BS: The over 80's and computers

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 29 Sep 07 - 03:15 AM

Sins -

Alice must be well trained.

Lon invariably rolls over and lays one paw quite carefully on Lin's Esc key. He pretends to be bored when Lin responds, but his expression definitely implies a smirk.

Bat has found that the keys on the laptop don't stick up, so he just lays down across the whole keyboard, which of course loads the keyboard buffer and scares him off with the machinegun simulation - when he isn't too sleepy to notice.

Bela's favorite trick is to hop into a lap, get a finger (claw) stuck in clothing, and then fall off. Bandages often required, which have the side benefit of offering some protection to the spots damaged when she repeats her act - interminably.

We don't let Vincent play at the computer. He's too young to be allowed to surf on his own.

John

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: SINSULL
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 06:37 PM

dAD GOT HIS FIRST COMPUTER AT 87 AND IMMEDIATELY FOUND BOTH THE PORNO SITES AND AN OLD GIRLFRIEND. sO WHEN i WASN'T UNDOING THA DAMAGE CAUSED BY "tUNA gIRLS" i WAS HEARING ABOUT THE JOYS OF vIAGRA.
aLICE STEPPED ON THE cAPSLOCK AGAIN!

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 06:18 PM

My mom used the computer a lot but never really got the hang of email, she was more likely to call. My dad and I, on the other hand, emailed all of the time. Dad would be 86 this year, Mom 85. Both died nearly 10 years ago.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 05:34 PM

How about needing a special pass to leave your hometown or your metropolitan area? That would do wonders for Homeland Security, I'm sure.

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: fretless
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 05:05 PM

Well, if you count Canada as the 51st state... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 02:02 PM

I wonder how long it'll be passports for travelling between states in the USA...

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: Folkiedave
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 02:01 PM

I used to teach the over 65's about computers and it was great.

My mother (RIP) never really learned to cope with technology. It always baffled her when we went shopping if I used the supermarket cash-back facility at a till and she saw them giving me cash having just put a load of shopping through the till.

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 01:55 PM

Hey.... ;-) Good for them!

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: MBSLynne
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 01:19 PM

My Mum is 82 and regularly communicates with her widely spread offspring by both e-mail and Yahoo messenger. She also puts photos on and sends them. My Dad, who is 77 not only uses the computer for work and communication but also sorts out other people's computer problems. Mind you, they aren't old for their age...they live in australia, have just been to California for my brother's wedding, over to uk to spend a couple of weeks with us and are now on a cruise out of Singapore before getting back to Oz on Monday in time to get ready for my nephew's wedding three days later

Love Lynne

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 12:58 PM

My Dad was always eager to keep up with the latest business stuff, so he not only got into computers (despite his almost complete incomprehension of them), but he even ended up doing a couple of things on them that I don't bother with...such as talking live to his business friend in Ottawa, using headphones and microphone. (this was the "friend" he milked for 3 years of free work and computer assistance).

My mother, on the other will never touch a computer or have any interest in them. She won't even put call answering on her phone...despite the fact that she has three friends who drive her batty by phoning many times a day, usually managing to interrupt her when she's trying to cook a meal. I told her she could get around that problem by using call answering, and offered to set it up for her.

No way. She resists any form of change like it was a foreign invasion of the country. Everything must remain exactly the same. So there are no extra features on my mother's phone. None whatsoever. No call display. No call answer. No call waiting. No nothing. It could be a phone from 1970 to all intents and purposes.

Oh, and she would fight her way through a snake pit to reach it when it rings... ;-) She's afraid it might be "an emergency". No emergency situation has ever been communicated over that phone in living memory...but still, you can never tell when it might happen, right?

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: wysiwyg
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 12:16 PM

Fortunately we have a vendor here in Oldfashioned Rural Communityland that does wonderful service for their older clients: When the computer stops working, they just offer them another very affordable (reconditioned) model that is easy to plug and play, does adequately on the internet, and doesn't have a lot of fancy bells and whistles to confuse things.

