Friday, April 4All That Matters

Try to explain to mom how to fix the computer over the phone

43 Comments

  • This is my hell. I am my parents personal help desk for anything.

    I went to school for computer science, so of course they think I can fix anything from a PC, TV, cell phones to the garage door opener.

  • This is extremely accurate to remedy this problem I installed and configured TeamViewer on my parents laptop. They wanted me to add another language on their computer I said no problem.

    All they needed to do was start TeamViewer and give me the code.

    Where is TeamViewer? Mom, it’s on the desktop.
    You don’t see it? Why do you have 500 icons on your desktop.

    Ok mom find the search bar and type in TeamViewer.

    No it’s not in the start menu (to be fair fuck you Microsoft for butchering the start menu to just be full of useless garbage and adds)

    All one word TeamViewer. It’s not working?

    What did you type? That’s not how you spell viewer.

    Did you click on it? You’re at the TeamViewer website?

    No I already installed on your computer.

    What do you mean it’s frozen? What is frozen? You haven’t done anything.

    Repeat till you give up.

  • My parents will encounter the weirdest computer issue 5 mins after starting the computer. The type of issue I’ve not encountered in 20 years of using a computer. They always find a way.

  • One of the absolute best features added to iOS was screen recording. I can finally record my steps and send it to my mom over text without spending 45 minutes to walk her through how to turn off Auto Brightness on her display. 🤦🏼‍♂️

  • **FOR EVERYONE THAT HAS NOT SEEN THE SHOW “SCISSOR SEVEN,” PLEASE GO WATCH IT.**

    This man voices the main character and he’s fucking hilarious, such a goofy show and very fun all the way through. I think they’re making a new season soon, too.

  • Yep, this is my life. One of the hardest things I have ever done is explain to my dad how to resize a window, over the phone.

    *Move the pointer…the white arrow.. to the edge of the window…it will turn into a double arrow…an arrow with 2 pointy ends…now click the mouse and hold it down…no left click…no hold it down…now move the mouse…I mean the double 2 headed arrow to the new location…no hold down the mouse button while you move…the left mouse button…no go back to the edge of the window until you see the double arrow…now hold down the left mouse button…and move the mouse to the new location…now let go of the button and the window is resized…what do you mean it’s not resized…tell me exactly what you are doing…uh huh…uh huh..uh huh…uh why did you move the mouse back to where it was before you let go of the button?…let’s start again…what do you mean you can’t see the window anymore?…*

  • On the other end of things, do you remember when MS Office had the ability to choose toolbars with a right click on the toolbars? A list of them would appear, and if the pointer moved literally about one pixel down, the first one, which was one of the 2 defaults would highlight, and releasing the button would unselect it. The bar would disappear. People would accidentally right click while moving the pointer down and immediately release, and the tool bar would go away. They had no idea what happened, and sometimes hadn’t even seen more than a flash in the the corner of their eye. “The row of buttons just disappeared and I have no idea how to get them back.”

    That WAS a bad design. It’s another case of “how can these smart people be so dumb?” I can tell you from teaching that every easy mistake like that will be made, and in great amounts.

  • Lol there 3 people in my family all who have gained the modest position of computer fixers which are me and 2 of my cousins one is a computer engineer and one is an engineer and me who knows stuff since I love reading. This is how we stand… I’m the troubleshooter, engineer cousin is the hardware fixer and computer engineer cousin is software fixer

  • I’ve been in IT for 37 years.. the stories I could tell.

    One of the funniest was when I first started computers I was teaching a computing basics course, when mice still had mouse-balls inside them. I was standing in front of the class, and was holding up the mouse and moving it from side to side, explaining how you make the cursor move. A middle aged woman student was confused because it wasn’t working for her. She was literally holding the mouse 2 feet in the air and moving it back and forth.

    I did not laugh at her, much to my credit.

  • This was my dad. Except he started having symptoms of dementia while I was trying to fix the problem from 3000 miles away. Needless to say, it was impossible for me to fix. When I moved him close to me, one of the most relieving things was being able to just go over his place and fix his computer issues!

  • My grandfather always calls me for computer help. After a few times, I took the time to walk him through setting up Team Viewer. Now I just remote into his computer and do what he needs done in a fraction of the time.

    He was having trouble with his phone the other day, so we were facetiming and I was sharing my screen showing him what to do. He couldnt share his screen with me becasue of the older version of iOS he had. But it was way easier than it used to me.

