Snakebit Friend (Rant)

[CaptTom]

I get a lot of this sort of thing. Fortunately I have a BIL who still works in IT, and since I'm retired, he's now the "go to" guy for the family

After some consideration, I'm wondering if a tablet or Chromebook would be more appropriate for your snake bit friend. It sounds like he's not really capable of using most of the features of a Windows (or Mac) computer anyway. If all he wants is a browser and e-mail, that's probably all he should have.

... my wife told me that one of the detectors started chirping at 3 AM, and she could not reach it to silence it.
I then replaced the batteries in all the detectors, and put a note on my calendar to change them at DST.

Some time after they started that BS about changing the batteries twice a year, I started writing the date on mine when I changed them. Usual life was 5-7 years before they'd start chirping.

Pretty good marketing; they sell you 10-14 batteries when you only needed one!

 

[Nightcap]

This is one of the big reasons I stopped using Windows long about 2000. Unfortunately the word has gotten about our development that the Unindicted Co-Conspirator and I are "computer experts."

I don't browse to sketchy sites, but I still get a dozen bogus emails a day (some of them quite sophisticated), and when on iOS, I still hit "You Have Won!" popups regularly. I even had a phone call from Microsoft telling me my Windows was infected (!). (There are not Windows machines here.) So I suppose I can't be too surprised when someone clicks on the wrong thing and ends up an involuntary conscript to a Russian bot army.

Back when I w*rked, tech support had long since given up. They had a standard image, and if your machine was infected / acting strangely / whatever, they just wiped and re-installed. You didn't back up your work? Sucks to be you!

There's a reason why everyone is storing things in Office 365 and iCloud.

 

[braumeister]

when on iOS, I still hit "You Have Won!" popups regularly.

Go into Settings, scroll down to the Safari section. Tap that, then scroll down to Block Pop-ups and toggle it on.

You can also install AdBlock Plus on your phone, which seems to work really well for me.

 

[Nightcap]

Go into Settings, scroll down to the Safari section. Tap that, then scroll down to Block Pop-ups and toggle it on.

You can also install AdBlock Plus on your phone, which seems to work really well for me.

Thanks, but I've both blocked popups and had an ad blocker in place for a long time. It doesn't help the Facebook app. And yes, I know that I can use Safari to browse Facebook, but find the app easier.

I just turn on Airport mode, quit the app, turn off Airport mode, and resume, with some bad words.

 

[aja8888]

Snake-bit friend

Re Chromebook comment above, I can be the "poster boy" for that. I still have a desktop on Win 10 (and another one on Win 7) and DW has her desktop on Win 7 also. Oh, I forgot....We both have laptops on Win "something or other" that we haven't used in a few years.

Dw is on an Ipad and I on my Chromebook. I can do 99% of what I need to do the the Chromebook and it is the most steady and reliable machine I have ever used. It's light as a feather and the battery lasts about 8+ hours with no trouble. With the cloud, Google docs and sheets, and other cloud apps, I am fine.

This Chromebook can also be wiped and Ubuntu installed if I so desire.

Tax apps and Quicken are all I need the desktop for these days. Quicken is even less as we no longer care to track expenses religiously.

 

[scrabbler1]

I got the W10 thumb drive back, unharmed, last month. The box it came in was a little banged up, but not a big deal. That being said, I doubt I will be lending him anything that sensitive again.


On a lighter note, I did a preliminary run through his taxes and on the state level his withheld taxes exactly equal his tax liability, making him "Even Steven." Assuming these numbers hold up after I check them more thoroughly in a few weeks, he won't have to write a check or expect a refund.

 

[audreyh1]

Why do you do this person’s taxes?

 

[scrabbler1]

Why do you do this person’s taxes?

I am his friend, and he pays me some money to help manage his portfolio (since 2012, after he received a significant inheritance) and do his taxes. Most of what I do with his portfolio includes making sure he takes his inherited IRA's RMD and allocates parts of it to taxes, and makes his Roth IRA contribution. Otherwise, it's mainly monitoring.

 

[scrabbler1]

Here is the latest misadventure with my snake-bit friend.


Ten days ago, when I was last at his apartment, we finished his taxes. We had already finished up his state forms a few weeks earlier when he was at my place a few weeks earlier, and I mailed it from my building's mailbox. This time, we finished up at his place after I had made another review of everything a few days before and found a minor mistake and fixed it up before printing out some of the forms. My printer's toner cartridge was getting a little low and I wanted to make sure my own tax forms were printing normally before printing all of his.


We printed the remaining forms at his place and assembled his return. He wrote out an $18 check and put everything into an envelope and sealed it up. He said he would mail it out the next day (March 29th).