So my dear (old) friend can email me how his wife is doing, when we're going to go play at a senior center, etc.. And he has an unlimited supply of internet jokes that he uses to keep people chuckling wherever he goes. So he's not a genius of message boards-- he can always email me to look for something for him.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: fretless
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 11:24 AM

Passports for air travel to/from US and Canada will be required as of October 1; for land travel the implementation date is in 2008. Here's the State Department's web site for hte process.

And back to the thread topic: my mother and mother in law, both born in 1910, simply refused to acknowledge the existence of computers. High tech just wasn't on their radar screens, and they both passed on the the next life without any of the equipment deemed essential for contemporary digital living.

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: Becca72
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 11:06 AM

It was my understanding that the feds are so backlogged with passport requests that they are still taking drivers' licenses for the time being and the passport requirement will start in July 2008...

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: jeffp
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 11:00 AM

I think the passports are required only if you are traveling by plane.

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: jacqui.c
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 10:43 AM

SRS - we came through from Canada last month and I used my driver's license for ID. They don't seem to be insisting on passports just yet.

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 10:38 AM

Same pronunciation. :)

My Canadian aunt is in her late 80s and is using a laptop for email now because the first attempt, with web TV, had too many difficulties. They should have gone straight to the laptop. She doesn't know how to avoid the popups so apparently no one has put in some of the software to help. I'll send a disk and ask my cousin's husband to do it. My passport has expired so I can't go visit and do it myself right now.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 10:27 AM

"She never had lesson #2"

Is the Tutor out of his Rubber Room yet? :-)


"insists that CD Rom is the Prime Minister of India."

No, it's Mr Ram...

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: Charley Noble
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 09:14 AM

We managed to replace our mother's dead word processor with a laptop computer about 5 years ago. She was adamantly against having a computer and we tried to convince her that what we got her was a new word processor. She wasn't fooled. The first thing she typed was "THIS IS NOT A WORD PROCESSOR!"

She's had some hard times with this computer but she's really learned to appreciate how much easier it is to write letters, do spreadsheets, and maintain a database of her art work. She's now closing in on 90 and still making progress. She probably would welcome a 20-inch screen at this point and we may try another upgrade. She doesn't do e-mail but she is an avid computer chess player.

We do have to sort out where she has inadvertently saved new files on occasion.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Sep 07 - 08:11 PM

On the other hand - A mis 95 años / 95 years old blogger

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: kendall
Date: 27 Sep 07 - 07:34 PM

Utah Phillips still refuses to use a computer. He insists that CD Rom is the Prime Minister of India.

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: GUEST,hg
Date: 27 Sep 07 - 07:26 PM

Larkin, that is REALLY funny!

My dad is 84 and has been using computers since Apple and Ascii but he still does weird things like keep every frickin' cookie because if he dumps them he loses all his passwords and has to start over. The popups are creeping up on him again. Plus, his eyes can't track very fast and it takes him eons to read down a page. But he helps all the other geezers he knows! On blogger he got very messed up when they changed to Google. I had to help him then because he had so many passwords on his password sheet he couldn't find the correct one!

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 27 Sep 07 - 07:07 PM

My mother is 94 and lives in a nursing home. A few months ago the activities director got the bright idea to try to teach my mom to send e-mail. I had to laugh. As far as I know, my mother has never operated any kind of mechanical device that was invented later than 1950. Digital clocks confuse her. Her favorite bedside clock, until it recently broke, was a Big Ben model that she had to wind, for Pete's sake.

(Brief digression: Did you know they still make them?)

She never had lesson #2, and I never got an e-mail.

I, on the other hand, am not worried about someday having to live in a nursing home myself. Give me public radio and a fast internet connection, and I'll never be bored.

Subject: RE: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Sep 07 - 05:45 PM

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.)

Subject: BS: The over 80's and computers
From: Larkin
Date: 27 Sep 07 - 04:35 PM

I've just spent 20 minutes trying to sort out my 80 year old Dad's internet - every time he opened his browser it read 'this page cannot be displayed'. I eventually figured out that he'd managed to save the 'this page cannot be displayed' page as his home page. My sister remarked 'man and machine in perfect harmony "

frustrated of molesey