computer frustration, crow feathers, and cabin fever

[arethinn]

I was late to work this morning for the first time in a long time. I didn't get out of my house until about 9:55 (I work at 10:00) because I was trying to talk about some computer stuff with my mother. She often doesn't know how to ask her questions, which is frustrating enough (I make a bad teacher because I get so annoyed so quickly), but what really drives me up the wall is her inability to generalize from one thing to another. For example, it took her quite a while to get the hang of navigating around in a "Save As" dialog box to find the folder she wanted to save a file in, or create a new one, or whatever. (Now she has built up a huge, complex organization system that even she can't find things in sometimes, which just proves that her file and folder names are not descriptive enough, but that's somewhat besides the point.)

This morning she was complaining that she always had a hard time finding the Firefox install file after downloading it because of "where it put it". It took me many minutes to get it through her head that "it" wasn't putting it anywhere, because she did not have Firefox set up to always save to a single folder, and that if the file wound up somewhere she didn't want, it was because she had clicked "OK" and she had full responsiblity for where files downloaded to. She had not been able to generalize from navigating in the Save As boxes in Word or Photoshop to navigating in ones that Firefox presented. Somehow she thought they were different and that the program was "putting" files where it felt like it without input from her.

I also don't know how to get through the concept of searching through menus to try to find options or actions, rather than just saying "I don't know where it is" when she hasn't even tried to find it. I know that she may not always recognize that a menu option performs the function she is trying to perform, but she should bloody well recognize "Preferences" or "Options" by now.

Hrrurgh.

There was something else... oh yeah. Today I found another crow feather on the ground near the ATM. Last week sometime I found one in almost the exact same spot, actually sticking upright out of the space between two of the slabs of concrete. Some time before that (but still this month) I found yet another in my path as I walked out to my car after work. I believe they are all of the same orientation, contour feathers from the right wing. It's been a long time since I seemed to be finding crow feathers all over the place. The last time was uh... well back in college.. probably in the late 90s. I am not sure if this is just chance, or if Someone is trying to tell me something.

Also, I am tired of being on the net all day. I would not be doing it if I were not wasting my time sitting at work all day long after having finished whatever real tasks I had. I would much rather be out scouting camping locations, or really, out on a short hike or something, with a picnic lunch on one of the ridge tops. Yeah. That'd be good. I am probably going to get up bloody early Saturday morning and scout locations, though, since some of them are way up in the north bay, nearly two hours even if the traffic were perfect, and there is no such animal when we are talking about driving through San Francisco, so I figure I will do the best I can by trying to go through SF at oh... 8 in the morning on a weekend. *rubs eyes blearily*

Comments

[baxil.livejournal.com]

Sorry you can't make it out to the Sierra; kadyg, roaminrob and I are going to hike up Mount Lola this weekend, vaguely north of Truckee.

(... Or can you?)

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

In theory I could, but I really don't want to postpone the plans to check out gather sites this weekend. That needs to get done. Another time perhaps!