Har! Har! My Dad did some very strange things with his computer too, and he nearly drove me mad trying to get me to help him figure out all kinds of stuff on it.

He would painstakingly read EVERY frikkin' message, dialogue box, and piece of information that appeared on any given screen, I mean EVERYTHING... thus wasting absolutely collosal amounts of time on the meaningless tripe that most of us glance at for a fraction of an instant and then ignore, knowing it is just an ad...or a popup...or a standard message about an update or utility...or a menu we don't need to open...or whatever... He would do that again and again, even after I would explain to him that "You can just ignore that. It doesn't matter. Go straight to the one thing you need and ignore the rest." Nope. He had to read it all. He had to answer every question and check every box and click on every thumbnail!

It was unbelievable and totally maddening. After he drove me crazy for a few weeks calling me over every 30 seconds or so to explain something else that was totally useless anyway once it had been explained...and then he had to write my explanations down too, while I waited for the next question...he was writing an encyclopedic work on how to interpret every goddamn thing that ever appears on a PC's screen...

ARRGHHHH! I finally couldn't take it anymore (I was trying to get my own daily work done in those same hours...) and I pointblank refused to be his computer helper any longer. I figured he'd never learn it unless he learned himself anyway, by trial and error.

Then he found a sucker...this other businessman that he was doing some research stuff with. That guy, a major computer geek, was willing to spend many hours a day long distance explaining the minutiae of navigating your way through a large variety of computer programs and screens and utilities. Man, did my Dad milk that guy for time and trouble! It took 3 years of them doing a project together in which the poor sap did everything for free and for glorious promises of future financial rewards before he finally realized his time was being completely wasted. (not just computer stuff...they were doing a project around fuel cells, and it involved a lot of expensive travel too). I wondered if the guy would ever wake up and realize he was being used.

Well, he finally did. I think his wife was most responsible for that, actually...she became disenchanted rather early with the whole scenario.

He departed with his nose way out of joint.

By that time my Dad had pretty much figured out most of the daily stuff he had to do on the computer. Thank God.

It was a case of man and machine in almost perfest disharmony.

(Lest someone out there thinks I was being mean, by the way, you don't know what I had to put up with. Believe, me, you don't. There are limits to what any human being can take.)