Do you know Computer Science...

Have you ever been in a situation where you have to make someone understand the basics of Internet which you usually take for granted as you do it every day? Last week I had been in this situation not once but twice. The Good Samaritan in me helped a friend in her 70s to set up her email account. She came to my house asking if I knew "Computer Science". In my first try the email account name that I picked for her was not available. So I suggested her to think of some random favourite number so that she can easily remember. She startled me by saying 'Kunje, social security theratte?' meaning lets use her social security. 

There was no use explaining to her why not to use SS in the account id. Instead I encouraged her to think of any other number that she can easily remember. Finally she was ready with a number that she could think of...no prizes for guessing it was her birth date. Once the email account was ready she wanted to send an email. I hit the compose button to demonstrate and waited for her to give me the email address, instead she said 'I love you'. With extra wide eyes I blinked at her asking 'alla auntie who do you want to send the email to?'. 'To Mary' came the innocent reply. Now what do I say to that!!! I smiled back and tried hard to explain that you need to find out Mary's email address to send her an email, maybe next time you talk to her you can get her email. I know now that Mary is her best friend ;-) that's the answer to her security question. oops...did I reveal too much!! Just kidding you guys don't know her id anyways...

Anyways I now know that its her birthday next month on the 5th and she is turning 70 that day, gathered all this information just by creating an email account for her. Jee and I have decided to surprise her with something on her birthday. I also created a google document 'quick links', with all the websites she would like to visit, so that she just have to hit the url and won't have to memorize the website urls. :-)

Now the second incident was also kind of similar when I helped a friend Smitha move on to Gmail from Microsoft outlook. Poor lady! she was confused with so many features all in one page. I could see her perplexed face eagerly wanting to know all about google features. She was making sure she is using all the features without missing even a single corner. She wanted to expand the left pane in Gmail to see her labels clear enough to read. Now I haven't thought of doing that myself all this time since I moved to Gmail. Point is who cares, its just a mail service, use it to read and write mails. She once announced that it looks like the whole world is on facebook, where do people find time for this?? Rightly so another friend Praveen who was there that time commented...'if you are not in facebook you are considered socially inactive!!' 


I am strictly not making fun of anyone here...just a few funny observations that came along my way and made me smile. I hope it does the same for you. At least they are trying hard to keep up with the tech savvy world.