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Olds And The Stupid Shit They Do On the Internet


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29 minutes ago, G650 said:

Personally I don't think it's any big leap, could you imagine going from horse and buggy, candle light and letters to the automobile, electricity, radio and the telephone? Or seeing images transmitted for the first time? Or an airplane?

The internet has been a big leap to be sure, but it's just a different pipeline for stuff we were already doing. Late 19th century saw stuff that was unimaginable before.

The big change I see is that in two generations we have gone from the first computers in common office use in offices and schools (DOS, 9-inch floppy disks, dot-matrix printing) to everybody walking around with a device that can connect them quickly and cheaply to any other person on the planet in seconds as well as access the collected base of human knowledge almost instantaneously.  And pics of naked girls.

Mind bottling, really.

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6 hours ago, SimonBolivar said:

I find it crazy the changes that are happening in our lives today. My grandfather was a depression era baby who grew up without indoor plumbing or a/c in Central Texas and by the end of his life he was on facebook  all day and texting me links to every article ever written. 

My grandfather watched Buffalo Bill ride through his town from a horse and carriage he sat in then watched NASA put a man on the moon.

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Well, I’ll be damned. I checked my AT&T app, and my credit card had expired. If any of you shitheads works for AT&T, please drop a note in the suggestion box that they at least get someone who sounds professional to record that message about suspended accounts. It sounded like a millennial trying to act like a grownup (Isn’t that the theme of this thread?).

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9 hours ago, SimonBolivar said:

I find it crazy the changes that are happening in our lives today. My grandfather was a depression era baby who grew up without indoor plumbing or a/c in Central Texas and by the end of his life he was on facebook  all day and texting me links to every article ever written. 

 

8 hours ago, G650 said:

Personally I don't think it's any big leap, could you imagine going from horse and buggy, candle light and letters to the automobile, electricity, radio and the telephone? Or seeing images transmitted for the first time? Or an airplane?

The internet has been a big leap to be sure, but it's just a different pipeline for stuff we were already doing. Late 19th century saw stuff that was unimaginable before.

I've got a replica copy of the 1902 Sears Roebuck catalogue. It's amazing to flip through and consider that world. Cars were not generally available, so you had dozens of pages dedicated to saddles, harnesses, horseshoes, buggies and wagons. If you were hooked on morphine, Sears would sell you a cure that included alcohol. If you were a drunk, you could buy a cure including morphine. There are thousands of tools in there whose uses the people of that era knew well but most of us would have to look up today. 

And then there's the whole existence of the Sears catalogue itself. Sears was the Amazon of its day and that book passed for the Internet. It was not only something you used to buy merchandise from but also something people just read for the hell of it, or even took to the outhouse and rubbed one out to. (There is a very chaste lingerie section that I am sure was spicy stuff in 1902.) 

And not 100 years later, Sears began quickly dying because what they had once mastered entered a new iteration and they were just not ready to compete. 

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On 8/23/2018 at 11:56 AM, Chewbacca said:

That's fantastic.  My mom is of the variety that she answers the phone when "Microsoft Tech Support" calls her cell phone.  Even though she has a Mac.  Then she gives them remote access to her computer (Lord only knows what they installed on her machine).  Then she proceeds to use her email, online banking, and every other sensitive online thing she can use.  Then she doesn't tell me for 3-4 more days.

 

It's amazing that nothing was stolen from her (yet).  I got her to change all of her passwords (using her iPad) and take the computer in to get a factory reset.  But holy shit, when does the fucking light go on?

Thanks for saving me the trouble of typing all this out, as it might as well be about my mother in law. 

I really hope that this doesn't mean that you're my sister in law, however. 

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My parents are pretty tech literate.   It kind of bugs me because they don't really ask me for advice, and end up buying stuff they  don't need.   

My dad got a little to deep in one of those to good to be true Craigslist  ads.  The ones where you have to send $8k in amazon cards, then pay to get it delivered from minnesota. 

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When my dad was alive he was so proud that he started doing his banking online. He couldn't remember his password so he put it on a big sticky on the cabinet door of his computer desk,  right above his computer and labeled in big red letters, Bank Password. I suggested that this was not the best practice because anyone could see it and user it to get into his account. So he put the sticky on the inside of the cabinet door. Progress. 

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My mother, mid 70s and a widow, almost fell for a "free grant" scam that someone messaged her on Facebook. The person spoofed my aunt's account and then sent duplicate friend requests. My mother, of course, accepted it even though her and my aunt were already friends on there. She then gets a messenger request from my fake aunt who talks in very Nigerian scammer speak that was easy for me to sniff out but not my gullible mother. Fake aunt tells her to contact fake account manager who will give her free money. She messages the guy and starts giving detailed information like address, phone number, email, age, her profession before she retired. Thankfully she has no idea what her bank info is as that was where I was called by her. 

So I have spent over an hour having her reset her Facebook password, put in her cell phone so she can be texted if someone tries to hack in, and repeated that she is not to give private information to some asshole over the internet that she doesn't know. 

