Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Technology Challenged R Us

There are very few people who know less about computers than me. Unfortunately I am married to one of them.

Mr. Rainbow Creek was a truck driver for 30 years until he landed this cushy job as manager of a package delivery depot. Well, cushy if you consider working 24/7 for a minimally respectable salary cushy. That is where the fun began. That job requires a little bit of computer skills, like sending and recieving emails, a little excel, downloading scan reports, and mapping routes.

Starting with the emails, we had troubles. He used to call me... and I am not lying about this! you can ask The Tattood Mama, she was here and actually witnessed this...to ask me to get into his email on his laptop because he accidentally emailed a very important document to himself instead of his office email. ROTFL I actually had to go to his office one day and prove to him that he could open his email from there. He finally got that I think. Then one day I told him that he could just google something, and he actually said to me ... I am not lying! he said this..."I don't even have google on that POS computer at the office." I just looked at him and said, "you are scaring me."

Now a few days ago I said something about his computer "issues" and he said that he is actually getting "pretty good" at it. Nice. No more frantic phone calls to ask for help.


Today, he tried to install the 2009 version of Streets and Trips, which he uses every day. The first thing it did of course is uninstall 2008. And of course he called me to report that it was not working and he could not find the little arrow thingy to select the pushpins. I told him I was pretty sure there was an arrow thingy somewhere and he would just have to find. And he said absolutely there was no arrow thingy, he looked everywhere and the whole thing was different and he could not use it. I told him that since I did not have that program I didn't see how I could help him unless he wanted to bring it home for me to look at. He decided to uninstall it and reinstall it for some reason, and then he argued that if he installed it in the program files folder he would not be able to find it so he wanted to install it somewhere where he could find it. I continued to tell him, "you know I can't really see your computer screen, so I don't think I can help you unless you want to bring it home so I can see it." (I had actually just set up a wholesale account with a fabric supplier and was browsing the fabric selection and kind of only heard half of what he said. But I am sure that would have made no difference in whether or not I was able to help him.) The only advice I could give him besides bring it home was to try right clicking on the area and see if there was an option to select his pushpins. No, there was not. I told him he would have to bring it home and I would look for the arrow thingy. bye bye, love ya.

3 minutes later the phone rings. "I found it!" Great. He said he would bring it home and show me how it works 'cause he couldn't explain it. So he brought it home and installed it on his laptop and showed me "see, you have to right click here and drag this and that arrow thing makes a box to select the pushpins." Oh, right click, huh? glad you figured that out. I guess he is getting pretty good at this.

Now I am thinking I might call him some day when I am having trouble making a French Seam on one of my bags and try to describe that problem to him and see if he has time to help me figure it out. Just for laughs.

1 comment:

  1. Doni I am still giggling about this post!
    I've been there with my husband.

    Things you think would be so simple are just over their heads....glad you have a sense of humor!

    And how rude of him to interrupt your fabric moment1 LOL

    Karen

    ReplyDelete

 
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