Baby Steps

My parents had off today so they drove the hour and a half to help out around my house. It was one of those excellent visits where my Mom came down and cooked multiple nights worth of food while my Dad mowed the lawn and power-washed the house. This mind you was done before I even came home from work. I love those guys.

It wasn’t all them give and me take because I promised to fix my Mother’s Netbook computer. The Netbook is a month old Hp and it is taking around an exorbitant amount of time to start up which is obviously a problem. I spent at least 20 minutes (maybe five minutes) routing through the boot screens trying to figure out why that was happening. Once I realized I was out of my depth I gave up and moved on to computer work I could handle.

I asked my Mother why she did not have Chrome or Firefox on her computer and she asked me what they were. I explained that they were internet browsers, like Internet Explorer (IE) but better. She said, “I thought Internet Explore was the internet”. After a brief explanation that included me clearing up that neither IE nor AOL were in fact “The Internet” I convinced my Mom that installing Chrome was a good idea.

Once I installed Chrome I stated that I was going to delete the IE icon off her desktop to save space and force her to use the new browser. At this point both my parents shouted “No!” as if I had said, “I am going to take a hammer to the screen so I can figure out how many whacks it can take before it bleeds “1’s” and “0’s”. Turned out my Dad was of the belief that you don’t delete things from computers ever and my Mom didn’t think she could find the internet without the blue “e” (though she was more concerned that Chrome would disallow her from visiting AOL.com).

Ignoring my Dad’s concern I told my Mother that I was simply going to rename Chrome “Click me to get on the internet”. She then forced me to make AOL her homepage, which I begrudgingly did (baby steps).