My late father set her up beautifully with all the retirement money she'll ever need. She is not hurting financially in any way. There is no reason why she should be worried about needing free money. I told her the money Dad put aside for her was all the free money she'll ever need. 

It's like dealing with a child who'll fall for pretty much anything.

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The single best thing I ever did tech wise for my in-laws was to suggest an iMac for them in 2010 when they were shopping for a new computer.  The had an old HP Win XP box and frankly, I dreaded visiting for I knew I was going to get the "can you look at this".  On the other hand, that hasn't stopped the FIL from calling an 800 number from a Chrome popup on said iMac that said Microsoft support.  Aside from a once a year checkup/update of their computer, I've done nothing to it.  Not to go all evangelical and turn this into a Windows vs Mac shitfest, but in some instances, a Mac for the less technically inclined can't be beat.

 

In the Spring of 2017, I switched my dad over from a Samsung flip phone to my mom's old iPhone.  I wiped the device, picked up an Otterbox for it and configured it so it it would have as few apps as possible.  I was setting up a device for someone who up to this point in their life a fax machine was the most technical piece of hardware they had ever interacted with.  My siblings both told me that if I pulled this off, it would be the greatest tech achievement in my life.  

A year later, he uses this phone for everything from watching Netflix and YouTube videos, to browsing news and weather sites, to doing his banking on the phone.  So for Father's Day, I got him an iPad and started getting him books for it.  I gotta say; his use of technology has surprised me. No Facebook yet, and hopefully, never.  But mom more than makes up in that department.

 

 

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12 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Not to go all evangelical and turn this into a Windows vs Mac shitfest, but in some instances, a Mac for the less technically inclined can't be beat.

 

 

Well duh, that's what Apple products are man. Computers for people to stupid to use computers. It's been their raison d'etre since their founding.

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13 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

The single best thing I ever did tech wise for my in-laws was to suggest an iMac for them in 2010 when they were shopping for a new computer.  The had an old HP Win XP box and frankly, I dreaded visiting for I knew I was going to get the "can you look at this".  On the other hand, that hasn't stopped the FIL from calling an 800 number from a Chrome popup on said iMac that said Microsoft support.  Aside from a once a year checkup/update of their computer, I've done nothing to it.  Not to go all evangelical and turn this into a Windows vs Mac shitfest, but in some instances, a Mac for the less technically inclined can't be beat.

 

In the Spring of 2017, I switched my dad over from a Samsung flip phone to my mom's old iPhone.  I wiped the device, picked up an Otterbox for it and configured it so it it would have as few apps as possible.  I was setting up a device for someone who up to this point in their life a fax machine was the most technical piece of hardware they had ever interacted with.  My siblings both told me that if I pulled this off, it would be the greatest tech achievement in my life.  

A year later, he uses this phone for everything from watching Netflix and YouTube videos, to browsing news and weather sites, to doing his banking on the phone.  So for Father's Day, I got him an iPad and started getting him books for it.  I gotta say; his use of technology has surprised me. No Facebook yet, and hopefully, never.  But mom more than makes up in that department.

 

 

How old is he?

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After reformatting about a couple of hard drives, I now do the same thing with my parents.

My dad is going to be 80 later this year. Back in the day he used to take a lot of pictures so he now has thousands of slides. Last week he took the projector and all of his slides out and started to go through them. I’m pretty sure that this is an annual event. The projector breaks. He asks me to come over without telling me why. I get there and he asks me if I can fix the projector. I don’t think that he was too amused with my laughter so I tell him I will get online and look for a solution.
My solution was to buy him a slide scanner. I took it over to him on Tuesday. He was really excited. I got it all setup for him and showed him the basics. The yesterday we have the following phone conversation:
Dad - The scanner is broken.
LD - What changed since yesterday?
Dad - Your mother and I moved it, but we plugged everything in the same way.
LD - Did you turn it back on?
Dad - *silence*
LD - The button is on the right side.
Dad - Never mind. It looks like I fixed it.

I showed him the button the day before.

I’ve received the following 2 texts since I began typing this post:
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c4adf19f7b61f6bc4aaf120e512403ed.png

I know what I’ll be doing for the rest of the year.


I haven’t heard from my dad since these two texts. I may need to call the cops to do a wellness check.
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57 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Young enough to know better.  

My FIL is only 7 years older than I.  

 

I thought the thread was about olds, not dumbasses. ;)

Had lunch with my mom today, the cleaning lady has now stolen a couple of moms small hair rollers. That bitch.

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18 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

A year later, he uses this phone for everything from watching Netflix and YouTube videos, to browsing news and weather sites, to doing his banking on the phone  porn.  So for Father's Day, I got him an iPad and started getting him books for it.  I gotta say; his use of technology has surprised me. No Facebook yet, and hopefully, never.  But mom more than makes up in that department.

 

 

 

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