Sorry this didn’t get posted yesterday, like it was supposed to; I looked at my calendar wrong when I was setting up my queue for this week, and set this to be posted next Wednesday.

Despite the fact that really don’t like teaching, I find myself doing a surprising amount of it. Usually, it’s in the form of helping older/less tech-savvy people learn how to use new (to them) technology. Most recently, I had to help my grandma figure out how to use a cellphone.

Now, my grandma is a pretty smart lady, and very active, but she’s also rather set in her ways. But, the basic phonecall functionality of cellphones isn’t overly complicated, so I didn’t think it’d be a big deal. I thought wrong.

Things started out rocky when the first thing I had to show her was how to unlock the keypad, since it’s not a flip-phone. This is a very simple concept; to keep keys from accidently being pressed, the phone locks itself after 30 seconds, and to unlock it, you have to press two specific keys in sequence. Not exactly rocket science. Yet, she spent the bulk of our conversation confused about this aspect of the phone. The display even says “Keypad Locked” when it’s locked, and displays exactly which keys to press to unlock it.

Speaking of reading the screen, another aspect that she had extreme difficulty with were the softkeys. Nearly every cellphone has these, they’re the unmarked buttons next to the screen that do whatever the screen labels them with. It’s a very handy concept used in all sorts of electronic devices now, and most people don’t even think about it. Grandma simply could not wrap her head around this. I swear she asked me a dozen times “What do those two buttons do?”, and I had to keep telling her “The screen shows you what they do”. Now, I can understand her difficulty with this a little better than the keypad lock, because I don’t think she owns anything else with softkeys, except her cordless phone. But still, is it really so difficult to understand? Especially for someone who spent the last 30-some years working with computers?

After awhile, she started taking notes. Notes. On the usage of a device that is easier to operate than the business desktop phone she’s been using for longer than I can remember.

Throughout this whole process, I noticed a common theme. From the start, when we first mentioned the word “cellphone”, she was absolutely, 100% convinced that it was a complicated, mysterious device that would take an semester of classes to learn how to use. And every time she actually did comprehend something (like, the power button), her reaction would be a very surprised “Oh, that was easy”.

In fact, any time I have to explain new technology to someone who’s not very tech-savvy, they usually approach the subject with the same perception of extreme, impenetrable complexity. They go into the subject already convinced that they’ll never be able to understand it. And, while some people (usually these same people) will insist that it doesn’t affect one’s ability to learn, I think the opposite. No one can force themselves to learn something, you have to want to learn it on some level. Hence why the average school student can’t find the city they live in on a map, but can tell you the entire cast, premise, and plot recap of their favourite TV show.

My experiences since high school have given me a unique perspective on this, in my opinion. After high school, I took one semester of classes at the local community college, barely pased them, and haven’t taken a real college class since. Certainly not a history I’m proud of, and something I struggle with on a constant basis in my search for employment, but in the years since, I’ve long since learned from my mistake. I’ve since started taking a new approach to new information, technology, and skills; for me, anything can be learned and understood. Whether it’s a new programming language, a new spoken language, or how to fix something on my car, I never let myself think that I can’t learn it. All I need is the interest. This approach has been instrumental in my web design career, and my training leading up to it, and while I have a natural skill for programming, that alone is not enough to build a career on. One must also have the ability to learn and evolve along with the industry.

They say that age affects one’s ability to learn, and while I agree that it can be a factor, it’s not a major one. My mom, who’s in her 40s, takes a similar approach to learning new things that I do, and she rarely has trouble picking up new skills. There are things she struggles with from time to time (like her new DVR), but in all such cases, her difficulty seems to stem from a preconceived idea that what she’s about to learn will be difficult and complicated, and she gets over it very quickly.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet found a way to convince those who think that can’t learn that they can, in fact, learn new things. I guess if I figure that one out, I’ll have a new career in adult education.

