Aside from running all over the shop this weekend, I had a laptop zonked on me by my father, to have a look at sorting it out for him, this laptop cost £60 off of ebay, and it was as old as the hills... A single core (core 1) with 2gb of RAM and an ATI graphics card.... Its dirt slow.
Best thing I could do was not bother to open windows, in fact, I opened windows on it and noted six different pieces of user monitoring software running in the open; clearly the seller wanted to phish for personal information from this machine.
So, I wiped the machine with a blank copy of windows XP (its licensed OS) and low and behold I booted up and the malware was back...
So I got out my trusty Linux boot CD and fired up into a version of Linux Mint to take a look around. Dead sneakily whomever had sold this laptop had a hidden partition on the hard drive, it was booting into that to restore whatever malware onto the disk on the main partition and then letting the OS Boot. It did this with a custom copy of Grub, with the text turned black and a zero time out... Very very sneaky.
I cleaned this all off, installed Mint onto the machine and it was a decent little box, I could imagine a developer (who doesn't mind the slow clock speed) enjoying the machine, it has a very tall screen (over twice the height of the screen on which I now write this mail to you guys in fact)... Crispy tall screen, I was almost tempted to have the machine off of him for my Pascal efforts, but I resisted...
But what a palava... what a lot of work that laptop seller must have gone to in order to set up that machine as a honey trap.
The machine is now sorted, however, all this is immaterial, what really bugged me was how much I had to say "No you can't play games on this machine"... to my mother... She had this plan that they'd get me to fix this laptop up and she'd sell it onto a member of the family so they could "browse the net, do homework and play some games".
Well, they can do all those things on it, but not play the games I think they thought they were going to play... First of all, the machine was very very low spec... I tried to explain this to my mother... "My gaming machine has eight processor cores and £470 worth of graphics cards inside... this laptop is ten years old and cost £60, its not going to run games".... But she insisted it would do...
No, it won't....
Yes, it will.....
Now, I'm no expert on my mothers education, but since it ended in the early 70's I'm going to pretty much assure you all right now that it contains absolutely no IT or computer related knowledge. In fact, apart from her typing a few letters on our Atari ST as kids, and her briefly using e-mail in the modern era, I don't remember my mother using computers all that much; she's an SMS expert but a computer numpty.
I however, have been gaming longer than I care to recall, have a degree in Software Engineering, am lucky enough to be a computer programmer for a living and I live and breath this industry as it is my life blood... Yet, sat in my own room, on my own turf, she was willing to argue with me about this, to basically try to play off the "I'm your mother, I know best" card on a topic about which she knows nothing.
Now, some of you out there may know my Mum, so when I say "She ended up pulling a face like she thinks you can't see her" you'll know what I mean. But, for the rest of you, she pulled a face like a turtle straining to take a shit and not blow itself out its own shell.
And, this made me very angry, not least because this is my area of expertise, don't put me down. My brother and sister-in-law are hairdressers, would I argue with them about dandruff?... No... Would my mother?... No... So why does my Mother and pretty much every fucker who's ever typed an e-mail (and little else) on a PC think they can argue with me on the topic?...
I've blogged about this before, but not from direct close family, that was extended family; whom may not beware I did a degree in this stuff... And not aware I've ALWAYS - for thirteen years - worked in this industry; and not aware I live and breath this both mentally and physically. My mother however should be more than well aware of my experience and bow to my judgement, not argue with me.
If I had cancer, and my son was a doctor, I'd defer to his knowledge and experience on the old diagnosis front. So why can't people back down and accept someone might know more than them about the IT trade and the piece of shit laptop they just bought off of ebay?
Maybe they have to defend what they just bought?... Maybe they're embarrassed this heap of shit ain't going to play Crysis...? Whatever the reason, they have to suck it down, because I'm getting right fucking tired of being back chatted to on the topic.
The other angst which came up was also related computers, you see, every weekend I had to do an online shop for my Nan. Its not a big deal, but lately I've been getting back chat to about what I've ordered; I have only ordered what Nan asked for; but my Mother thinks she can talk to me like I'm a fucking idiot that forgot to order disinfectant... if the old gal don't ask, she don't get, if I just bought things there'd be hell to pay. If the old gal has forgot to ask, fair enough, but don't talk to me like shit because of it.
But anyway, this old saga of doing this order has gone on for YEARS, I have hundreds - no shit - of receipts for all the orders I've done, and we have the pattern of what to order down easy, but this weekend I've had family visits, I've had to travel to Leeds, I've been pretty fucking busy - even before I mention my wife being extremely ill last night and this morning... Above that we have a weekend away planned soon, so in anticipation of problems I printed out a dead easy to follow cheat sheet for my Dad to follow to do the shop.
I gave him this, and said "we're going away, so you'll need to do the shop that weekend"... nothing more, nothing less... The action in the sheets involve typing in the web page, a username and a password and then basically using the mouse to click the list of favourites that site holds for my Nan... its about 21 key strokes total.... Remember this list of instructions has just been handed to a man you've witnessed is happily using ebay, is using paypal and whom plays computer games all the time...
