What is the most computer illiterate thing you've witnessed?

Peppe22 · 2012-05-22T00:43:46.866844+00:00

I bought a second hand laminator for $30 bucks. I write instructions and include screen shots (with little red arrows added to point to exactly where they are to click or type or whatever), print them, laminate them and send them to my older relatives to add to the binder which MUST sit next to their monitor. Then when I visit, I weed out old instruction pages. Best 30 bucks I ever spent.

forcery · 1 day

Cut the pockets out of your pants. Make a new pocket about 12 inches long. Sew new pocke on, and sew the 'top' edge to the front of the pantleg. You now have a horizontal pocket. When at a party, place the phone on vibrate and make sure it's between your thigh and your balls. You'll feel the vibration.

You'll feel it.

LindyJayne · 1 day

Be happy. Both my kids fixated on Fox in Sox. By god, by the end of the fifth year of reading it, I could go on about tweedle beetles battling in a bottle faster than John Lithgow.

Shortly after I moved them on to My Father's Dragon (Ruth Stiles Gannet) which was the first chapter book I read on my own. Now I still read to the 14 year old (Reading Pratchett mostly these days. Monstrous Regiment at the moment) and reading a wide assortment of books to the 10 yr old (although she is resisting starting on The Hobbit).

Enjoy the reading time.

cylonsympathizer · 9 days

About 20 years ago, I had a co-worker who did a similar thing. I found out what she liked (bunny rabbits or something), and I would return the favour by buying little ceramic bunnies whenever I saw them. So, I wound up with some crappy gold key comics (baby huey), first time, she got some ugly bunnies in rubber boots in return. I got some icky porno comics in some foreign language, she gets a pair of bunnies posing for American Gothic. Finally, she gave me a stack of really old Archie comics that she bought for five bucks. In the stack was an Iron Man number 1 in damned good condition. I sold it for about a hundred bucks, bought her a fancy crystal bunny that set me back $50 but wasn't from a yard sale.

I missed her when I left.

bootsmegamix · 10 days

If I'm paying for it directly, then I get input as to what is on the menu. Otherwise, text me when you get back from the honeymoon so I can avoid you until you're tired of showing your vacation photos.

Andrzej_Jay · 14 days

This was awesome. It's such a hard song to sing.

chipkoekjes · 14 days

Oh my God! We may be related! My aunt, on my father's side, took me in for 10 days while my parents went on holiday. Now, my parents had sent her money before they left and they gave me adequate spending money for the ten days in small town Ontario (for ice cream and shit). Of course, I had spent the $50 mad money they had given me, buying ice cream for my cousins and myself, burgers at McD's, that kind of shit. We get to the bus station for me to get back and my aunt says "you have your money for your ticket?"

"No," sez I, "Mom said she sent you money for the tickets." Well, anti-aunt goes on her rant about how my mom didn't send enough to feed me for the whole time and so she had to use the bus money for groceries for me and I should have saved enough money for the bus ticket (which would have been $35 of the $50 I was given) yadda yadda yadda.

She shut up and bought the ticket when I said "Isn't it worth it just to get rid of me?" Mom and I still laugh about it (my father never found it funny).

dijxtra · 15 days

I've never used it myself, but openLibrary looks like it may do what you want.

AliTheGiant · 15 days

1984, Winnipeg, MB, the group worked at the Winnipeg free theatre, Place for Kids daycare centre. Blenheim, ON, we all worked at the (now defunct) Southwestern Regional Centre. Abitibi-Temiscamingue , QC, worked on a construction site, building a camp for underprivileged kids and one of us worked as a secretary for the local priest (he was envied because he got to remain in a warm office...that construction site was frickin' cold!)

bgutta · 22 days

Yep. And then you'd count the seconds 'till they're in bed asleep so you can have a drink...I often do ;-)

You'll be a good parent. Especially if you remember to put yourself in Time Out when the kids tick you off to the point that you can't effectively deal with them.

bgutta · 22 days

Okay, just to prepare you: if an incident that needs this kind of intervention happens on a quiet Sunday afternoon, then your planned response is just perfect. It'll work beautifully.

But, Thursday afternoon when dinner is late because you had to pick up your daughter from rehearsal for the school play/concert and throw food into them real quick before your son has to go to his tutoring session because his math work is falling behind, his teacher sucks and he won't learn an academic subject from you because you're Dad/Mom (whichever) and for some reason he just won't get it when you're teaching it (this sometimes really happens). Not to mention the fact that it's hard to get the uninterrupted minutes necessary since his sister has a critical question to ask every 90 seconds.

In short, you have 20 free minutes to make the lesson, unless you are going to push back the bedtime for it (which is seen as a reward which means you're giving positive re-enforcement for a negative behaviour, unless you read to them, which I still do, in which case 'no stories' is a way of grabbing 15 extra minutes for important things like this, but still doesn't give you time to implement your plan) which means this back and forth that you're planning needs to be truncated severely.

Plan for 5 minute discipline and 15 minutes to get the kids back on track to finish the night in one piece and prepared for a good night sleep.

bgutta · 22 days

You, uh, you don't actually have any kids do you?

capitalletter · 22 days

Do you license these images? Isn't licensing the Simpson's characters extortionate?

capitalletter · 22 days

So why are there no video's on the site?

xdonutx · 22 days

Strip of duct tape (or duck tape, depending on your region) going from under one arm to under the other arm. When it's pulling out you underarm hair (which is incredibly painful) you'll remember to square your shoulders and the rest of good posture follows. Within weeks you wont need the tape.