    If youre smart, you can make it a lot easier on yourself these days. I regularly log into my grandfathers PC and just check it for viruses and make sure hes nt getting any scam emails (he knows I do this and is perfectly fine with it.)

  • Anydesk solves this permanently. If it can’t be fixed remotely my dad ships his pc to me to get it looked at and I ship it back. This has only happened once with PSU fail.

    I actually talked him through installing a new drive and installing windows once. Well, I say once but we had to install it 3 times because he kept clicking the wrong thing.

  • My mother is death on computers. I don’t know how she does it, but even Apple computers instantly malfunction the second she touches them. However, I have a secret weapon: I have managed to convince her that I know nothing about computers. If she tries to ask me a question I just shrug and say “I dunno mom”. So she calls my sister instead. Problem solved.

  • I used to get frustrated with my mom in these same situations, now shes dead and I miss those interactions. Now I’m very patient with everybody and understand that sometimes shit ain’t as easy as it is to me.

  • True story (note: late 90’s)

    Mom: Do you see this??

    Me: No.

    Mom: I’m moving the f*cking mouse and nothing’s happening. It’s wobbling the arrow, but it’s not moving!!!

    Me: Mom…

    Mom: Do you see that?!?

    Me: Mom…

    Mom: Why the f*ck isn’t it…

    Me: Mom…

    Mom: What?!?

    Me: Why are you out of breath?

    Mom: Because I’m moving the f*cking mouse!! Do you see this??! Do you see??!?

    Me: Where is the mouse?

    Mom: In my hand

    Me: Where is your hand

    Mom: In front of the f*cking screen

    Me: It needs to be on the mouse pad

    Mom: I got a pad with flowers. That’s it home

    Me: Put the mouse on his home and move it left and right…

    Mom: Ok! I got it! I’m so excited! Bye!!

    Note: For those who don’t know, older mice were controlled by a ball, not a laser or optical sensor. So… wobbling pointer…

  • After being present to watch my mother (a baby boomer) use the computer, I noticed that:

    -She often thinks she’s clicking on something, but not actually because the click doesn’t go through. This is because she puts so much effort into pressing down the left mouse button that it also ends up moving her mouse, so it registers as a drag instead of a click.

    -She often thinks she’s double-clicking an icon on her desktop, but the second click will either be too slow, off the icon, or will turn into a drag instead of a click.

    -When she can’t find the cursor, she knows to move the mouse around to locate it, but also unknowingly presses down on left mouse button while doing so, at random times. This causes her to inadvertently click things on her taskbar, causing her to start programs, minimize her current window, and even turn on airplane mode, which made her not be able to connect to her iphone for the internet.

    -She doesn’t understand tabs in Firefox/Chrome, so the idea of opening a new tab to go to a new website to not lose the tab with the website you are currently on is something she can’t grasp. She will often exit the entire browser as well when she meant to exit a tab, thereby losing everything. (and no, restoring previous sessions is absolutely beyond what she can remember to do)

    -She doesn’t understand minimizing windows to the taskbar. (this is even worse on the newest version of windows where ungrouping isn’t an option any more)

    -She doesn’t understand that the internet is slow and takes time to reach a server, so she will click buttons repeatedly, thereby slowing everything down even more. She is INCREDIBLY IMPATIENT.

    -She cannot decipher ads from legitimate buttons on the website. If she’s buying something, she’ll fill out all her information, then click the ad that says “CLICK NOW!”, which will bring her to a new web page, then she gets frustrated and blames the company saying their website is bad. She will spend 20 minutes trying to find a phone number to call on the ad’s website thinking it’s the phone number of the company she’s trying to buy an item from (which is hidden from her on another tab), thereby leading her to spend 30 minutes waiting in a phone queue and talking to a representative from the wrong company.

    I think this is why some people are extremely resistant to change. They just. can’t. wrap. their brain around new things.

  • I visit my parents on the east coast once a year. One year I bought them a DJI drone and a PC and taught my father how to fly and upload footage. The following year I got back and asked him how things were going with using the internet on his computer. He said the internet had been broken since a week after I’d left last year and they were waiting for me to come back so I could fix it.

    To make a long story short, he’d put the computer into airplane mode because he thought that was how the drone would communicate with it. This was not in the lessons I taught him.

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