And you should see the comedy text reply my mother has sent me... here's the first:
From Me: "How's Dad got on with the shopping list?"
Reply: "Do u mean the How 2do an online order? If so he's lookf n gonna try. Friday he helped me with a brief e-mail as i can no longer see letters n numbers. It took 3hrs. He's limited when using his fingers as he has 2keep them in creans n cover them with plastic dressings. There4 it'l b hard using his fingers n hands as their so sore. We've been 2nan, collected her order n explained the change. She got very upset as she was happy with u. Was really hard telling her."
Now, lets parse this over folks... My Dad has a hard time with cream on his fingers... yes he does... but he manages on ebay and paypal - activities which take more typing than this online shop for Nan... And comparing ebay, paypal or the online shop to typing an actual e-mail is just retarded... Not least because my Dad ain't the most literate bloke on the planet, indeed he only seems to know where the ASWD keys are because of playing shooters all the time... So, stupid comparison from a stupid woman as far as I can tell...
As for his fingers hurting him, I've counted 21 characters need to be typed to do this shop... all the rest is clicking pre-existing items on a list...
I might suggest he get one of these though, since he's on ebay, I'm sure he'll find one...
Next thing to parse out of this mail... She's been to Nan, a vulnerable, confused old woman and told her god knows what story about my not wanting to help any more... Scaring her, upsetting her... When... These instructions were only for a rainy day (and its rained this weekend) or for the weekend we go away (soon) and possibly for covering whilst we go on our delayed honeymoon... Never was it mentioned I'd not do it any more...
But my mother is an over dramatic theocratic obtuse pain in the rear end, so she's decided to make a drama out of this.
This has me incensed to actually stop doing the shop altogether, firstly because I consider my mothers actions ridiculous and I think my father should have shown some back bone and gone "whoowhooowhoaaa there, stop and think about this, these instructions are only to cover, or in case he gets hit by a bus"... instead... off they trot to rain on Nan's parade...
But also to receive these stupid messages as text... It incenses me to be angry, to "FIT RAGE QUIT" because they've been... well they've been fucking arseholes...
AND THEN....
To really annoy me, more lies are crawling out the wood work... I have the text saying they've just got the shopping list right... its timed 19:13...
I have an e-mail timed 20:32 saying the shop has been done...
So it took about 1 hour 30 minutes to drive home from Nan's, settle in, get the machine on, digest my instructions and type in the whole shopping list... right... That's an hour and thirty minutes.... When I'm on the phone with Nan trying to get sense out of her, that's about the same amount of time I waste... Not doing bad is he, for a guy unable to use his hands...
But then... at 21:13... So, two hours after the first text... (TWO HOURS)..... I have this text arrive....
"Dad just done nan's shop - Took him 3hrs from list. x"
No, no it did not, it took him at most an hour and a half, and you took only two hours to reply... Where does she get three hours from?... I have irrefutable proof of 1 hour 30 minutes, assuming she sent the text about getting the shop in the car (which I admit I assume I do - but its the most likely scenario).
1. Go Nans & scare her, take written list.
2. Drive home - whilst driving send guilt riddled text to fuck with mind and set my resolve NOT to shop again.
3. Get home - fuck about - get on machine do shop
4. Confirmation of Shop being done arrives at my inbox.
My mother in unaware I had a live mail tell me about the confirmation, she has no idea that I know this discrepancy exists... But she's quite willing to lie to me about the time taken...
Its not the first lie she's been caught out with... There's a few others out there in the ether that she'd rather gloss over... But, I'm getting tired of this attitude from her.
Tired of this, I'm holier than thou, I know more, I am bending over backwards for you... She has this air...
I spoke to my wife about this earlier, my wife lived at home with her parents well into her 20's... I was gone out the family home at 19... to Uni... My younger brother left at 16 to live with his girlfriend... My parents have had years together as a couple to live their own lives before they were married and now long after, they've had more time living their own lives as a married couple doing their own thing, than having kids at home... But they go on like they've been tied down to us kids for ever... They've not...
They've travelled, they've been all over and have a rich social life... And if they (specifically my mother) wants to come to my home and argue with me about my specialist topic, and argue with me about life and then weave this web of guilt and bullshit about this whole shopping insignificance, to be frank I can do without visits from her, until she can buck her ideas up and stop arguing...
Other arguments with my Mother in the last 30 days:
> "You've never lived in St Anns"...
< "We lived on St Anns Wells Road for two years odd, and I lived on Abbortsford Drive, St Anns, for a year whilst at University"...
> "You never lived in St Anns"...
Even my Dad looked at her sideways on this one, because we've always said we lived in St Anns, its always been a fact and a simple, proud one...
> "You written your game yet?"
< "What?"
>"You were writing a game on the computer?"
< "You mean my project at work, the system software I was writing?... yes I checked it in last week after months of work".
> "But its a game?"
< "No, is a software system"
> "But you play games on the computer"
< "Not at work"
This was about my work... Nice to know my professional conduct is considered playing.
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