GrandMastaFunk · 22 days

Professionalism is subjective. For some it is being an emotionless automaton that does only the job. For others it is a balance of allowing their humanity to shine through the rules and regulations that an employee must follow. The latter strengthen and buttress morale of co-workers and 'customers' by building personal relationships without allowing them to become intimate relationships.

Load the final version onto Google docs for us.

tripleR · 22 days

I figured it was Kaarst as well, but I see no artist by that name.

That first name though is hell to figure out...what with the weird accent half way through.

TurtlesLikeBerries · 22 days

Sorry, you have to hurt feelings. Either your friends by constantly letting her tag along and ruining their good times, to the point where they stop telling you what they're doing and you have only your roomie for company. Or you hurt your roomies feelings by telling her that your friends just aren't into her, but are too polite to tell her to fuck off (after which you need your friends to back you up and you will probably need a new roomate).

Choice is yours, but I'd probably want to hurt my friends less than hurting the roomie, who you don't give a shit about.

Hiphoppington · 23 days

If they didn't say they are closing the case then call and confirm that they are closing the case. Really. Otherwise, it may be left open and some other asshole makes a false report then it becomes "a case that has been open since 2012". If anything winds up in family court, that sounds worse than "a case that's been closed since 2012".

Drixislove · 28 days

Now that I'm (much) older, I'd probably just point out to them that they should feel lucky and not be such an ass about it. There's no sense going around hurting people and making them question their parents love for them.

Drixislove · 29 days

My dad was a truck driver. I had a friend who pulled the same shit on me. My response?

"My parents get me one big thing because they want me to be happy because they love me. Do your parents buy you ALL that shit because they don't want to have to deal with you?"

We were no longer friends after.

someguyinahat · 29 days

Mexicana, one at Bathurst & Lawrence and a second location near Yonge & Bloor.

tempal78 · 1 month

Buy keyboard for kids.
Insert paper.
tell them paper is a keylogger so I can track what they're doing.
Leave them befuddled and bemused.

bleutiger · 1 month

Okay. To my uncertain knowledge she didn't ever write 'exceptable' (but if she had, I bet the editor wouldn't have caught it). As I say, writing dialogue is where I give author's some leeway, as vernacular (writing how people actually speak) is a great way of creating characterization (Stan Shunpike (sp?) is a perfect example of this). Spelling errors? There are a few, Professof in one book, ennervate instead of enervate, etc. Probably less than 20 errors in each book, BUT, there should be none. Literature for kids, as I say, I hold to a higher standard.

As for Order of the Phoenix, I have had the exact opposite experience. Very few thought that the book was constructed well. How can this be? Well, we know different people obviously, and maybe our social circles are looking for different things from our literature.

Good lord emberspark, I'm sure google will lead you to inconsistencies in Harry Potter. One of the main ones that my (then) nine year old daughter noticed was in Goblet of Fire, when the two wands connected, and Voldemort's wand started regurgitating the people he had killed. First Cedric (which means Wormtail killed using Riddle's wand...why?), then whatsername the witch from Albania, then Harry's Father who tells Harry is mother is coming. Wait, that means Voldemort killed Harry's mom first, then his dad, but that's not how it is in the book, in Voldemorts memories...nowhere. Some say this is nitpicking, but if it's a glaring inconsistency that takes a nine year old out of the book, then it is not good writing.

And no, she wasn't nominated for any of the kidlit awards that are awarded for good writing because it was not good literary writing. With a proper editor, she could have had the great story that she told and had it properly presented. She could have, I think, swept the Carnegie Medal & Hans Christian Anderson Medal, if she were well written. Her story was that strong. Her editors were that weak.

I have the greatest respect for JKR, I really do, and I have no truck with her. Her editors, on the other hand, let her down, and let the readers down, and were not careful and thorough enough, and didn't reign in excesses...and lost her the awards that she could have had.

bleutiger · 1 month

sigh

Look, I don't want a lot of disappointed muggles trying to lynch me, so let me say right up front that I thought the Harry Potter story arch was exciting and entertaining. My problem isn't with JKR so much as it is with her editors, who appear to have taken the attitude that this lady is bringing in truck loads of money, so we don't want to be too critical of her and hurt her feelings. They did the author, her readers and themselves a great disservice. Want to know what I mean?

Okay, as kidlit/juvie, I have certain standards for what I consider to be well written. First, the spelling, grammar and use of language has to be correct. I'll give the author SOME leeway in the realm of dialogue, because people don't speak proper English, and using vernacular is a great way of creating characterisation. There are grammar errors galore in the Harry Potter books. Some sentences are so awkwardly written that I suspect the editors felt that their job was to make sure that JKR didn't accidentally write a page in Latin or German. So long as the page looked English they passed it. There were more spelling errors than I find acceptable in a juvie book (or exceptable if I were to write like JKR).

Secondly, by the time the books took off, the publishers were rushing to press. Is there anyone who doesn't think that Order of the Phoenix goes on WAY too long? It's like they published a first draft, there is no tightening of the story. JKR got carried away on a subplot that was tediously protracted. Good editing would have helped all of the books, but especially that one.

Finally, there are all the inconsistencies within the books that are exhaustively listed elsewhere on the net, and I'm not going to reiterate them here. Suffice to say, a good editor would have caught these inconsistencies and would have made the story better.

There's a reason why the HP books didn't win any of the literary awards, it's because the poor editing precluded them from being nominated. And rightly so if you look at the books, not as a wide eyed reader already comfortable in the language, but as a user of English as a tool for conveying ideas. The whole point of 'kidlit' is to entertain AND educate the audience. In English, and how she is writed.

fquested

TROPHY CASE

fquested

TROPHY CASE

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login