- cross-posted to:
- 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- 196@lemmy.world
- godzilla@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- 196@lemmy.world
- godzilla@lemmy.world
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While helping my mother troubleshoot her phone:
I can’t do anything because the keyboard keeps going away
Everything I click on tries to take me to WalMart
It keeps saying the phone is overheating but it’s not overheating, should I download this program it’s recommending?
No! I didn’t download anything! I don’t download things! Wait… Is the app store considered “downloading”?
I can keep going lol
Fortunately my dad is a retired cybersecurity architect so they live as modern-day Luddites.
I wish.
My father currently works in IT and has “smart” everything (except locks, thankfully)
He has multiple Alexa thingies (used to be Google homes), Internet thermostat, smart light switches, smart cameras/doorbells, smart plugs
Idk why he does. The only thing that really provide any value are the light switches and plugs (scheduled lighting) and maybe the doorbell thingies
Could have gone the self-hosted route, but he might just think it’s a lost cause as long as you’re carrying phone that spies on you.
Unless you are running grapheneos without the spyware apps and services :)
JFC, that white text is me to a T.
And my printer is a 1998 HP 4050DTN that could probably survive the apocalypse in fair shape.
Even my planned CCTV system will be completely hardlined with shielded cables, technically airgapped, E2E encrypted between the cameras and the server, and with a mechanically-driven RJ45 connector that will allow one-way backups to BackBlaze once a week through a specially configured Bastille server.
OMG - that’s the same printer we have… it’s the only one that still works!!
Some of the plastic pieces have gotten brittle and broken - I’ve been trying to figure out how to 3-D print replacements. (they broke before 3D printing was a thing and I don’t have the broken bits anymore)
I’ve replaced the rollers once and serviced it myself over the years.
It’s valuable enough to fight over it when my Last Will and Testament is read… If there’s a fire, save the people, save the cats, save that 1998 printer - the rest can burn and be replaced.
Same here. The only part that doesn’t fit me is the Bluetooth - there are much better protocols for that.
No smart home crap
I use Home Assistant for my smart home stuff. As soon as I have a free afternoon I’ll be setting up a VLAN to keep it off the internet.
I love how it’s the people who know the most about how modern tech works that want nothing to do with 90% of it.
My mom (78) got a new kindle a couple years ago, after the previous one lasting over 10 years.
She’s not been using it now because “it’s not okay” anymore. After a lot of poking and prodding remotely (we live in different countries) to get to understand what the issue was for the kindle to “not be okay”, I managed to get her to tell me that “the screen is blank”. I said I’d check it soon after when I went to her place.
When I travelled there, not long after, I checked the kindle, turned on the screen, and it was blank. Because she’d finished a book and the last page was blank. All worked fine.
I have told her, but she refuses to use the kindle because “it’s not okay”.
In a separate conversation I offered to give my sister my really old kindle as hers is actually broken. My mom heard that and said she wanted it because hers is… Not okay.
The insistence and willful ignoring of what I said is the most infuriating part.
Sounds like you can give your mom’s “not okay” kindle to your sister and give your really old one to your mom.
But she can’t possibly endanger her child, OPs sister, by giving her tech that is “not okay”. It might explode on her or something.
Just don’t tell her that it’s her “not okay” kindle. Slap a different case on it and she’d never know.
Many of life’s problems can be solved by a web of lies.
I laughed too hard at this.
My parents each have a Kindle but they share the same account and are always reading the same book at the same time. I made the tragic mistake of trying to get them to use Airplane mode so that they don’t keep getting popup messages about the read progress on the other device. I have now heard “so should I be in Airplane mode or not in Airplane mode?” one million times.
Don’t know about most painful, but it definitely sticks out.
My mother screamed for me at the top of her lungs on the other side of the apartment. I hurried into her office, where I see her pointing at the screen saying “FIX IT!” So I look at the screen and… it’s a save dialogue in Word, asking her if she wants to save her document.
Me: It’s asking you if you want to save the document.
Mother: Well how am I supposed to know that?
Me: Do you want to save the document?
M: I DON’T KNOW!!It’s like she saw the dialogue and her brain crashed. She definitely could’ve read and understood it, but just chose not to. That sort of thing was a frequent occurrence sadly.
