Wherein those who love me don't listen to me...Warning! Lengthy!

[Blade_Raver]

Gravekeeper, sorry for stealing your title style... but it fits.

My parents were (and still are after this fisaco) customers of (cable company) for internet service. Their promo for $30-40ish for their internet service ended and they were getting bumped up to $80.

Father spoke to a sales droid for (phone company) who told him he can get 6mbps down/1mbps up for $30/month for 12 months. Sounds fine and dandy, but there are a few pieces of information missing before I go into the story..

1) Distance/Past experience: Last time they had DSL (2001-2003) they were capped at 256k down/128k up. No phone company techs have been in that area doing any upgrades on the copper in their area since then.

2) Bandwidth: Becuase of #1, their 3 computers accessing internet plus the VoIP may not all work efficiently and/or simultaneously.

3) VoIP/Phone wiring: They use Vonage VoIP service that's hooked into all of their phone wiring. The VoIP device and the DSL modem would fight over the signal, therefore a separate jack will need to be installed independent of all the other phone wiring in the house.

I told my father all of those issues stated before, recommended him to call (cable company) and re-negotiate a price due to competition. Did he listen to me? I wouldn't be posting this if he did.

My father wired one dedicated jack not connected to the rest of the phone wiring and had the DSL tech provision that jack only for DSL. I came by the next day after work (I work nights, btw. 9p-6a or 6p-6a depending on the day) and installed it. DSL modem = no sync.

Did all possible troubleshooting methods (Powercycle, new phone cable, new splitting filter, etc.) to no avail. Same issue like last time he had DSL... as predicted.

I explained the issue to my father. His ignorance frustrated me. He thinks it works because all the lights are green and blinking. Sync light is green flashing, not green solid. He tells me that it should work regardless because it's green. I told him only way this is going to work is when that light turns solid green. That can only happen by having the phone company cap the bandwidth.

He says that's unacceptable because he was promised 6mbps down/1mbps up by the sales droid at (phone company) and won't settle for anything less.

I asked my father if he told the sales droid about points 1-3 that I listed above. He said he didn't and that it shouldn't matter. At this point I was tired from working a 12 hour shift and then having to put up with him... Enough was enough and it was time for me to do something about it.

I called (cable company) posing as my father.. got (cable company) to drop the price.. Rehooked everything back to (cable company)'s internet service... removed all DSL equipment.. Configured routers properly.. Done. He's back online and I fought sleep driving home.

Had he listened to me, he would have saved me at least 4 hours of my time... rawr! And I had to go to work that night

What irked me the most was that my father decided a sales droid (most likely working for commission) for a phone company holds more technical credibility than his son who has worked in IT since 1999 and does it for a living... one of those years was working in DSL tech support (2001-2002).

[LostMyMind]

You describe my father.

I've been programming/computing, since a small lad (early 80's) and he'll still take the word of his buddy/radio/anyone else over mine (until something breaks).

[lordlundar]

My dad is like that, and I almost lost my top at him for that.

Allow me to explain. I have been working with computers for years at this point, pretty much building and modifying them considerably. I also had a solid understanding of viruses and other net threats. As well I have done a number of freelance tech support calls for family friends. Suffice to say my knowledge in this field was considerable even at that time.

My brother in law on the other hand, is stupidly paranoid. He seems to think the most dangerous thing to his computer is me, and well he would happily go on the net on all sorts of sites without antivirus or firewall protection, I was banned from accessing anything but the internet on his machine.

Please. If I wanted to trash his machine, there was not a single thing he could do that he was capable of that could stop me.

The thing is, he talked my dad into thinking that the minor act of plugging a phone line into a dial up modem would cause computer infections that would destroy the computer. (Yes, my BiL was on the net at the time, no he didn't get comprimised, despite his stupidity) it got to the point where my dad declared that if my own personal machine was connected to the net, he would throw me out of the house.

Now this was before I had a job and there were some free net providers. So cue me using the net sneakily when he was asleep.

Well, I got a job, got high speed, and he never said a word about it. At current, 3 computers in the house, all connected and he asks me to hunt for stuff on the net for him.

