So the grandson e-mails a paper he needs for school to me at ten last night. For some reason or another the printer at his house is unavailable. He asks me to print this document for him and I readily agree. Of course I didn't read this e-mail until five this morning, plenty of time before school right. I get up and turn on my old faithful desktop, yes I still use a desktop, and open my mailbox. There it is, an attachment to a blank. It is at this point I discover I do not have a program capable of opening this document. The computer asks, do you want to look for an app in the app store ? Sure why not. Like I know what I'm looking for. I did find a program I thought might work , Microsoft word. Seems I've heard a lot about that one. Oh boy, there is a free trial version available. Oh, wait a minute, with this free trial I can view but not print ! Well, that's not going to help. But I'm not defeated as I grab the wife's laptop ! Yes, she prefers a laptop and it does have a program that opens word documents. Hey, grandpa has got this. I'm feeling pretty confident at this point. Then I see a text message saying this document needs to be in Times- New Roman 12 pt font, double spaced, and the name and date centered. You want what ? I do manage to print this document as it was sent to me. It meets none of the requirements ! I have absolutely no clue how to manipulate the document, none. Don't you have to write it that way in the first place ? All the wind is now gone from my sail.
It's early but I'm on the hot line waking up the grandson. He begins to tell me he will resend and all I have to do is copy/paste and something about yellow highlighters and I say, I'll come get you. I can hear the disgust in his voice as he realizes he is talking to an illiterate. He's thinking OMG old people. After having spent the better part of an hour getting this thing to open and print Grandpa isn't very happy. Well, he says to pick him up about fifteen minutes earlier than planned. That is all the time it should take to fix the problems. That's what he says. I also had to wake up his sister. I'm betting there won't be a lot of sisterly love being shown on the ride to school this morning.
And that is how this morning started. You gotta love it. Nothing like waiting till the evening before to prepare your stuff for school. Now you know I never did that ! I will give him the lecture about preparedness and how in my day we had to type, on a manual typewriter, well unless you didn't own a typewriter, then you could print, double spaced in black ink. I can honestly say I don't recall the font ever being mentioned. The only Font I knew about was at the church, I got baptized in that. Well, if he gets it printed with the requirements he says he needs I could run off several copies on my mimeograph machine, it's around here somewhere. All this copying and pasting too, it's an amazing thing to us of a certain generation. Copying and pasting without paper and glue. I thought white out was a technological marvel. Now, the kids sniff that stuff. The more things change the more they stay the same.
It's early but I'm on the hot line waking up the grandson. He begins to tell me he will resend and all I have to do is copy/paste and something about yellow highlighters and I say, I'll come get you. I can hear the disgust in his voice as he realizes he is talking to an illiterate. He's thinking OMG old people. After having spent the better part of an hour getting this thing to open and print Grandpa isn't very happy. Well, he says to pick him up about fifteen minutes earlier than planned. That is all the time it should take to fix the problems. That's what he says. I also had to wake up his sister. I'm betting there won't be a lot of sisterly love being shown on the ride to school this morning.
And that is how this morning started. You gotta love it. Nothing like waiting till the evening before to prepare your stuff for school. Now you know I never did that ! I will give him the lecture about preparedness and how in my day we had to type, on a manual typewriter, well unless you didn't own a typewriter, then you could print, double spaced in black ink. I can honestly say I don't recall the font ever being mentioned. The only Font I knew about was at the church, I got baptized in that. Well, if he gets it printed with the requirements he says he needs I could run off several copies on my mimeograph machine, it's around here somewhere. All this copying and pasting too, it's an amazing thing to us of a certain generation. Copying and pasting without paper and glue. I thought white out was a technological marvel. Now, the kids sniff that stuff. The more things change the more they stay the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment