My father is a Luddite

At the weekend we were over at my parents (with visit to Kent Beer Festival) and the TV being a bit rubbish we looked to see what was on the Freeview box (purchased and connected up on our last visit), it work fine until my dad played with the remote and the screen went blank. “oh that happens sometimes” says my father and then proceeds to turn the plug connecting all the TV/ Video/ Digibox etc. on and off. Nope the light on the box still stays red “Hmm, it doesn’t seem to turn on and that usually sorts it out" says father. I then twigg its probably on standby, and ask (as his daughter, how can I know more than him? Hence Dr T often gets called in on technology stuff as he can accept from someone not related to him! My sister gets her hubbie to do similar!) “what buttons have you tried?” Did you press the standby button like this (picks up TV remote, instead of Digibox one and points to a standby button) "oh no I didn’t use that one it was the digibox remote I used". Mother (home briefly from Brownie camp for ironing of decorated plate bags to set fabric paints) then finds digibox remote and turns on box by pressing standby button again … dah dah it works, so we point out to dad to try the standby button next time ....

Then at the end of the weekend he wanted me to sort out their card reader, which they can’t get to work. In his most annoying pose when using the computer he stood a foot off my shoulder (as if I can’t be trusted to use a computer style) whilst I tried to work out why. After the previous day’s matter with the digibox I asked the basics “did you use this driver CD” (we’re talking W98SE OS), yep he’d done that… plug in reader and the blue screen of death appears (not seen it for years with W2K!). So a few few reboots later (he seemed to think I was unable to do this unaided to start with – this is why my mum uses the computer when he’s not around as it drives her mad when he does this!). Hmm works on my laptop OK .. I suspect it may have something to do with dad’s fiddling (the phrase a little knowledge .. is very true with computers and my father) that have made it go a bit odd; their internet connection works in a unique way, due to dad (it worked fine when I left it after installation …). Bad news is that they are thinking of getting a new computer around Christmas … I think I know what I (and probably Dr T) will be sorting out when doing a festive visit. Mind you we’re thinking it might be wise that we set up mum as a user, dad as a user and then give us kids the administrator rights so they can’t mess it up too much! Hmm don’t know how well that would go down? But at least it would mean we hopefully wouldn’t have to sort out computer problems every time we seem to visit.