Posts Tagged Family
Tech Support the easy way
Last year I posted about my mother and how I decided for her new computer that she should buy a Mac Mini. This was mainly a selfish decision on my part since it would allow me to use iChat to share her screen whenever she has a problem she wants me to look at. Such was the case on Saturday night when she called me and wanted to know how to do a few basic things.
As is my wont, I was complaining to a friend of mine about being tech support for a family member when he shared his tale of family tech support from Saturday. It seems that his father bought an Acer computer and was having some problems. My friend was on the phone with him and was trying to help him download the updated driver and whatnot. As you can imagine, helping a family member (a non computer savvy one at that) to download and install new drivers is not for the faint of heart. In the end it turned out that it wasn’t a driver issue at all.
This is why I decided that my mother get a MacMini instead of a Windows box. I’d much rather be dealing with questions of how to print or email something instead of having to lead her through downloading the latest drivers only to find that they aren’t needed.
Snow, Snow, Snow
Well, the eastern seaboard got hit pretty badly with snow yesterday. Here is Brooklyn it wasn’t as bad as in other places like the Washington, DC area. According to one of my resellers and someone I follow on Twitter they got about 21 inches. From the look of things on my porch I’d say that we got about a foot but we may get more as it has started to snow again.
With the first snowfall of the year, Rivky is very excited and already went out on the porch several times to play in the snow. I have always liked watching the snow fall. It’s just the driving and getting around once the snow has fallen is a pain. With the way people drive during the snow you would think that they have forgotten how to drive. I also have two cars to clean off and that is a pain but at least I don’t have to shovel a walk or driveway since that gets handled by building management.
Apps I can’t live without
It’s amazing how when you use someone else’s workspace or computer that you suddenly feel useless. I was in that postion today when I used Rivky’s Macmini. I have an account on her machine and I’ve tried to duplicate the workflow that I have on my main machine (13″ MacBook Pro) but there are some that I have forgotten to put on that computer and I missed them greatly. Here are the utilitues that I find the most useful for workflow.
- Quicksilver – Quicksliver is a great launcher like Butler or Launchbar but for me it’s better than the others. It’s not a question of what it can do, it’s more of a questions of what can’t Quicksilver do?
This is almost the first non Apple application that I’ll install on new computer. I almost feel naked with out it, as scary as that thought may be. - Dropbox – It’s more of a service than an application but what is cool about it is that you can install it on as many computers that you want and it will synchronize the dropbox folder (which you put whatever you want. You can also share folders, files or pictures.
- Stuf – I never thought that I would actually need a clipboard manager because they always seemed to take up a whole lot of memory. Then I bought Stuf as part of a bundle and have I been happy ever since. It stores the last 20 things that you have copied. I can’t tell you how many times I have found this little app useful.
- Typinator – This is similar to other applications that let you type a few letters and then have a whole bunch of text appear. It’s similar to TextExpander but it also allows autocorection for commonly misspelled word and includes several useful dictionaries like the one from Tid Bits.
Today’s masculine work space
Rivky wasn’t feeling well today and stayed home from school and I worked from home so that I could watch her. I did a good deal of work from my “home office” also known as Rivky’s room. Since I’ve moved to a real office, we’ve gotten a new desk and chair to give the room a more girlish feel. Behold my masculine workspace for today!
A thought about 2012
I saw this on my uncle’s facebook page and I think it’s pretty funny:
What if the Ancient Mayan that was working on their calendar suddenly died and no other Mayan knew how to complete the damn thing, so it stopped on December 21, 2012. There are other alternatives to thinking that the world is ending on that date.
Scenes from an aquarium
With me being on vacation and Rivky having a day off before she starts day camp I decided to take her to the New York Aquarium. It was lots of fun and as always we had a good time taking the subway even though the fare was raised from $2 to $2.25. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the trip. If you want to see more, you can check them out on Facebook.
I will apologize up front for the poor quality and lighting since I forgot my regular camera and had to use my iPhone camera instead.
Family (Tech) Support
Most of us who like technology have been in this position one time or another, giving out technical support for family members. Usually it would wind up like the beginning of this scenario.
Color me surprised when my mother told me that she ordered DSL for her home and she wanted me to get her computer (circa 2001) hooked up to the DSL modem. That was an experience that I wasn’t looking forward to in any way shape or form. Then an idea came to me, if I was going to have to support her computer, why not give her a computer that would be easy to support. And, if I needed to see what was on her monitor it would be easy to do so? It sounded like a good idea to me and so I bought my mother a MacMini.
Sunday I went over to her house and set up the MacMini. The first thing I did (after I turned it on) was set up my mom with an iChat account via AIM and signed her into iChat and that was all I needed to get the screen sharing done. After that I installed NeoOffice so she could write papers and other word processing goodness. She was already used to OpenOffice from her old job so it is a seamless transition. I then took care of all the other stuff like setting up her printer and showing her how to use Safari as her web browser.
The only thing that I wasn’t able to set up (for technical reasons) was her email account on the benedictfamily.org domain and set up Mail.app. I set the account up last night and then I was able to set up her email account using iChat and the screen sharing ability that is baked into the application. Then later in the day, she called and I was able to walk her through another question she had.
I’m glad I made the right decision.
