[prepare thyself, this be a major rant]
I'm a terrible son and a terrible grandson.
Here's why. I get pissed at my family. I get pissed at them because they ask me to help them with their computer problems.
Its not all their fault. I bring some of this on myself. I'm the one who purchased an iMac for my father, so he wouldn't buy a 386 laptop with black and white monitor and windows 3.1 from a pawn shop. I'm the one who purchased a brand new Windows XP machine for my grandmother when the old one she had, donated graciously by a 'friend' of the family and held together with duct tape, literally exploded. I'm the one who installed the Operating Systems for them, hardened them so that they would not be instantly 'pwn3d' when they set foot into cyberspace. Configured their crappy ISP software (Juno for my grandmother, ECE for my father) because the tech support at those places is what happens when you think you know something, but then binge drink until the pain goes away, or you smoke way too much pot and listen to Pink Floyd backwards. I did all this, so I am to blame.
Why am I upset? Simple. I'm never the first one they call, I'm always the last. They tell me I'm the only one they know who knows anything about how, as my grandma puts it, "these silly things work." Yet I am always the last to call. Before today, I never got mad at them. I, with a smile would drive to their house, spend hours undoing and fixing their machines (instead of visiting with and being with them) and getting them back online. I must be a real ass to them in someway however, because I am the last one they call.
I'm feeling a bit taken for granted. I'm feeling a bit hurt. They didn't consult me until after they had purchased Juno, or McAffee, or MSN. It doesn't work and they want me to fix it. I used to try my best to muddle through helping them. But its over. I'm done.
My father called me today as I was re-locating from the windowless office to finish my day at my favorite window at a coffeeshop in Rochester. His internet didn't work. I had a moment of deja'vu. This is exactly how my grandmother's call started not three days earlier. They had taken their iMac to a friends house to use her DSL to download the security updates. This is not a bad thing, as there were 16 updates to download, and it would have taken days over dial-up, and ECE disconnects after an hour, because they're the kind of ISP that couldn't find its ass with two hands, a hunting dog, a mirror, and various high-paid consultants pointing it out. All their friends in the area have MSN, because its 'faster'. How I'm not sure, everyone is on dial-up since only a few places have DSL, but Qwest is rolling out DSL sometime later this year. Well they have been unhappy with their dial-up ECE speeds, and I don't blame them for that, but in honesty they were getting good speeds for where they were. But instead of asking me what I thought, and letting me do some research, they talked to their friends and decided to get MSN. Then they called Qwest and MSN and asked to get it. The shit-wits at tech support were absolutely no help b/c they had Mac OSX and fed them various lines of bullshit and lies that I am not going to repeat because its the kind of bullshit that makes me see red. They told them that they can't get MSN for Mac OSX, which is sort of true according to this link. And then they proceeded to have them go and do something that caused all their network preferences to disappear. This prompted my dad to finally call me. I was walking outside and stopped to talk, as the wind is just enough that walking makes it hard to hear. We proceed to go back and forth for 20 minutes (I made the mistake of telling my dad he made a mistake, which my father does not tolerate well) and I start to freeze my ass off. It turns out all that needed to be done was to plug the USB modem back into the USB port and let the system re-detect the modem and it automatically reconfigured everything back to what would allow them to connect. They did thank me, and we apologized for getting upset with each other, I'm having a shitacular week (its getting better now at least) because of DST. I'm under a lot or pressure and stress and I just snapped.
So for my mental health, I'm done. I live too far away from them and their issues are not ones I can fix from memory over a hundred miles away on the phone.