When he was at my place a few days ago, he asked me if we finished his taxes yet. I told him we had finished everything up the week before and had done the state forms a few weeks earlier. But he couldn't remember mailing out the envelope we put together. And he couldn't find it anywhere in his apartment or in his car. He didn't work the day after we finished up his federal forms, so he couldn't have dropped it off at the PO on his way to work. BTW he lives a short walk from the PO.


He called his bank today to see if the check had cleared. It had been 9 days since he should have mailed it out. The check hadn't cleared. In contrast, I mailed my own federal taxes out last Tuesday (to the same place his will go to) and the check cleared today. This means he never mailed out the envelope and he lost the envelope, too! How careless and stupid!


So, when I go to his place this Wednesday night, we'll print out all the forms again (at least it is all in those fillable pdf files), put together the return again, and this time *I* will take the envelope home with me so *I* can mail it out and make sure it gets mailed. I mean, I can't even trust him to mail out such an important letter like this? It isn't like he had to keep track of it for very long before mailing it, maybe 12 hours until the next morning.


I am still dumbfounded at how stupid and careless he is, unable to mail a simple letter containing such an important document, and that I have to do it for him so I will know it gets done.


The snake really bit him this time.


(end of rant)

 

[Dtail]

Perhaps a deep discussion with him is warranted as to how frequently you get frustrated, without going too deep as to hurt the friendship.

 

[JoeWras]

scrabbler, it sounds more like health problems with short term memory than stupidity.

 

[scrabbler1]

He found the envelope. He mailed it out. Yay.

 

[USA]

Reminds me of the Bill Withers song - Lean on me. “We all need somebody to lean on”

 

[scrabbler1]

Latest episodes of snake-bit friend:


First, he somehow fell asleep at the wheel of his car and smashed it into a pole on the parkway. He wasn't hurt and no other cars were involved, thankfully. But the car was totaled. After seeing his neurologist, the doctor concluded that it wasn't a seizure, he just unexpectedly fell asleep at noon on a weekday last month while behind the wheel. However, the doctor told him he would not be allowed to drive for 6 months.


This leaves my snake-bit friend having to use Uber to go to and from work every day, a costly way to commute ($200-$250 per week). It also leaves me having to drive to his place about once a week for our evening get-togethers. Once he can drive again, he'll have to buy a new car. He got some money back from the insurance company, but not enough for a new car. He is nearly as wealthy as I am (NW=$1.25M) so money isn't an issue, thankfully.


He continues to be a bozo on his PC. As usual, all kinds of weird things happen to him which don't happen to anyone else I know. He can never remember his passwords, so the "forgot password" option on a login screen is the equivalent of "enter password." Also, he can't seem to easily figure out the difference between his Windows password to unlock his PC and the email password to access his email. He had me reset the latter, which I was able to do while I am at home and on the phone with him (he gets a code texted to him), only to figure out that the problem was with the former, something I do not know how to fix because I bypass the Windows login screen when I boot the system up.


He was eventually able to reset the windows password and get to the Desktop screen and then the email screen. And the new password we had just reset somehow didn't work for him (not sure why, did he get locked out of that due to wrong answers or he was incapable of entering the correct one?) so he had to change it again.


He was able to get to his email, finally. The next time I go to his place on July 11th, I will try to run the Windows Login program (netplwiz) which is the same in Windows 8 and 10. Of course, for it to work, he will have to enter the correct Windows login password, hardly a given for my snake-bit friend.


Thank goodness he has a Smart Phone so he is not locked out from his email which he can access that way although it is clumsy. The Smart Phone seems to be smarter than he is.

 

[aja8888]

Latest episodes of snake-bit friend:


First, he somehow fell asleep at the wheel of his car and smashed it into a pole on the parkway. He wasn't hurt and no other cars were involved, thankfully. But the car was totaled. After seeing his neurologist, the doctor concluded that it wasn't a seizure, he just unexpectedly fell asleep at noon on a weekday last month while behind the wheel. However, the doctor told him he would not be allowed to drive for 6 months.


This leaves my snake-bit friend having to use Uber to go to and from work every day, a costly way to commute ($200-$250 per week). It also leaves me having to drive to his place about once a week for our evening get-togethers. Once he can drive again, he'll have to buy a new car. He got some money back from the insurance company, but not enough for a new car. He is nearly as wealthy as I am (NW=$1.25M) so money isn't an issue, thankfully.


He continues to be a bozo on his PC. As usual, all kinds of weird things happen to him which don't happen to anyone else I know. He can never remember his passwords, so the "forgot password" option on a login screen is the equivalent of "enter password." Also, he can't seem to easily figure out the difference between his Windows password to unlock his PC and the email password to access his email. He had me reset the latter, which I was able to do while I am at home and on the phone with him (he gets a code texted to him), only to figure out that the problem was with the former, something I do not know how to fix because I bypass the Windows login screen when I boot the system up.