Earthlink is certainly gaining some free advertising with the media argument that the recession is driving people back to dial-up. Despite the fact the company really has no future business model, they recently exciting the Associated Press by dropping the cost of service to $7.95 per month. The Tampa Tribune is also breathlessly suggesting the life of dial-up is being extended by the recession. The Orlando Sentinel takes things one step further, by using one person who might revert to dial-up to suggest there’s a broader trend:

With his work hours cut and an investment portfolio in the tank, Arnold Zimmerman is considering the unthinkable: ditching his blazing-fast cable Internet service and going back to dial-up. “I didn’t think I would ever go back,” said Zimmerman, 66, of Davenport. “I had to wait to get online. It was terrible. But with this economy, you got to look to cut wherever you can.”

Of course while times are hard for many, they’re not that hard: most people aren’t cutting luxury services like TV, carrier earnings reports indicate most Americans seem perfectly capable of paying their $150 smartphone bills, and there’s absolutely no evidence so far that people are cutting broadband services (though it makes for good reading). New broadband subscriber additions are down, though it has more to do with slow home sales and construction, not because people are reverting to a soul-crushingly slow technology of yesteryear.

The mainstream press seems to forget you need a costly (and increasingly irrelevant) landline for dial-up. If anything, the recession may just accelerate the death of the landline, as people continue to save money by going with VoIP bundles — or mobile phone only. But is anybody seriously planning on trading in their Surfboard modem for a 56kbps modem? Maybe because of the recession, we should downgrade to a Wildcat! BBS. Who’s up for a game of Trade Wars 2000?

Would You Ever Head Back To Dial-Up? on DSL Reports

Having worked for a dial-up ISP just a couple years ago, and seeing our pathetic attempts to get new customers, this story really amused me. Not much to add to it, though.

It’s been awhile since I added new pages to the main content sections of the site, but I felt that my review of Google’s Chrome browser would be a good fit. So, it’s now part of the writing section of this site.

My mind always conjures up images like this whenever people talk about having ridiculous NSA-grade security on their personal computer. Of course, I did it too, once upon a time, but I quickly realized that it wasn’t worth the hassle because no one cares.

I spent 8 solid hours fixing computers and setting up networks for a pair of clients today. And I have to go back to one tomorrow, the other one next week.

On the plus side, both clients are loaded, and expecting prices on-par with what Geek Squad would charge, but I really don’t have the patience to do this long-term. Despite the fact that this is what I used to think my career would be, I find it very difficult to care about other people’s computer problems and lack of knowledge, even when I’m being paid to do exactly that.

Oh well, at least this is better than the long-term client I had, where no matter how many hours I spent there, the job never got any closer to completion because the client was an idiot who kept wanting more.

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In other news, new phone arrives tomorrow

Yesterday, my sister picked up the latest zero-day exploit for IE. This seems to happen to her computer every few months, because she keeps going to these nasty websites that are so popular with teenage morons. This one she picked up because she searched for song lyrics to a recent song, and clicked on the first hit Google gave her. Bad idea.

I spent a few hours working on the system yesterday, ran an overnight virus scan, and cleared out some trojans. Everything seemed to be fine.

Today, she said it was still acting up. I’ll spare y’all the details, but I basically spend my entire evening after work trying to chase down this virus and get rid of it. After three hours, and with my entire evening pretty much gone, I finally had it taken care of. And of course, I don’t get paid for maintaining systems on my own network, nor did I even get a “thank you” this time (an unusual occurance). And, the computer that I am being paid to fix (my favourite kind of customer, with more money than sense, and who throws big numbers at me before I can say how much I’m charging) is now delayed by another day.

I’m tired of this. I disabled IE in Group Policy for her account, and told her to use Firefox. That didn’t used to be a catch-all fix for stupidity, but it’s starting to be. If she manages to get infected by a virus again, I’ll fix it when I feel like getting around to it.

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Work isn’t particularly inspiring this week either. Our client for this current project is never satisfied, and keeps coming up with stuff that needs to be changed. After taking a week to finish the massive bug list he dropped on us last weekend, and spending my weekend adding a feature that was a pain due to the way the site is coded, he came up with a dozen more on Monday. This put me into “I’m going to finish this as fast as absolutely possible because I hate this project” mode, but I ran out of steam for today, and couldn’t quite get going on anything.