So what changed? apart from the fact that it was my own money funding the net connection, my sister and BiL has effectively been alienating us, so he's not exactly been able to convince my dad of anything lately.

[BlaqueKatt]

I have the opposite problem-my mom calls me whenever anything happens-she didn't know what to click on when her antivirus asked her to update(AVG). She let it sit with the pop-up window on the screen for two hours until she could call me to tell her it was ok and to click the ok button. She's doing pretty well though, I'm actually proud of her, she had never touched a computer before in her life(she's 52), and has managed to set up her own e-mail, paypal acct, and successfully used e-bay and amazon.com. Which may seem simple to us, but remember this woman has never used a computer or even seen the internet before!

Though I do have to teach her how to use the address bar, she types every web address into the search box on google-

[earl colby pottinger]

Heaven

She let it sit with the pop-up window on the screen for two hours until she could call me to tell her it was ok and to click the ok button.

Still you must be in heaven, she leaves the error message on the screen to read back to you.

Any time my mom gets an error she click blindly on one of the options then complains later that the computer acts 'funny'.

And to the OP, I owned a Logix toy digital computer in 1970, build a nano-controller for my train set in 75, went to college for Data Processing in 76, got a KIM-1 in 77, a PET-2001 in 78 and later a SuperPet, a C64, an Amiga 1000, Amiga 2000, Amiga 4000, T1200, a dual CPU BeOS machine, a number of Dell Laptops, made a living as a Programmer for 4 years and as a Computer Tech for 19 years, and am now working by doing computer installations for schools.

And until the day he died, my father rather he got advice on computers from a bunch of know-nothings than admit that his son knew more about something than himself.

[powerboy]

I help out at my moms work from time to time. Well whenever I want to clean it out. I can't. She thinks that I will mess up the computer. All I want to do it run Adware and Spyware. Oh, and also check for errors. And download AVG. They are going without an virus protection.

[Difdi]

My own parents are the same way. It took my father four trips to CompUSA to buy a router before he listened to me that A) USB and ethernet are different, B) a hub is not a router, and C) you can't plug 3 computers into a 2 port router simultaneously.

He's endlessly paranoid about putting things on his hard drive; He's literally scared to death of running out of space. He's constantly upgrading his hard drives, often at sizable expense. He puts everything on zip disks and CD-Rs. Totaling all of the dozens of disks he's currently using, their combined total capacity is roughly equal to 40% of one of the dual hard drives his computer currently has. But I can't install spybot for him, because it takes up too much space!

My father is 61 years old, and used computers when he was in the Army. When he was 21. He knows beyond any reasoning or logic that the Army always has better computers than civilians do. He knows that the Army trained him very well to operate and maintain said computers. He knows everything there is to know about computers as a result, and cannot be told otherwise. So he constantly applies his 40 year old computer knowledge as if it were cutting edge today. And gets it wrong nearly every time. I actually do know what I'm doing, but he gives my advice less weight than his own 40 years out of date training on systems that were less powerful than my wristwatch is now.

My mother believes his claims of being a master of computer technology. Worse, she gives the claims made by comcast contractors greater weight than his advice or mine. We've had some major outages at my parents house in the past, due to my mother believing every word a comcast tech said, and giving permission for them to do all sorts of bizarre things. But I always get the blame, since the tech usually blames what I've done for the problems. Never mind that the problem pre-tech was slow downloads (my mother takes my father's advice about not allowing me to install spybot and other system defenses, and frequently downloads animated calendars and screensavers and toolbars, oh my) and after the tech gets done "fixing my mistakes", nobody can connect at all.

[technical.angel]

He's endlessly paranoid about putting things on his hard drive; He's literally scared to death of running out of space.

Have you tried showing him the pie chart of the available HD space? It might help. That way, you can show him that it doesn't change after installing Spybot.

[Blade_Raver]

Thank you for your responses... It makes me feel better knowing that I'm not alone in this kind of situation.. and I completely empathize for all of you with your similar situations.