He was eventually able to reset the windows password and get to the Desktop screen and then the email screen. And the new password we had just reset somehow didn't work for him (not sure why, did he get locked out of that due to wrong answers or he was incapable of entering the correct one?) so he had to change it again.


He was able to get to his email, finally. The next time I go to his place on July 11th, I will try to run the Windows Login program (netplwiz) which is the same in Windows 8 and 10. Of course, for it to work, he will have to enter the correct Windows login password, hardly a given for my snake-bit friend.


Thank goodness he has a Smart Phone so he is not locked out from his email which he can access that way although it is clumsy. The Smart Phone seems to be smarter than he is.

Sounds like a guy in our ROMEO group and has the same issues, although he hasn't smacked his car up (Yet). I have reset his computer password and found his files several times. He can't figure out his smart phone or his digital watch. He turns 82 years old in September. Too bad he is losing it so soon.

Oh, if I was your friend, I would buy a cheap used car.

 

[pb4uski]

Why doesn't he just use Chrome to save his passwords and take his chances?

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

My first and only thought is how lucky your snake bit friend is to still be alive. He could easily have lost his life. Falling asleep at the wheel is very dangerous to ones health.

 

[scrabbler1]

Chrome won't help him for the Windows login password. He can barely manage with IE, something he has used for the last 15-20 years. He didn't like Edge and couldn't navigate it.


I have always been a little concerned about him falling asleep at the wheel. From time to time, when he has been at my place he instantly falls asleep in the middle of our Scrabble or chess games. After that happens 2 or 3 times, we know it is time for him to leave. He knows how to stay awake for the short drive home, about 15 minutes, and has always arrived home safely. So it did surprise me when his accident happened around 12 noon on a day off from work.


He is not a very good driver to begin with. He has totaled a few cars over the years, sometimes his fault, sometimes not. The car he totaled last month he bought in late 2014, not very long ago, replacing a totaled car in a previous crash which wasn't his fault.

 

[aja8888]

He really doesn't need a Windows login password. You can set up a Win machine to boot straight into the OS. We don't use login passwords on our machines at home and never had a problem.

 

[scrabbler1]

He really doesn't need a Windows login password. You can set up a Win machine to boot straight into the OS. We don't use login passwords on our machines at home and never had a problem.

I have never had to set up a password for my home systems, either. I don't remember how I did it, if I had to even do anything special to not get a password prompt. But I did see that netplwiz program which can deactivate the password feature, and that is how I will fix it on my friend's PC.

 

[Texas Proud]

Chrome won't help him for the Windows login password. He can barely manage with IE, something he has used for the last 15-20 years. He didn't like Edge and couldn't navigate it.


I have always been a little concerned about him falling asleep at the wheel. From time to time, when he has been at my place he instantly falls asleep in the middle of our Scrabble or chess games. After that happens 2 or 3 times, we know it is time for him to leave. He knows how to stay awake for the short drive home, about 15 minutes, and has always arrived home safely. So it did surprise me when his accident happened around 12 noon on a day off from work.


He is not a very good driver to begin with. He has totaled a few cars over the years, sometimes his fault, sometimes not. The car he totaled last month he bought in late 2014, not very long ago, replacing a totaled car in a previous crash which wasn't his fault.

Has he been checked for a medical condition... just falling asleep while playing a game is not normal...

 

[scrabbler1]

Has he been checked for a medical condition... just falling asleep while playing a game is not normal...

He sees doctors regularly and he is on some medications. When he has suddenly fallen asleep at my place, he has been up for 16 or 17 hours straight on a day he worked which included physical work outdoors. I do agree that simply nodding off that way doesn't seem normal.

 

[Nemo2]

Has he been checked for a medical condition... just falling asleep while playing a game is not normal...

Narcolepsy?

 

[cooch96]

My job uses multiple (over 12, I’ve lost count) cloud based softwares and they all have different password requirements and reset at different times. I seem to have way more of a problem with this than anyone else. It is extra frustrating for me because I’m confident that touch screens are good enough to use fingerprints now (that’s how my iPad works).

Why are we still using passwords?? I just want to use a retinal scan or fingerprint. No more bimonthly updating a 9 character password that can’t be a word and includes one of 7 approved special characters... and then doing it again next week for a different program. It drives me nuts.

Extra hilarious: I remember all my passwords from the 90’s. What a waste of brain space.

Anyway, scrabbler, I feel for your friend, and I’m only half his age.

 

[albireo13]

I have so many PINs and passwords at work for various SW tools that I need to write them all down in and index card file! LOL


Do I care? LOL