when you come to visit 4 months later.

Mouse

Every time I sit down to use Dad's computer, I immediately notice a problem.  I am moving the mouse, and it is having minimal effect on the pointer on the screen.

I open the mouse and find all sorts of gunk in there that I clean out.  The mouse is now working properly.  I am left pondering how Dad was ever able to use the mouse in the previous condition.

On my last visit, even after cleaning all the gunk out the mouse would not move the cursor in the down-right direction.  The only way to accomplish this is to move way right, then way down, then back up and left as needed.  I suggested to Dad that he fork over the $10 for a new mouse.  On my next visit, I will not be surprised to see the old mouse still there.

Inbox

The horrors of Dad's e-mail Inboxes are difficult to convey in words.  Notice the plural "Inboxes".  He has e-mail accounts in Outlook Express, Hotmail, Comcast, and Yahoo, all containing many e-mails from a hodgepodge of random sources.

Each of Dad's Inboxes has several thousand messages, most of which are marked as unread because even he can see that they are spam.  Nothing goes to the Delete folder.  The only time e-mail leaves the Inbox is when the hard drive crashes, at which time the Inbox for any local accounts is reset to zero and a fresh start occurs.

Dad has so much junk in his Hotmail account that he used up the free space and now pays Microsoft a recurring fee of $20 to get extra space.  If he just deleted 3 e-mails per month with large video attachments, 97% of his space would be reclaimed.

Desktop

Dad's desktop is littered with shortcuts from days gone by.  This could come in handy someday if he ever wants to subscribe to Compuserve, NetZero, or Earthlink.

Of course, the irony of these shortcuts is that he doesn't know they are there.  Let's suppose one day he needs to quickly and urgently install Netscape 1.0.  Will he really use the shortcut for this?  No, he will search for it in Google and then when he finishes installing it, there will be 2 new shortcuts on his desktop.

Browsing

Browsing on my dad's computer can be a slow and painful process.  He never met a toolbar that he didn't like.  About 1/3 of his browser is toolbars.  AOL has a toolbar?  How often is he really using StumbleUpon?  (Probably not much, based upon all the URLs I see scrawled on little scraps of paper all around the room.)

Who knows what is causing the slowness, but he has a very fast cable connection so it seems that he has accepted too many spyware and adware programs.

Monitor Cable Issue

My Dad wanted to disconnect the CRT monitor from an old computer, but was having great difficulty with it. It turned out that the problem was that he was trying to disconnect the signal cable from the monitor side, which is not a detachable cable. It did not occur to him to follow the cable down to the computer side, where he would have seen that it could be easily removed.

Welcome

Welcome to My Dad's Computer.

This is a place for me to tell interesting stories about experiences with helping my dad with his computer, or stories from friends working on their dad's computer.

If you have any stories to submit from working on your dad's computer, please let me know.