Those Darned Computers

[NW-Bound]

My wife has a long-time friend who is computer-averse, who had used PC at work but refused to have her own at home. She said that these PCs were buggy and temperamental, and that she would rather avoid all aggravations and not deal with them.

It is sad, and I couldn't help thinking that if she had a more user-friendly Mac that her experience would have been a happier one. Note that I have never used a Mac, and stick with PCs mainly because they are used in the business world.

And here's some more data points. A friend of mine, a well-paid engineer, has a side business of "fixing" home PCs. He started out helping his in-laws, then the cousins, and the word spread, and people came beating a path to his door. At first, he did it for free (he's a hard-core geek!) because he thought it was fun. Soon, as he had too much business though he only accepted jobs from friends of friends and not strangers, he had to charge something to pay for his beers while he babysat weekend-long sessions of Windows re-installation, etc...

He said he saw quite a few PCs that got infected with virus, and the owners stopped using them soon after buying them, judging from the date and the amount of files and data on their hard drives. What was sad was that the poor owner, not knowing anyone to fix it, just put the PC in the closet, and by the time it got to my friend, the PC was already so old and obsolete it was not worthwhile to resurrect it.

He was doing this before the Geek Squad started, and still had some "business" the last time I talked to him.

 

[W2R]

I'm not sure but I think this link goes to their rates, though there are really too many to fit on a card.

DMM Notice 123 Price List

 

[NW-Bound]

There's this joke widely circulating on the internet and through emails. So, I searched this forum, and sure enough someone has posted it here.

An elderly gentlemen of my acquaintance did not realize that when you fax a document, you don't have to make a copy for yourself Yes, he has all his marbles, and is intelligent....just never had anything to do with office machinery...back in his day, women did "all that" whilst the menfolk did the Real Work...And we think women are the sheltered ones!

Amethyst

 

[ItDontMeanAThing]

Progress just moves too quickly for some, but that horse left the barn long ago.

I started programming in the punch card era. Since the PC appeared I've tried to help and or train co-workers, family and friends. The ones who progress moved too quickly for all acted the same way. Based on their actions my guess is the following thoughts ran on a loop while trying to learn about computers is:
- What's wrong with paper and pencil!
- You're trying to make me look like a fool!
- I Don't want to be here!
- I HATE this Stuff!
- ITS NOT FAIR!

 

[ItDontMeanAThing]

Was walking out of a client's office one day when the head of the agency stopped me. He had seen me working again with 'The Complainer', an employee who would have been fired along ago if it hadn't been a civil service job. Being within earshot of this woman was an ordeal. She talked to herself and at others who were ignoring her way, way too much and most of what she said was whining moaning and complaining. For this session she'd been a happy camper, which did not go unnoticed.

I told him she was spell checking a word processing document when I arrived. The copy was to be used in a graphic program she used to make the version to be posted on walls all around the county. She mentioned that now she had the spelling right, her next step was to retype it into the graphics program, but that would wait until I was gone. I showed her how to copy and paste text from one program to another. She was stunned for about 10 seconds, all smiles after that.

 

[NW-Bound]

I started programming in the punch card era...

You used punched cards? You had it made! See this.

 

[Major Tom]

It's love/hate for me, but we are stuck with it. I even take my iPod with me to the bathroom.

I think, based on this information alone, you have pretty much taken the new technology to heart

 

[GrayHare]

I'm not sure but I think this link goes to their rates, though there are really too many to fit on a card.

DMM Notice 123 Price List

Holy cow, that page is over 6 megabytes of html! And sure enough, the most commonly used "First-Class Mail Domestic—Retail" ratecard is indeed there: at the very bottom.

 

[scrabbler1]

The thing about many very elderly men is that they never learned to use a keyboard, because until personal computers came along, typing was strictly "women's work" and something they knew they'd never need. So once their wife dies, computers are out, unless they can find a daughter, niece, or lady companion to do the keyboarding. They remind me of old ladies of an earlier era (1980's) who never learned to drive because their father did the driving; then their husband did the driving; then their son did it; and finally, they hired someone to drive them.

