tech-related things your family/friends do that drive you nuts

[siurpeeman]

not necessarily what they do, it's what they don't do. my sister won't upgrade the ram in her macbook. it's only got 512 mb, and she could really use some more memory.

 

[iMacZealot]

My dad bothers me. As an Apple shareholder and founder of a medical software company, he thinks he knows all there is about the industry and thinks that everything is all web application-based now; yet he called me into his room last night to ask me how to forward an e-mail.

 

[EricNau]

Forwarded Emails. Family and Friends just love to send me the stuff. ...I hate each and every one (EDIT: the emails, not the people ).

I'm about 3 hoaxes/lies/politically or religiously-fueled emails away having all emails with "Fwd:" in the subject line bounced back to the sender with this message: "I'm sorry, this user is no longer accepting forwarded emails, and thus your message has been automatically returned. Please do the world a favor and stop sending them."

I can't remember the last time I received an accurate, funny, or interesting forwarded email. ...In fact, I think I would rather read spam.

 

[yg17]

In fact, I think I would rather read spam.

No kidding.....at least some of the spam I get is entertaining, or at the very least interesting. Like the spam that talks about using certain parts of the male anatomy as a pool cue. That had me laughing. E-mails about viruses that will end the world or e-mails telling me that for each person I send this to, Bill Gates will send me a thousand dollars and a sick child will be cured of his cancer don't have me laughing.


My dad will just forward it along and forget about it. My mom will forward it along and believe the hoaxes she's read. We got into a lengthy discussion about an e-mail she received that said if you drink a bottle of water that's been sitting in a hot car, you'll get cancer because the sun does something to the plastic. I found links from the FDA that said it wasn't true and showed them to her. "But it was on the internet so it must be true!" I then said, "Don't believe everything you read on the internet." She said "Then how do you know what you read on the FDA's website is true". I said "Because one is a federal organization who spends millions of dollars researching this stuff, and the other is some moron trying to get his 15 minutes of fame." Then one day over the summer we were in the car and lo and behold, there was a bottle of water in there. I drank it (against her wishes, but I had to prove a point) and still haven't dropped dead yet, so I guess I win

She also scrambled to get her cell phone number on the do-not-call list because of an e-mail that said telemarketers were going to start calling cell phones (even though I told her that it was against federal law for telemarketers to call cell phones). She gave me the "but it's on the internet!" crap. I never registered my cell number on the DNC and still haven't gotten a single telemarketer call....imagine that!

 

[SthrnCmfrtr]

Reading through this thread, it struck me that I'm actually pretty lucky. My step-dad used to work for Apple. My mother is catastrophically stupid when it comes to computers but generally harmless. Some things have popped up, though.

- My mother left her iBook G3 out in her car overnight in the middle of winter.
- Two words: Bonzi Buddy.
- She still refuses to grasp that she has a CD-RW in her iBook, and she has absolutely no grasp of iTunes. The other day, she called me and mentioned she was looking at multi-disc changers for her car -- even though she has a stereo that plays MP3 CDs.
- She understands that I have a lot of music. "Nathan, one of my coworkers was wondering if you could burn all of Queen's albums for him, and I told him it'd be no problem." Sure, Mom. No problem. I'll have them to you on Tuesday. Oh, and let him (and everyone) know that I am starting up a new non-profit organization where I spend my time and money violating various ethical and legal precepts for people I don't even ****ing know. I'll be doing this full-time from now on, so if he or any other numbnuts wants the complete discography of any other musicians that I don't like, just let me know so that I can get crackin'.
- She had a 500MHz/96MB/6GB/Win98SE Hewlett-Packard. A couple years ago, in the Spirit of Giving, I upgraded it to a 1.4GHz AMD Athlon with 512MB RAM, about 40GB, XP, and so forth. Not a great box, but an immense step up. Well, she didn't like it because it "felt cheap." What she meant by that was that the new PC was lighter while the old HP seemed like it was made out of six steel bricks welded together. She didn't notice or care about the upgraded everything -- it was the computer's weight that she didn't like.

*ponders* I can't wait to visit her... the 26th and 27th :-/ My wife is already pulling her hair out...

 

[Darth.Titan]

I'm about 3 hoaxes/lies/politically or religiously-fueled emails away having all emails with "Fwd:" in the subject line bounced back to the sender with this message: "I'm sorry, this user is no longer accepting forwarded emails, and thus your message has been automatically returned. Please do the world a favor and stop sending them."

That's genius. I wish I'd thought of that. I'm going to set this up on my Inbox right now in fact,

 

[erickkoch]

Chain e-mails, especially the ones with nested attachments that require clicking 4-5 times or more to read the original message.

Viruses(PC). I always get friends and family complaining that their computer used to run quickly but now it's bogged down and "doesn't work right." I always ask, "have you been updating the anti-viral software, installing update patches, etc?" They usually just stare back at me with a bewildered look on their face.

 

[EricNau]

Chain e-mails, especially the ones with nested attachments so you have to click 4-5 times to read the original message.

Those are my favorite - prevents me from having to read the first word.

 

[toolbox]

1. Windows users, seeing how nuked with spyware and viruses
2. Not keeping there systems up to date
3. My Parents calling it UBS instead of USB
4. Parents still listening to there cds on the surround system system despite me sitting there and showing them how to rip music
5. People ringing me at home to ask tech advise
6. Any norton products on a mac
7. Eating, drinking and touching the lcd screen

 

[iSaint]

Buys a planner even though she has a Blackberry that syncs with her laptop automatically.