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Thanks. Yeah, she’s a horrible and abusive person, and I’ve had zero contact with her for a year and a half now.
🚨
Helping my octogenarian mom with her iPhone is the most painful experience. She often calls me about something that has “popped up” in some app that she’s using. I tell her to just close it and she says “how?” I then say something like “just click the OK button … or the Done or Close buttons, that will be some unknown color … or click the X in the upper right or maybe the upper left corner … or click “Done” or “Close” in the toolbar, on the left or right sides … or maybe the thing has slid up from the bottom and you need to swipe down to get rid of it … or maybe you need to click the Home tab on the app’s bottom bar.”
I’ve actually been an iOS mobile developer for 15 years now. Anybody who thinks there’s any sort of consistent, intuitive design principles behind Apple products is insane.
Android is on board with that crap too. Software Buttons that don’t always pop and gestures are trash.
But at least Android still has the option to enable the old button bar at the bottom of the screen, it has a back button that pretty much closes everything that opens up.
Pixel changes the navigation mode to gesture only by default. You can go and turn that back to three button mode and it is pretty successful, If you know it’s there.
I find Samsung’s one UI implementation to be dodgy when apps go full screen sometimes it doesn’t like to stay on, sometimes when apps come out of autohide there’s a race condition and the app will appear over the bar rendering it unselectable. That bugs been there for years. It’s also irritating that the button positions on vanilla and one UI are backward of each other.
The gestures in Android do the same thing as the button bar, so even when I use gestures I always have a dedicated back gesture.
At least it’s the same type of phone you use. My mom has a cheap android phone, with all sorts of crap and limitations from the provider. I guess it’s cheap, but sometimes it’s just not worth it. Anyhow, I haven’t used an Android phone in at least ten years, have no idea about all the crap on hers, and she doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe what she sees or does, but I’m supposed to help over the phone?
It’s much easier if she has an Android phone, you can just use TeamViewer to see and control her phone remotely https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teamviewer.host.market
I feel this lol
I do have some personal experience to ‘prove’ the contrary, since I gave my grandmother an iPhone, it become much easier to deal with. That might be bias though, as that is my primary device as well, so I might just be more used to it compared to troubleshooting Android devices.
My grandmother has always had iPhones and I’ve always been on the android side of the fence. She’s been struggling with spam texts and unfortunately I’m not seeing an obvious way to stop them. Meanwhile my pixel automagically tosses basically all spam texts usually before I even see them. Honestly the spam is becoming a problem because she’s getting so many texts from organizations begging for donations and she doesn’t actually know how much she actually has set up to donate every month or to whom
I’ve been wondering about that. It would certainly be easier if my mom had the same type of phone I do, and I can find all the accessibility options, but it’s just too expensive for something she uses only as a telephone
I set up my mom on Microsoft Outlook many years ago, back when you had to set the server and so on.
She called me a few days later and said her email wasn’t working, so I walked her through looking at the options, making sure the right addresses and preferences were checked, etc.
After about 45 minutes, I remembered that I already set everything up correctly and it was working. Then I decided to ask, “are you typing the @ symbol, or are you typing the word at in the email address?”
Yep.
The first question after “it’s not working!” Is always “what isn’t working?” followed by “show me what you were doing”.
Used to have to deal with getting information out of customers that were having issues with our app (as a software dev, not sure why that was my job). Eventually we just asked for a video of what they were doing first thing when anyone called.
There’s so many tech illiterate people out there, even young people who grew up with their phones often don’t really know how to use it besides opening apps.
show me what you were doing
Nothing! I did nothing! Things just happened!
Me when I corrupt New Vegas with a simple texture mod.
This session is over then, I’m unable to help you. Take it to the repair center.
“are you typing the @ symbol, or are you typing the word at in the email address?”
…wut??
My father is 86, is fairly far down the slope of dementia, has a 5th grade education, has a hard time typing because he can’t really see the keys on the keyboard anymore, and still doesn’t do things like this.
…maybe I got lucky?
This occurred about 20ish years ago. Mom had never touched a computer in her life before getting the laptop.
And, this is the same woman who got a new phone and sent me a text that said ‘do you like my new phone?’
This occurred about 20ish years ago.
Oooohhhhh…
Now that makes a lot more sense.
