Does Not Compute - Parental Style

09-02-2011

I'm a tech head, I think everyone knows that at this stage and if you don't then you need to go and read over the last few years of entries on this site. One thing I am always telling people is this: I don't know everything about computers.

I like this statement. Mainly because it is an indication of the computer industry itself. If you ever meet a person that claims to know everything about computers they are lying bastards and you may kick them in the crotch, because nobody can ever know everything about computers for one simple reason.

There is always something new to learn. A new language. Some new technology. A new syntax for some function in a language you learnt in college but has been updated a few times since. That's the beauty of working with computers, you always have something to learn and mess around with.

Sadly this doesn't translate so well into Parental Speech. In the mind of a parental unit an offspring that works in computers can do anything with computers. Including the impossible.

Like fix a netbook that has no factory restore discs.

See, we got the mother a netbook one year. I've told this story before. When we gave her the present I had two very simple instructions for her.

Number one, always, without fail, shutdown the computer correctly. Click the start menu, click shutdown, wait. Don't close the lid and hope for the best, don't touch the fecking power button because you can't wait ten seconds. I even told a big white lie and said that the power button only turns a computer on, just to maybe remove temptation from the equation.

Number two, keep the restore discs somewhere safe. You will need them later.

Just under two years later and the discs are nowhere to be seen and if that computer was ever shutdown correctly once then it happened when it was still in the factory.

Bottom line, it's fucked. Nothing a good reinstall won't fix...but oh wait!!! Where fore arth though oh restore discs.

Not to mind, the offspring works in computers. He has the Midas touch. He shall place his hand on the keyboard and all will be fixed like a general election.

In twenty minutes no less! After all how hard can it be. Wait, what do you mean you need to take it with you? I won't be able to go on The Internets if you have the laptop. I did turn it off properly, honest. Well except for the other day but I was in a rush...

Needless to say I am learning a lot about netbooks. A lot more than I want. Like how hard it is to find bastarding drivers for the things without some fucktard on the web looking for sixty pound.

Ah parents, they just never listen.

Blue_jester




Leave a comment...

Name (required)