Aug
3
In an odd course of events, I was pleasantly surprised that technology doesn’t scare always older generations. Odd considering how this all came to be. As this shocking news came to me when Sonja’s mom had received a boxed up computer from her father who had passed away, and she had asked us to come set it up for her.
At first I thought this was an curious request, as there aren’t too many cables involved with setting up a computer. It’s mostly circle-does-not-go-in-square situations. However, upon arrival we found the real reason. Whoever had packed the computer, had unplugged everything, and thrown all cables in a cardboard box – power, network, ethernet, telephone, wireless receivers, usb cables, etc. On top of all of that though, they had thrown all additional cables for other things being moved too — keyboards, headphones, more cables of all kinds.
Setting up the keyboard was quick and easy (minus a broken ps/2 cable that I needed a tweezers to un-bend a pin). However, the real fun was sorting through and untangling cables similar to the debacles of Christmas lights.
Anyway, on to the whole point of the story. Sonja’s mother had a friend visiting from Missouri during this time, and she constantly shocked me the whole night with her understanding of technology. Just from knowing of Open Source projects, or free online things like Skype, to finding out that she uses Linux as her primary desktop operating system at home (with a Windows XP VM for a few programs that aren’t compatible).
Considering this woman was probably in her early 60′s, and considering my mom in her 40′s couldn’t even dream of doing that, this was pretty impressive. Although I think the funniest part of the night was finding her hatred of Windows Vista. 
Carol is a fairly hip lady.
I’m not sure hip is the correct word for nerdy
That being said I’m finding a lot of people aren’t overly opposed to using linux. And if you don’t play many games, you really have no reason not to use linux on a home computer.
Just need a little bit more automation to get things like flash/jvm/etc installed from the web browser. Silverlight/Moonlight is a nice start there though.