My own father has been using a computer since the 90s, initially just to track his own investments and finances, but later on to keep in touch with family back in the old country. So he’s got a bit more experience under his belt.
Still, he manages to suss out all scams that target him, and does a fair bit of his own troubleshooting. And while the latter is decreasing in effectiveness as of late… the fact that he can still do this with a 5th grade education while in the grips of dementia at 86 makes me proud AF. I have to swing by more and more these days, but he always has detailed notes of what he’s looked up and what he’s tried and didn’t work, so I can have a full roadmap of what has happened. Honestly, I have clients half his age that are far more useless, and that’s why I still jump when he calls for help.
That’s cool! My grandmother was similar–discovered email in her early 80s and loved it, got herself a printer to print out letters to send to people. Last I saw her before she died, she asked me to help set up her phone so she could answer emails on it.
She loved getting emails from people too. It made me remember how exciting that stuff was when I first started using it and it still felt like a great, new thing to make it easier to connect with folks and explore the world.
My parents: “You’re a nerd, can you help with our computer?”
I reluctantly overlook how insulting they always are and help
Many months later
My parents: “Our computer isn’t working right lately. It’s probably your fault from the last time you were messing with it.”
It’s probably your fault from the last time you were messing with it.
“Ok, you better ask someone else then. Clearly I’ll only make it worse.”
You’ll never prove them wrong by falling for the manipulation tactic.
People who are bad at understanding tech and logic coincidentally tend to be very competent at these kinds of tactics.
You should answer:
And it is your fault being assholes. Live with the consequences.
Then cut contact as much as possible
Is the Lemmy version of “lawyer up, hit the gym” basically just “cut contact with family at the slightest insult”?
I hope so. Many of our parents need to learn that “family” isn’t about blood, it’s about who I allow to be in my life. I don’t give a fuck if you’re related to me, treat me with respect and I’ll reciprocate.
You realize that “lawyer up, hit the gym” was a silly overgeneralization that eventually turned into a meme, right?
hit up, lawyer the gym
Hit the wife, divorce the lawyer, talk to the gym?
Yes
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the fact that my grandmother absolutely, hard ass refuses to do anything that would improve her situation. Just bitches and moans and has great big narcissistic pity parties until someone forces it down her fucking throat.
For example, her vision isnt great, she complaints its hard to use the computer cause she cant see to type (Shes one of those chicken peck typers). I tell her to get a large print keyboard with a backlight, it’d be easier for her to see and use.
She says no, it wont help. nothing will help. boo hoo pity me blah blah bullshit.
Long story short, it goes back and forth for a month, with her refusing the idea, refusing when I directly link her to a keyboard to buy (it was cheap, too), etc etc. Just making a big fucking woe is me pity party out of it.
I finally say fuck it, buy the goddamn keyboard myself, take it over to her house, put it on her computer.
within 5 minutes “Why didnt you tell me about this before? Its amazing! I can see it and use the computer again!”
Shes the reason i’ve been balding for 20 years.
That sounds more borderline than narcissistic.
The difference between borderline and narcissism is fairly small. They are both cluster b because the symptoms overlap. It sounds more like histrionic, another cluster b disorder. The diagnosis itself means very little unless the person is seeking treatment.
Yeah, laypeople using big words from the DSM to try and sound smart is cringe
big words from the DSM
Ah yes, the big word derived from the mythical Narcissus, who we learned about in school… If anything, the issue seems to be the opposite, where the word is too widely known and used without knowing the overlapping medical term.
I feel you. Add her then acting like it was her idea to get you to do the thing and you have my late grandmother.
Don’t let her get to you (easier said than done, I know) but she is also fairly easy to manipulate if you don’t let her get under your skin.
You probably already know how she reacts to things, start small and see if you can get certain reactions out of her. You do A, she reacts with B (good or bad), you do C, she preens like she won something.
I managed to trick my grandma into giving up her car keys after her first minor fender bender in her 80s (in fairness she was a good driver, her vision was just going bad) - she ended up believing giving up the car was her idea and that she deserved to get driven around from now on. She loved her independence but also loved having people at her beck and call. She got to feel smart and superior by stopping driving and we didn’t have to worry about anyone getting hurt. Everyone was so relieved, she got a lot of praise for that decision which helped too.