[ArcticChicken]

Though I do have to teach her how to use the address bar, she types every web address into the search box on google-

Wait, how does she get back to google when she wants to go to a new website?

I actually have the opposite problem from you guys. I'm the resident "tech genius" in my house, but all I know is some really basic stuff any reasonably competent monkey can learn. But because I'm better than her my aunt asks me to look at her computer every time it messes up. Listen, I can run your anti virus (which you've never run), and I can defrag your harddrive. If the three antivirus program on your computer can't pick anything up, then I have no idea why Outlook is kerfuckled, call my dad, who's been a computer programmer longer than I've been alive, or shell out the money for the computer guy, but I can't help. (Actually, her solution was to buy a Mac, which makes me happy, 'cause I get her old computer to practice on, and then turn into a Linux box if I haven't managed to make it explode)

[Broomjockey]

Wait, how does she get back to google when she wants to go to a new website?

Back button. Lots of back button.

Actually, probably not that much. If you use google to get everywhere, I doubt she uses a lot of hyperlinks, meaning probably 10 or 12 back links to get to google, usually. I could be wrong about the number/behaviour, but based on my own observations, that's likely. It could be possible (though not as likely) that she uses the Rewind button if she's not using IE. One click and you're back to the first viewed page on the tab.

[technical.angel]

Though I do have to teach her how to use the address bar, she types every web address into the search box on google-

Since I saw this in a quote, I had to reply...

Oh my F'in' G! I HATE THAT!!!

There's no bloody reason to google msn.com. There's no bloody reason to google the uni's homepage. It's such a waste of time and energy! UGH!!!!!

Can you tell it's a pet peeve of mine?

[lordlundar]

Though I do have to teach her how to use the address bar, she types every web address into the search box on google-

My mom's like that, in addition she always puts in spaces because she writes the addresses down grammatically correct (so it has spaces)

Then when it doesn't work, she cries out for help on why it isn't working.

[sld72382]

I guess I'm lucky that my parents always turn to me for advice, including their friends.

Here's a good one. Last week, my dad was complaining someone "deleted" his solitaire game at work (he's the manager of a quick lube place). The person who deleted it is a putz who thinks his shit doesn't stink and doesn't like my dad very much for some reason. This guy was a manager who stepped down from a manager position to a regular lube tech "because it wasn't for him" (translation: he sucked as a manager), he doesn't like my dad because my dad told the DM (his boss) that this guy should not be a manager. Then this guy voluntarily steps down a couple of days later.

Anyway, my dad likes to play solitaire on the computer when there is downtime and nothing else to do. One day Mr. Putz is working for my dad, covering for someone else. My dad overhears this guy say to another worker, "I hope he enjoys his solitaire game!" with a shit-eating grin on his face.

Well he calls me to come over than take a look. Turns out Mr. Putz only deleted the links for it, not the game. I restored the links and all was well.

As for Mr. Putz? He's barred from ever working in my dad's store again (not really for the solitaire thing, a customer accused him of getting short with him).

[MadMike]

Most of my friends and family do listen to me when it comes to computer stuff, but my ex's dad doesn't listen to anybody.

This story takes place back before most virus scanners were able to self-update, and you had to periodically download the updates yourself. He had gotten a new Gateway computer, and a few months later, it started acting slow and screwy. I started checking things, and determined that it had a virus.

His response? "I thought that virus program was supposed to stop that from happening!"

I explained to him that (1) nothing is foolproof, and (2) you have to keep them updated, because new viruses are always coming out. Unfortunately, the virus he had was a really nasty one that randomly overwrote files and screwed with settings (Device Manager showed a tape drive. How many home computers actually have one of those?), so the only option was to wipe it clean and start over. Once I was done, I brought the virus scanner up to date and showed him how to do it, so this wouldn't happen again.

Not too long after that, he picked up the Blaster virus. I had never seen it before myself, but it had recently been in the news, and I recognized the symptoms he was describing. I told him it was a virus, and once again, "I thought that virus program was supposed to stop that from happening!"

Why do I even bother? Sometimes, I don't know.