Dad called a few minutes ago.  Said Mom was on the computer ordering him a truck and it asked for her email address and he just needed to confirm her email address before she typed it in.  (Remember, they're still new to this computer stuff!) 

Anyway, I hope he was kidding about the truck.  He might have just said that to see if he could rattle me.  He's like that.  You have to really know my daddy to appreciate his sense of humor. 

Mood:  silly

I called Dad this afternoon to ask him something and he said he was aggravated.  I thought "oh no, what has the computer done now?" 

But when I said "what's wrong?" he said "I cant find what I'm looking for on Ebay".  I said "What are you looking for?" and he said "a 64 corvette".

<< I thought "what"!!!!!>>

I asked "why do you need a 64 corvette?"  He said his brother-in-law had just sold one and he just wanted to see what they were going for on EBay. 

He said "I didnt punch around too much though.  Dont you have to make bids on cars on EBay?"  I said "you have to make bids on almost everything on EBay.  But you can punch around all you want to because you have to set up an account with a name and password and then you have to sign in to bid.  Since you dont have an account you cant buy anything." 

I think "punch" is his word for "click". :-)

For the computer that is ......

Dad called.  The computer wont wake up.  The orange light is on the screen (most of us call that a monitor).  So I ask him if they had a power glitch.  They werent home but he doesn't think so because his clocks aren't blinking.  So I ask him if the blue light is on the computer (most of us call these cpu's).  He says yes.  He says "why dont I just turn off the power strip and start over?"  I said "no, that's not good.  Let me see if I can take my 15 minute break and come up there."  So I tell my co-worker I'm going to take my "smoke break" (I dont smoke) and go help dad before he tosses his computer out in the street. 

Ended up I had to reboot (not a good thing because I had to 'hold the button in' and turn it off).  So when it rebooted, the printer also started working (see entry from earlier today).  I had to quickly cancel some print jobs because Mom had about 15 in queue I think because it wouldnt print this morning. 

So, I changed some power settings on the computer to keep it from hibernating and hopefully that will fix the problem.  I still dont really know what the problem with the printer was but it is working now too.  I did have to turn it off and back on as well.  It was printing on about 1/4 of the page up in the corner so small you couldnt read it.  When I left my niece was printing some MapQuest directions but I have no idea if they were full size or not.  My 15 minutes was up.  So  I have to go back after work and make sure all is still well. 

Dad was about ready to toss it all out in the street.  Mom was gone to the store thank goodness so I didnt have her over my shoulder along with Dad.  He said she was over there pushing every button on the printer this morning when it wouldnt work.  And of course I'm sure he didnt touch it (yeah right!)

So .... I'll let you know later if I have "cured" the problem or if there is more to be done. 

I meant to do all those settings changes this weekend, but with the dryer issue (a couple of posts down) I just never got around to it. 

Stay tuned for the next episode from our family comedy of errors.  It's sure to be entertaining!

Ma called about 9am with printer woes.  She said it wont print.  I said "what does it tell you when you try to print?"  She says it doenst tell her anything.  I ask, No error message?   She says No.  I say is the light green?  She says sometimes then it goes to orange and back to green (this is the wireless indicator).  I tell her I will come over after work and see what's up, but if she needs to print something she can hook up the usb cable.  She says no she doesnt need to print anything, later will be fine.

She doesnt need to print anything?  Huh? 

 Never mind. 

Phone rang last night and Mom said "are you planning to get back out tonight?"   Realizing that in spite of my previous plans (or lack thereof) that I would be getting back out to handle whatever problem she was about to inform me of, I said "no, but I can."  She said "well, Daddy's used up all of the black ink and we dont know how to change the ink cartridge."  I said "well, my dinner's in the oven but if I hurry it will be ok til I get back."  So I slipped on some shoes (with my pj's) and headed over there. 

We'd bought a new ink cartride a few weeks ago realizing that the ink was getting low (remember, they've had the printer a year, even though they just got the computer).  So I got there and Mom had the new cartridge by the printer and was waiting so I could show her.  She said "I could've probably done it but I didnt know where it went."  Of course, I wasnt 100% sure either, but they're all pretty much "under the hood" somewhere.  So I raised the lid and sure enough, there they were.  I just popped the old one out and the new one in and it printed a test page and I was in and out of there in less that five minutes and headed back to take my dinner out of the oven and enjoy it. 