My dear late mother, though, had a different issue. She could type blue blazes, but was afraid of doing something by accident that would "break" the computer. No matter how much we reassured her that it was almost impossible to break the computer except by dropping it or pouring water on it. She was especially intimidated by pop-up ads, and would turn the computer off (using the "on-off" button) when one appeared. Finally one day I showed her how to click the little "X" in the corner and she was so relieved!

Amethyst

I can relate to this on several levels.

First, my mom's mother had stopped driving after she got divorced in the early 1960s and lived in Brooklyn near Flatbush Avenue which has many stores and is near lots of public transit. By 1981, 10 years after she and her second husband moved to Florida, she was taking driving lessons again to get her license back. I had just turned 18 and was going to visit them in Florida, and, just having gotten my DL we were going to kinda celebrate this big (re)achievement in our lives. Sadly, it never happened because she had an aneurysm and passed away rather suddenly.

My dad, meanwhile, has had only a minor interest in using a PC and going on line. I gave him an old PC about 10 years ao then my brother gave him a better old one soon after. That one broke down last month (I tried to fix it but failed; it needs some new parts) so my brother is giving him an old laptop. But my dad never learned to type so he is painfully ssllooww to watch type a small message, using one finger from each hand and taking several seconds to hit each key. I did show him how to sign onto the library's PC to check his email (nearly all junk mail anyway) but he has not done it while he waits to pick up my brother's old laptop this weekend.

I often wonder if things would have been different regarding PC use in their house had my mother still been alive. She passed away in 1995 at age 59, a few months after I had just bought my first PC. She did get to see it once before she died and was really impressed with it (a real POS by today's standards, not much better by 1995 standards). I hadn't even set it up to go on line at the time until 1996. She was a good typist and, given how many friends she had who lived out of town, probably would have been a big FB fan.

 

[mh]

Uh oh. I am in trouble. I will be technologically obsolete at 59.6 and I am currently 58.

I'm 52 and it blorched out 199.8 for me. I am skeptical

 

[Katsmeow]

I do have sympathy for the guy in the Post Office because I think of my 87 year old mother.

Now, I realize that people vary on use of technology. I see people who are younger than me who can't quite figure it out. But, my mom has never been good with technology. She still doesn't have cable TV and when we used to have it (we've migrated to netflix and hulu) she would invariably get the TV off the correct channel and be too confused to find where she should be. She still rails about wanting only ABC, NBC, and CBS and is upset there are more choices available...

Anyway...she has no computer and she doesn't really quite get the idea of the internet or how to use a computer. She is starting to get perturbed as she will call some place for something or other and they want her to get it online and she has no online. Having a computer at the library, for example, wouldn't help as she has no idea how to get online and would be hopelessly confused by it.

She recently got her first cell phone and finds that confusing enough....

 

[braumeister]

It's certainly true that you don't have to be elderly to be a technophobe.

DW's brother, same age as me, owns and runs a retail business. It's a one-man operation, but he's been operating it for decades. He has always refused any involvement with computers, and does all his business on his office typewriter. He won a speed typing contest in high school, and I guess the pride/nostalgia is just too great for him to give it up.

He needs an email address for his business, so he has one that a friend set up. Once or twice a month, the friend prints out his emails and drops them off at his store for him, so he can answer them with either a phone call or a typed letter.

I've offered many times to set up and teach him how to do everything on a computer (I spent years as a technical writer/website designer), but he has always refused. His idea of being "with it" is his creative use of different colors of typewriter ribbons.

What mystifies me is that not only is he intelligent, but actually extremely intelligent. He just doesn't like modern life, and has often spoken wistfully about how wonderful it would be to live in the 19th century.

 

[rescueme]

You used punched cards? You had it made! See this.

What's a DB?

If you don't know what a timing chart, jackplug, and skip punch are, you're spoiled. Here's the first "programming language" I learned/used (after moving on to mainframes, e.g. "real computers"; PC's were just toys):

 

[MichaelB]

What we need is a sketch that brings the Four Yorkshiremen into the computer age. I'm not sure how it would go but I do have a strong feeling REWahoo would be one of the four...

 

[Walt34]

Political Calculations: When Will You Become Obsolete?

This does not look promising. According to that site I'll be technologically brain-dead in 11 years.

