Wednesday, September 24, 2008

I'd Rather Be in Bed

Right now I'm trying to walk a rather technologically impaired classmate through an online application that is not particularly user friendly so she can get her half of our project posted. The only problem is that I'm having to do this entirely by an in-program chat window. Calling wouldn't help. I'm not a very good verbal communicator. I'm kind of like George W. Bush in that way, except that I only sound like an idiot. I'm not convinced he'd sound any brighter when communicating through a pen or keyboard.

If I could look over her shoulder and point at the screen, it'd really help. She doesn't understand enough to communicate what she's seeing effectively so I'm not even sure if she's clicking the right buttons when she says she is. Earlier today I came home to find that the work I had spent over an hour figuring out and getting posted this morning had disappeared entirely. Turns out she'd gotten confused and somehow accidentally caused an action that takes at least four separate actions to set into motion. Instead of being deleted (what I thought had happened to start with), it had just been moved into a random folder than had nothing to do with this week's assignments.

So here I am, on a night when I had hoped to get to bed early (since I couldn't last night) shouting profanities at the ceiling and very gently typing encouragement and directions into a chat window.

3 comments:

JustinS said...

If you still need to help, you might try some of the free remote assistance type applications. Something like the stuff from Zoho.com that shouldn't require you to make any firewall changes.

Jacob said...

That would have been awesome if I'd known about the free versions of those last night. I'll be working with her throughout the semester, so I may see if we can use one of those next time if she needs help.

Julie said...

Perhaps she is pursuing the wrong field?