I'm just glad they only live about two and a half miles from me!

Mood:  don't ask

Ok - so when I left work today I told everyone I had to go to "printer hell" ... meaning I had to go try to get the dang printer going because if I didnt, Mom and Dad were gonna drive me crazy. 

Well, at least I've moved from "printer hell" to "printer purgatory".  I got it to find the wireless network .... but I cant get the computer to "communicate" with it ... even though I have the both correctly connected to the wireless network.  I'm sure it's just  setting in Vista I havent found yet ... even though I've check-marked "share printer".  Grrrr.  I'll find it.  I'll ask my unfortunate co-workers tomorrow.  After all, I work with a whole passle of IT guys.  They'll help me.  I buy them candy!  Ha Ha!!!

I do have the printer printing, but it's connected via the USB cable.  Better than nothing.  Actually it prints fine, and since Mom wanted it sitting on the desk with the computer anyway, it's really not necessary to have it working wireless .... except for the fact that it is supposed to work wireless!!!

Dad is doing good with the email.  His sister sent him some pictures tonight and he was able to open and look at all of them.  He even managed to reply to her.  My mom was telling him his misspelled words in the reply and I said to leave him alone, that way Auntie E would know he sent it all by himself!!

I put a couple of things in his "favorites" and showed him how to open them.  I think he'll get it all figured out soon ... mainly because he's gonna be a junkie like me and spend a LOT of time on it. 

 Mom will use it while Dad is out "gallavanting" or having coffee with his buddies in the mornings.  So that he wont be looking over her shoulder telling her she is doing it wrong.  :-)

Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment!

Well – so far I haven’t gotten a call asking “now tell me again how to do this”.  So I guess that’s a good thing.  Because I’m sure they have been on it already this morning.  If nothing else, just to see if it still works.  J

I left work and went home to change into some comfy clothes for crawling around and hooking up cables.  Talk about perfect timing …. I pulled up in Dad’s driveway and the DHL truck was there and Dad was standing by the truck with the driver signing for his new computer.   The driver put the three boxes on the hand truck and rolled them up to the carport.  Dad, being the chivalrous guy he is said “that’s good; we’ll get it from here.”  So the driver left and we hauled the boxes in. 

 The setup went smoothly.  BabyBrother and BabyBoy had put the desk together and had it all set up and had moved the other piece of furniture where the new desk would fit.  Mom was cooking supper and Dad was watching ‘Walker Texas Ranger’ so they were busy and left me alone.  Once in a while Mom would come in the living room and look, but she never got within about 15 feet of me, so it was ok. 

Once I got all the stuff set up and hooked together, Mom had supper done so we ate before I plugged it in and turned it on.  It was coming a little thunderstorm so I didn’t really want to plug it up anyway.  Good decision because when the thunderstorm passed by the lights blinked.  Just for a split second but enough that it would have shut down the computer. 

So after supper I plugged it in and gathered them around me to see how to turn it on (yep, we had to start with the basics).  Then I showed them how to check their email.  I had to show them that three or four times.  I showed them how to use the internet, how to type in a url if they had it, and how to search if they didn’t have it.  Mom will do better than Dad with that because she did have access to the internet when she was working.  However, she will do better if she is looking stuff up when Dad isn’t there looking over he shoulder “telling her how to do it”.  J  And I showed them how to play a CD.  My dad asked if you could burn CD’s with it and I said yes, but that I would have to show them that later.  I also told them that at some point we would copy some of their music to the computer so they did not have to put the CD in every time, but we would worry about that later. 

In the end, I put shortcut icons on the desktop for their email, Word (for Mom), hearts and solitaire (for Dad).  Today I’ll go back and put a couple more … for NASCAR.com and the Atlanta Braves site.  And maybe for MapQuest.  Oh, and Yahoo, so Mom can show Dad how to play the games on there (she was allowed to do that at work if they weren’t busy). 

The real bugger was trying to get the printer set up.  I never did get it working.  The computer wouldn’t recognize it.  I even went to Lexmark website and downloaded a new driver for Vista but still no luck.  I told them I would try again this weekend.  They can survive without the printer for a few days. 

So – all in all, it went much better than I expected.  But we’ve only just begun.  J