Am I the only one who still uses Windows 2000, and who still installs it on fresh computers from time to time?

I was setting up a new workstation for my mom recently, for her home office. Her usage habits could be satisfied with a 486, so I used a spare system (which is actually pretty decent), upgraded a few bits here and there, and started installing an OS. This computer could, in theory, run Windows XP, but just barely. So, as with most of the older systems I have, I decided to install Windows 2000 instead. It’s comparable in almost every regard, and it uses a small fraction of the system resources.

Right after installing network drivers, my first stop was Windows Updates. And, after installing the necessary components, I was informed that IE 5 (the default for Windows 2000) was not supported for Windows Update, and I would need to upgrade to IE 6. I clicked the link to the IE page, which was full of hype for IE 8 and IE 7 (both of which require XP at a bare minimum). Umm, how do I get IE 6? I scrolled down the page, and finally, in the bottom-left corner, I saw a link that said “Your version of Windows does not support IE 7, click here for IE 6″. I clicked, went to a knowledge base article. I clicked the download link, which took me to another knowledge base article. I clicked another download link, and the browser froze.

After repeating these steps two more times, the last time with javascript disabled, I discovered a fallacy in the system. The download page for IE 6 uses a javascript that freezes IE 5, but without that script running, it is 100% impossible to download IE 6. Nice work, dipshits, you’ve locked new installations of Windows 2000 (which is still supported enough that this is a problem) out of Windows Update completely.

Thankfully, a long time ago, I downloaded the distribution package for IE 6 SP1 (which is no longer available from Microsoft, it seems), on the off-chance that I would ever need to do this. Almost five years later, it actually proved to be useful. Yay for being a software-packrat!

This article has been added to the Writing section of this site. View it here.

Recently, I had the opportunity to use Google’s new web browser, Chrome. Since I’m probably the pickiest person on the internet when it comes to browsers (I didn’t start using Firefox until web developers started ignoring IE 6 en masse), and I work as a web developer, I figured I’d write up my thoughts on this new entry to the browser world.

Short Version:
Not a bad start, but it needs a LOT more work to call it “finished”, and has some disturbing installation habits.

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Yay, it came today!

I’ve been posting about this a lot, but it’s really exciting for me. It’s the first new computer I’ve bought for myself in almost five years (the Lupinia server doesn’t quite count), and it represents a whole new way of working for me (using a laptop independantly from my laptop, instead of using my laptop as a short-term desktop extension). It’s also the first laptop I’ve ever owned that had the computing power of a desktop; my first one was a stripped-down piece of crap even the day I bought it.

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After making my last post about the issues I’m having with getting my laptop shipped, I decided to do some research on both Dell Precision models I’m considering (the m6400 that I initially ordered, and the m6300). Found some very interesting things out about both:

1. The m6400 is much newer than I thought, they just started shipping it in the US two weeks ago. Which explains the high lead time on building them; people who ordered them in August are just now receiving them, and people who ordered them yesterday were given shipping quotes in December.

2. The few people who have received the m6400, and who’ve posted about it, mention that the keyboard design is really flimsy. This is a problem in cheap backlit keyboards (I’ve owned several for my desktop computer), but I didn’t expect it to be an issue with a Dell laptop that’s being presented as a super-high-end flagship model.

3. The m6300, on the other hand, is a tried-and-true model that’s well-refined (despite looking much like its flimsy PoS cousin, the Inspiron), and receives constant high marks for build quality. I couldn’t find a single mention of “screen flop”, a problem on large Inspiron models (which share many casing similarities with the m6300). And, the keyboard on the 6300 receives many positive marks, with many reviewers calling it “second only to Lenovo”.

So, given this information (that I should have researched before jumping into a major investment like this), I think I will cancel my original order and get the Precision m6300. The 6400 is really nice, and I would like to have one, but given my timetable and usage habits, the m6300 looks like a better choice.

Thanks for all the feedback on my last post, I appreciate it.