 

[Walt34]

The thread reminds me of one of the [-]secretaries[/-] Administrative Aides in our office ~1995. She used a desktop running MS DOS 4.4 and WordPerfect, connected to a noisy dot-matrix printer and therefore associated a computer with work and a noisy printer.

She came in a said her husband wanted to buy a home computer and put it in the bedroom. She was adamant that she was not going to have that "damn thing" in her bedroom. (Understand that for her to use language remotely resembling a swear word was very rare.)

Then she found out she could get E-mail and pictures from her grandchildren in Oregon on the other side of the country. Well, that changed things. Then she wanted it on her side of the bed.

 

[grasshopper]

My 86 YO Mom Skype's, I couldn't figure out how to do it.

 

[Amethyst]

Perhaps my second cousin (the fax-impaired gentleman) is the source of this joke, but it wasn't on my account. This is the only time I've ever mentioned him on the Internet. Now I feel kind of mean for having done so

Amethyst

There's this joke widely circulating on the internet and through emails. So, I searched this forum, and sure enough someone has posted it here.

 

[Bestwifeever]

DW's brother, same age as me, owns and runs a retail business. It's a one-man operation, but he's been operating it for decades. He has always refused any involvement with computers, and does all his business on his office typewriter.

We have a family member like this, but we're convinced the reason the business is not on the computer has more to do with records of cash flow (wink wink) than philosophy.

 

[braumeister]

OK, I'll play the game.
My introduction to programming was on one of these things.

You could program it (and you had to boot it this way) by flipping those little lever switches (making words in octal).

Of course we also used punch cards and magnetic tape, but this was the original "machine language."

The peripherals (punch card sorter, interpreter, etc.) were programmed with plug-in wiring boards, as shown by rescue me.

Memory wasn't on disks, but drums. Think "3-foot lengths of sewer pipe with a magnetic coating and 64 read-write heads."

Ah, those were the days! I don't miss 'em a bit.

 

[M Paquette]

find out the age at which you will become technologically obsolete (100 for me!)

http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2010/10/when-will-you-become-obsolete.html

190.2

At which point I'll almost certainly be on my second or third body, and I'll probably just update my technological capabilities with the new MindDesign options for the season. "MindDesign: You CAN change your mind!"

 

[Sirka]

Texting

I wonder what our kids are going to be dragging us into, in the future.

Our kids are already affecting us. They like texting, facebook and iPads for each of their kids. I refuse to pay extra for texting on our cell. To me it's like going back to BBS time. Why type (and pay) instead of talking for free? We found a way to comply, we use Google voice, which includes texting for free.
There is no choice, but to sign up for facebook, or forget about getting any updates or pictures from our kids.
iPads are here to stay and I refuse to help DD with setup. iCrap is not for me, but grand kids love the games - anything electronic is a hit. Can't imagine a toy that is silent when squeezed in the right place. It would be sent back into the box as broken.
Times are changing.. it's more then just inflation we have to keep up with!

 

[Midpack]

I refuse to pay extra for texting on our cell.

Me too. But it costs less to text than voice on my simple no-contract phone in that texts cost me 0.25 or 0.50 minutes each vs 1 minute increments for voice. That's why I'd rather text and often can (short messages). I think the days of paying extra for texts are fading fast if you look at the contracts available now.

 

[Sirka]

Vanguard has the worst stock trading platform I have encountered. Cumbersome, slow, lack of real time information, lousy graphics -

Fortunately, I do not trade often in my IRAs, and do my regular activity on Ameritrade's platform.

+1
I also trade with TD Ameritrade! Vanguard is only OK with MF. I hope they will improve with time, they have free ETF trades after all.

 

[explanade]

Technology is great but it does have its costs. NY Times series on manufacturing in China, focusing on factories which churn out Apple products, gives you a picture of what we've traded for these electronic conveniences.

The demand for better products every year -- sales keep going up -- drives harsh working conditions in these factories, kind of like the modern sweat shops.

Then there are the ecological costs, especially when people are encouraged to traded up their gadgets every year or every other year for improvements, even though the devices they have function fine. So not only increasing volumes of resources used to build more devices but a lot of energy to recycle and dispose of devices which have been traded in or dumped.