Why everyone should listen to me
or How I "fixed" my mom's new iBook
So my dad bought my mom a new iBook G4 for Christmas and had it mailed to us so she wouldn't know. Then we filled iTunes with some music and set the wallpaper to be a picture of her dog. She loved it, but I quickly learned that she hasn't actually used a computer except to play solitaire in 5 years. So she decided not to mess around with it until she had a whole day to learn how to use it and read the manual. That's great for her, but everyone else wanted to play with it, and we soon learned that it would not connect to the internet. Nobody cared too much, figured it was the DSL router, since it has been acting funny the whole time we've been here.
DSL/Router problem gets resolved although it involves moving the DSL & router which involves getting behind the tree and knocking the tree over. Oh yes, my Dad knocked the fully decorated Christmas tree over. See the the cable was plugged into an outside jack and snaked through sliding doors. Apparently in order for the internet to work you have to leave the sliding doors open a little bit. This finally explained to me why when the internet wasn't working earlier my Dad proclaimed, "Oh yeah, that's because I closed the doors". At the time I didn't bother asking what that meant.
So one of my brother's friends, Nathan, is as tech savvy as they come. He has been known to "fix the internet" for my Dad on many occassions. His advice was to move the DSl & router to a place where my dad would have NO reason to touch it and so they did that. The internet magically worked again and all the internet addicted people in the house were happy again.
Next day someone new comes over and sees the new iBook, I take it out to show to her, and discover that it still won't automatically connect to the internet wirelessly. nathan quickly takes the computer away from me to "fix" it. He goes through all sorts of craziness, opens all sorts of windows and declares that there's nothing wrong with the router, the computer is talking to the router, but that the computer is not picking up the IP address. It will only go online if he types in the IP address. Of course he says all this using lots of words that I don't understand and we all think he is making them up because he says things like "statically enter the IP address" instead of "manually enter the IP address". Many jokes fly around from Windows people about how Macs are supposed to work right out of the box. I declare that if I was trying to fix it I would just goto the help menu and if that didn't work i would call Apple. Nathan said thats a waste of time, they would just tell me it's the routers fault. So I got out the manual that came with the thing and read through the whole section on connecting to the internet. Soon Nathan got a phone call and then Scott tried to fix it but only got as far as restarting the computer when it was time for dinner. Everyone forgot about the problem until hours later, when Nathan suddenly declares he's got to fix her computer. I told him not to worry about it until tomorrow. See I had a plan. I was going to prove to everyone that i know what I'm doing and I was going to show them that there really was nothing wrong with the computer at all. But I wanted to do it when no one was around, just in case I was wrong.
Everyone went skiing/snowboarding the next day except me. I still when to the hill and took some pictures with my sweet new camera that my baby's daddy bought me for Christmas. We all went back to the house except for Nathan and my brother who went to spend their Best Buy gift cards, so I had my chance to work my computer magic. Here's what I did:
Turned on the iBook
Went to Systems Preferences-Network
Followed the steps to configure the Airport settings
Gave the connection an easy to remember name
Voila!
It was now connected to the internet
I told everyone I had fixed the laptop, but then told everyone that there was nothing wrong with it. Nathan was perplexed, he told me he thought he had gone through the set up. Obviously he had not. He was too busy trying to figure out what the problem was, whereas I knew there was no real problem. i knew they were just doing something wrong, but I'm patient. And I knew my mom didn't care, she still hasn't touched the laptop except to see the pictures that were on it. She's probably not even going to use it until Tuesday when she can take it to work with her. See she doesn't actually do anything at work, she's retiring soon and she just doesn't care anymore.
I asume what happened was that when Scott and i opened it at our house, it prompted us to configure the internet connection. Scott probably told it he'd configure it later, and then forgo about it completely. So once again, in case you were wondering, I totally rule.
Oh and I just need to say, Widgets are freaking awesome, a few of you know what I'm talking about.
So my dad bought my mom a new iBook G4 for Christmas and had it mailed to us so she wouldn't know. Then we filled iTunes with some music and set the wallpaper to be a picture of her dog. She loved it, but I quickly learned that she hasn't actually used a computer except to play solitaire in 5 years. So she decided not to mess around with it until she had a whole day to learn how to use it and read the manual. That's great for her, but everyone else wanted to play with it, and we soon learned that it would not connect to the internet. Nobody cared too much, figured it was the DSL router, since it has been acting funny the whole time we've been here.
DSL/Router problem gets resolved although it involves moving the DSL & router which involves getting behind the tree and knocking the tree over. Oh yes, my Dad knocked the fully decorated Christmas tree over. See the the cable was plugged into an outside jack and snaked through sliding doors. Apparently in order for the internet to work you have to leave the sliding doors open a little bit. This finally explained to me why when the internet wasn't working earlier my Dad proclaimed, "Oh yeah, that's because I closed the doors". At the time I didn't bother asking what that meant.
So one of my brother's friends, Nathan, is as tech savvy as they come. He has been known to "fix the internet" for my Dad on many occassions. His advice was to move the DSl & router to a place where my dad would have NO reason to touch it and so they did that. The internet magically worked again and all the internet addicted people in the house were happy again.
Next day someone new comes over and sees the new iBook, I take it out to show to her, and discover that it still won't automatically connect to the internet wirelessly. nathan quickly takes the computer away from me to "fix" it. He goes through all sorts of craziness, opens all sorts of windows and declares that there's nothing wrong with the router, the computer is talking to the router, but that the computer is not picking up the IP address. It will only go online if he types in the IP address. Of course he says all this using lots of words that I don't understand and we all think he is making them up because he says things like "statically enter the IP address" instead of "manually enter the IP address". Many jokes fly around from Windows people about how Macs are supposed to work right out of the box. I declare that if I was trying to fix it I would just goto the help menu and if that didn't work i would call Apple. Nathan said thats a waste of time, they would just tell me it's the routers fault. So I got out the manual that came with the thing and read through the whole section on connecting to the internet. Soon Nathan got a phone call and then Scott tried to fix it but only got as far as restarting the computer when it was time for dinner. Everyone forgot about the problem until hours later, when Nathan suddenly declares he's got to fix her computer. I told him not to worry about it until tomorrow. See I had a plan. I was going to prove to everyone that i know what I'm doing and I was going to show them that there really was nothing wrong with the computer at all. But I wanted to do it when no one was around, just in case I was wrong.
Everyone went skiing/snowboarding the next day except me. I still when to the hill and took some pictures with my sweet new camera that my baby's daddy bought me for Christmas. We all went back to the house except for Nathan and my brother who went to spend their Best Buy gift cards, so I had my chance to work my computer magic. Here's what I did:
Turned on the iBook
Went to Systems Preferences-Network
Followed the steps to configure the Airport settings
Gave the connection an easy to remember name
Voila!
It was now connected to the internet
I told everyone I had fixed the laptop, but then told everyone that there was nothing wrong with it. Nathan was perplexed, he told me he thought he had gone through the set up. Obviously he had not. He was too busy trying to figure out what the problem was, whereas I knew there was no real problem. i knew they were just doing something wrong, but I'm patient. And I knew my mom didn't care, she still hasn't touched the laptop except to see the pictures that were on it. She's probably not even going to use it until Tuesday when she can take it to work with her. See she doesn't actually do anything at work, she's retiring soon and she just doesn't care anymore.
I asume what happened was that when Scott and i opened it at our house, it prompted us to configure the internet connection. Scott probably told it he'd configure it later, and then forgo about it completely. So once again, in case you were wondering, I totally rule.
Oh and I just need to say, Widgets are freaking awesome, a few of you know what I'm talking about.