I should have just stayed on the train...

[danlansdowne]

Those of you who have been in the studio audience for a few years will know that my relationship with my father idles at "distant". When you work over an hour away for the first twelve years of your son's life, you're not going to be home too much. Eventually the son is going to get tired of trying to bond with you and will only come to you when he needs help with homework--even though you'll only help him during the commercials.

And then came the internet.

I think it took about a year after we got high speed for me to lap him in terms of computer savvy. That day arrived when he started asking me for help with his computer instead of the reverse. The man has a B.Sc. from a prestigious university, worked at IBM's headquarters, started the systems program at the Humber College business school, but his brain shifted to neutral somewhere around Windows 95 and hasn't shifted into gear since.

Which brings me to today. On a day to celebrate family togetherness and the birth of our Lord, I'm providing tech support for a problem with his e-mail that started two weeks ago. I found a workaround and that was the end of it--until it stopped working. Then the tech support started getting yelled at.

You would think that in the past two weeks he would call the ISP tech support. But he hasn't, because it "takes forever" to get through to them. This solution is SOOOOOOO much better! PS, Victoria University at U of T called; they want their degree back.

By the way, MERRRRRY CHRISTMAS!

Comments

[sheepdog.livejournal.com]

I hope you have a Merry Christmas anyway. *hugs*

[torakiyoshi.livejournal.com]

My dad is also a former IBMer. We lived five minutes from the plant, and they let him permanently have a shift that ended at 3pm so he could get home when we did, lest we be "latchkey children."

I surpassed him in computer savvy while still in high school, somewhere around the release of MS-DOS 5.0 (to the best of my knowledge, there is no IBM-DOS 5.0) and Windows 3.1. GUI was completely anathema to him.

And when high school's earlier got me home first, I'd be sitting at the kitchen counter eating my snack, and all but ignored his daily entrance. If he insisted I respond, I would grunt a basic reply and not so much as look at him. So physical distance has nothing to do with familial aloofness.

[dhlawrence.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it didn't get much better when he started working from home. I could go all day without saying more than five words to him.

It makes buying greeting cards a bit tough; you need to find the card that says everything and nothing at the same time.

[ladyringo.livejournal.com]

*BIG HUGS*

Merry Christmas anyway!

[dhlawrence.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It's picked up a bit now that I'm back in Windsor with my mother. We're going back to Cambridge for a couple of days tomorrow and then coming back on the weekend. New Year's Eve at the casino!