Don’t let her ruin your health, try to reframe your reactions to her and never, ever let on that’s what you are doing. Don’t tell the cousin that will rat you out to try to appease her. ‘She seems to do what I want? I don’t see it that way. She’s just making good decisions like she always does… what are you talking about?’ Feel free to tell the one you can trust.
A few weeks ago, my parents complained that the laptop kept going to a “screensaver” while they were trying to work on it.
So I changed the screensaver setting from like 3 minutes to 15 minutes… but it kept happening. I knew something was up when they said “well it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to reopen the Internet every time.”
Guys… it was a touchscreen laptop. They were grabbing it by the corner and closing out the window. 😆 And one of these people showed me how to make a website in HTML when I was younger…
Are we all doomed to be daft in our old age?
I can only hope I get my chance at the bliss of ignorance one day.
My mother once threatened to evict me (was still living with them) because I asked her to back up her important files for me to carry them over to the new office computer I had set up for her.
She flat out refused to even attempt it or answer any of my investigative questions. This woman had been using windows computers for work for over 20 years at this point, but the thought of opening an explorer window apparently terrified her so much we got into an actual shouting match over it.
God bless you
My mom called me a few years ago, after she clicked the big red warning message in a pop up. After the nice tech support man got on her phone. After she let him install “some program”. Then she thought, maybe she should check with Perish. Yikes.
Friend of the family but still…
Had to travel by boat to an island with no road connection to turn on a printer, after having been promised that it was, in fact, on.
Once turned on it was working. Well as much as a printer can work.
Well as much as a printer can work.
Only after a ceremonial blood sacrifice on the Tuesday after a blood moon. Got it.
Step 6. Grab a bat and perform percussive maintenance
Waste of two goats. Better to have them mow your lawn.
A trick for that is to tell them to now try actually unplugging it from the wall and turning it back on again. This gets them to actually do it instead of lying and/or not understanding what it means to actually turn it off and on again
The problem was more of a disagreement between the end user and the printer in what constitutes an on button.
A sentence that shouldn’t be this normal.
I worked tech support for an ISP, and i did this more often than i want to think about it.
It didn’t help that one of the cable modems we gave out to our clients had a standby-button, which made the CM look like it was off - there was no indicator at all on the device, so i couldn’t even blame the client for that (but i did blame my employer for not thinking about that. just like i blamed him for buying another modem series with power sockets which failed pretty quickly. did i mention that repairs were done in-house, and not all too well? it’s been 20 years, and i am still a bit salty for all my wasted time)
Unfortunately there were no other parties present to provide a second opinion, only their cat. Which, to be fair, is probably less tech illiterate than the human.
Cave woman that I helped: “You’re not installing porn are you?”
Me: “Uhh, no?! Is that what you meant by helping you to setup the computer. Are you mistaking me for your husband?”
I bought my mother a laptop and she treated the touch pad like something that was to fragile to actually use. So she hardly used the computer because no matter how many times I showed her you could actually press it and move your finger across it and it wouldn’t break and she kept asking me how to move around the desktop using the keys cause “I don’t want to damage it”. I finally got fed up one day and found myself tapping the touch pad really hard repeatedly while saying “See it won’t break!!!” She ended up giving the laptop away cause she was too afraid to break it.
buy her a mouse?
She didn’t like the mouse for some reason, I could never get a straight answer as to why.
Thinkpad with a trackpoint?
Mother in law calls me during work, blaring warnings sounds blaring in the background, warning her that she has a virus and NOT to try to reboot or unplug the computer….
MIL: what do I do/why is this happening?
Me: you clicked on something… unplug the computer
MIL: but it says not to
Me: it’s ok, it is trying to get you to call the number so that you will give them money
MIL: I am too afraid
Me: ok, if you want to give them money or your credentials so that they can take all of your money, feel free. Just don’t drive to Walgreens to buy gift cards again… you will miss your soap operas
MIL: Ok, I’ll unplug it
I make sure the important stuff is backed up to external drive on the computers I tech support for family and friends.
So I say, “yeah, it says that, but they are lying. unplug it. If it’s not working when it comes back on, I’ll come over and restore it. You won’t lose anything, we’ve got backups just for this reason.”
So far, I haven’t had to go and restore anything. But one of them buys me lunch, so I go and shoot the shit and have a good time for big Windows updates about once a quarter.
