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| WINDOWS (10) STARTUP SCREEN |
It is wondered how many XUNICEF families will have experienced the same introduction to computers as ours ? In this account of our early encounters, there was the father (that’s me), the mother and our son. Names not supplied to avoid embarrassments.
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I am rather deaf. In fact, I am rather more than normally deaf, and it seems that I also suffer from tinnitus which can mask some sounds so that when everyone else is getting rather excited, I am happily going about my business undisturbed. This is a variation on “Silence is golden”, which could be rewritten as “Tinnitus makes the heart beat slower”, or some such.
There are times, however, when something intrudes into my personal bubble of tinnitine peace like my wife’s voice which she has over the years, learned to pitch at exactly the frequency that I can hear. Like when the stove pinger goes off and I am standing over the stove. She can hear it clearly two rooms away while I cannot hear a thing, so she needs to alert me to the fact that the food is ready rather than waiting till the smoke alarm goes off. The trouble with this is that while I can hear that she is addressing me, I am unable to distinguish what she is saying so I have to walk to where I can see her so I can lip-read what she is saying before going back to the kitchen to ‘do the needful’.
This calling from two rooms away is a bit of a game. My wife will call me to see something on TV that is interesting her but which I know will not be entirely to my taste, so I have become quite adept at judging the urgency/pitch of her call to know which one to ignore and which requires an immediate response.
Now, bring on the radio, that wonder which we still sometimes refer to as “The Wireless”. We both listen to the radio and often enjoy the same programme, but we inevitably have somewhat differing tastes so that there are times when I have switched mine off but my wife will be listening to hers. The problem comes when she moves about the house with her radio and she is listening to a discussion programme where a woman is speaking. I frequently mistake this for a call from my wife to attend to her immediate needs – but I am learning to delay until the summons becomes peremptory as a means of differentiating between the conversational and the mandatory.
So here we are – Derby and Joan – living a really very peaceful life while each of us occupies our respective space trying not to disturb the other unless absolutely essential. Marital bliss of older age; or, as one of the children so aptly put it after hostilities had broken out over some alleged minor misdemeanour of mine – marital blast.
*****
My wife stoutly resisted having anything to do with computers when first they arrived on the scene. First of all they are mathematical – which she most definitely is not – but more particularly because they require that you follow a detailed set of instructions in sequence while she is more adept at multi-tasking, doing everything at the same time. A computer appears not to take kindly to having all keys depressed simultaneously in the hope that it will fathom which was the sequence you required it to follow. The screen usually indicates that this approach has not been entirely successful. So, interaction between my wife and computer was very limited for some years until she discovered that it was possible to play contract bridge on the computer. Oh, how I rue the day I introduced that bridge programme on to the hard drive !
From this, you can probably gather that my wife plays a fair hand of contract bridge and she has been trying for many years to train me to follow her logic in both bidding and play – which I have valiantly resisted. It’s something to do with Venus and Mars, I think. Well, she became so frustrated at my inability to follow her logic that she took to training the computer in the same routines, without noticing that the computer was only slightly less human than me.
Soon after she had ‘discovered’ computer bridge, she had so taken over the computer that both our son and I had the greatest difficulty in gaining access to it, so he decided that appropriate action was required. Luckily, he attended a school where the intricacies of computers were part of the curriculum, and well taught, and he had been shown how to change the sounds that play during various computer operations – like the Windows Logon sound. He set to work when my wife was out late one night knowing that she would start the computer early next morning to have her ‘fix’ of bridge before breakfast.
There are times, however, when something intrudes into my personal bubble of tinnitine peace like my wife’s voice which she has over the years, learned to pitch at exactly the frequency that I can hear. Like when the stove pinger goes off and I am standing over the stove. She can hear it clearly two rooms away while I cannot hear a thing, so she needs to alert me to the fact that the food is ready rather than waiting till the smoke alarm goes off. The trouble with this is that while I can hear that she is addressing me, I am unable to distinguish what she is saying so I have to walk to where I can see her so I can lip-read what she is saying before going back to the kitchen to ‘do the needful’.
This calling from two rooms away is a bit of a game. My wife will call me to see something on TV that is interesting her but which I know will not be entirely to my taste, so I have become quite adept at judging the urgency/pitch of her call to know which one to ignore and which requires an immediate response.
Now, bring on the radio, that wonder which we still sometimes refer to as “The Wireless”. We both listen to the radio and often enjoy the same programme, but we inevitably have somewhat differing tastes so that there are times when I have switched mine off but my wife will be listening to hers. The problem comes when she moves about the house with her radio and she is listening to a discussion programme where a woman is speaking. I frequently mistake this for a call from my wife to attend to her immediate needs – but I am learning to delay until the summons becomes peremptory as a means of differentiating between the conversational and the mandatory.
So here we are – Derby and Joan – living a really very peaceful life while each of us occupies our respective space trying not to disturb the other unless absolutely essential. Marital bliss of older age; or, as one of the children so aptly put it after hostilities had broken out over some alleged minor misdemeanour of mine – marital blast.
*****
My wife stoutly resisted having anything to do with computers when first they arrived on the scene. First of all they are mathematical – which she most definitely is not – but more particularly because they require that you follow a detailed set of instructions in sequence while she is more adept at multi-tasking, doing everything at the same time. A computer appears not to take kindly to having all keys depressed simultaneously in the hope that it will fathom which was the sequence you required it to follow. The screen usually indicates that this approach has not been entirely successful. So, interaction between my wife and computer was very limited for some years until she discovered that it was possible to play contract bridge on the computer. Oh, how I rue the day I introduced that bridge programme on to the hard drive !
From this, you can probably gather that my wife plays a fair hand of contract bridge and she has been trying for many years to train me to follow her logic in both bidding and play – which I have valiantly resisted. It’s something to do with Venus and Mars, I think. Well, she became so frustrated at my inability to follow her logic that she took to training the computer in the same routines, without noticing that the computer was only slightly less human than me.
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| WIFE (SOUTH) WINS THE RUBBER: SUCCESS ! |
Next morning and right on cue at 5:30am, my wife appeared before the computer with cup of coffee in hand and switched it on. The house was still until the Windows Logon sound should have been heard, but instead of that, my son’s voice boomed out over the loudspeakers, “Really Mum, you shouldn’t play so much bridge !” My wife did the nose trick with her coffee; then set about trying to find where her son was hiding. . . . . . . . .with strong thoughts of chastisement in mind – the law on spanking children notwithstanding. Luckily he was fast asleep at the time, and when he had to get up to face the music, he stood some inches higher than my wife. An accommodation was reached whereby he and I had reasonable access to the computer again.
Sadly, this event didn’t cure her of her need to play bridge. Indeed, there were times when I had had to carry on my work on my old and trusty laptop that has an air of former times about it. It smells of the monsoon and looks as if it is definitely in need of a bath - and appears to creak when it works – but it seems to get there in the end. Imagine, if you will, Derby and Joan intent on the events unfolding on their respective computers, with me totally absorbed and silent as the grave. I speak as little as possible these days since I lost a tooth and have noticed a distressing tendency to spray my audience through the gap.
My wife, on the other hand, has no such impediment. This allows her full rein to instruct the computer she is using, in the finer points of the game of contract bridge. I don’t hear what she is saying and the best of it all is that the computer doesn’t answer back. Full satisfaction on all sides; so why didn’t we work this out earlier ?
*****
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