68F and wet. At a guess. [66F and drizzling at 6am, 0.07in of rain since midnight]
Yesterday started at 68F and got a bit warmer. It got a whole lot wetter. It was still misty and occasional drizzle when I went to bed.
I didn’t get much of my list done yesterday, what with several hours of phone and remote pc support for my mom in Florida smack in the middle of the day. The one saving grace was how easy it is to use Teamviewer (despite my frustrations with the constant updating). Installing that should be a no brainer for anyone doing remote support for friends or family. I’ve used gotomypc, and various versions of VNC, but Teamviewer is the easiest I’ve used. (I still install VNC on all machines when I set them up, but I realized a week or so ago that I haven’t used it in years. At least TightVNC doesn’t nag you for updates, it just sits there waiting….
One of my issues with supporting mom’s pc is that I set it up for dad, and his use was very limited. I used one of the little ‘appliance’ win10 machines that cost about $120 and that includes the windows license. The little thing only has 32G of ramdisk for C: (which I figured would be plenty for windows and a couple of games- wrong!), and I added a 64G SD card for everything else. The little thing would play 4 simultaneous youtube streams before choking, so it is actually pretty powerful, for what it is. But, limited. I had to talk her through adding a USB hub so that she could use a thumbdrive. The new printer connects with wifi. Any new software has to be installed on the D: drive, which is a complication for someone who is “not a computer person”.
The biggest frustration for an older person attempting to use a pc for anything is the constant updating. Every time she tries to do something, it forces updates to the program. The OS nags you to update (seems that win OSs now expire and have to be updated, even though the major release version will remain the same? WTF?) She just wants to do x, and can’t because 3 other things must happen first. AND the OS coughs up scary warnings about making changes when she does click on OK. Sometimes the update window doesn’t come to the foreground and the pc looks like it’s locked up. All in all, not a good experience for the casual or inexperienced user.
To finish up, I’ll need to find space on C:, probably by cleaning up WinSxS, update, and then work with my wife and mom to get her iPad and iPhone printing to the new printer. (My wife is the apple person in our family.)
By the time this is done, MS will owe me for about 5 hours of support. I don’t think I’ll get it.
Meanwhile, Halloween approaches! Mr Lynn needs to stock up on Kandy Korn while he can, 30 or 40 pounds should be enough, no? Think of the children!
I need to get the rest of my decor set up, and get the candy and toys ready. I always threaten to hand out cigarettes, and my sweet wife always talks me out of it. Probably better that way. Cheaper too. Dang cigarettes are expensive. Lawyers too.
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