QMusings

I spent Saturday with my mom. It was a Girl’s Day Out.

The plan was to have lunch near the park and then walk to the botanical gardens for a photo shoot.

Since I am not only a daughter but also one with Geek-Like Tendencies, I ended up getting a wee bit sidetracked by my mom’s computer and phone system.

“Phone System” is an overstatement. Unless you consider a series of extension cords an electrical system.

Ever since my mom got DSL, the speakerphone in the kitchen stopped working. It’s an ancient wall phone and when mom is puttering around in the kitchen, she puts callers on speakerphone so she doesn’t have to hold the phone.

Now that she has DSL and the DSL filter on the phone, she can hear callers but they can’t hear her. She has to actually use the handset to speak with them. Mom is not so up with this sitch-ashun. Nails. Eyes. You know the rest.

A couple of years ago I had purchased her a nice cordless phone for her bedroom and of course selected one that had a speakerphone in the base AND the handset. I also got her a headset. I pondered her current phone sitchashun.

I pondered my mom’s electronic Wall Of Privacy (she once had a phone stalker). I looked at her Caller ID box, her answering machine and almost broke out in hives at the tangle of phone cords, power adapters, 2-prong-to-3-prong-to-3-way-adapters stacked up like Legos.

Deep breath…deep breath. Where is my freakin’ Quiet Space?

I then realized that the cordless phone base could be moved to the kitchen. If that worked, I wouldn’t have to get another phone. It took me a while to figure out which cord was the actual phone line: Hmm, this is going to the answering machine…and this one is going out of the answering machine to the caller ID and …this is routed out of…

I am reasonably handy and was able to get her phone system up and running and I called her on my cell phone to test that the speakerphone worked both ways.

One chore down…

It was time to tackle the Big One: Microsoft.

Uh-huh. Remember that animated short, “Bambi vs Godzilla”?

Mom had already tried calling AT&T. Who then routed her to Microsoft. Who then told her that her Outlook 2002 was old but she could pay $49.95 for tech support. Mom then called me.

I had installed Outlook 2002 on my mom’s PC and while she could receive email, she couldn’t send it. We both have the same DSL provider and I was able to configure my Outlook 2000 to work. Yes, I have XP running on my laptop and my mom is on a Vista PC but still…

I’ve attempted to get her outbound email working twice in the past. Both times I was tired and wanted to get home and if I couldn’t figure it out in 10 minutes I was stopping.

This time I was going to focus. I was going to beat this problem.

I tried everything, clicked every freakin’ Advanced Tab, used different combinations of ports, even tried my settings.

I am not exactly ignorant of POP3 and SMTP server settings. The lunch hour came and went. Mom popped open a container of yogurt and ate it while looking over my shoulder. I was hunched over her keyboard.

We were both hungry. I gave up. Like Bambi, I was flattened. I configured Microsoft Mail that comes with Vista and … no problems.

Arrrrggggh.

Mom didn’t really care. She just wanted email. I wanted to wrestle that thing to the ground and win.

Maybe I AM a Geek.

But even a Geek has to eat.

Coming Soon: Lunch and a Photo Shoot. Maybe.
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