Thursday, June 01, 2006

YAY!!!!!!!!

Today is a very special day.

It is the day that my son passes from childhood to being a teenager! Every birthday is special but this one seems more so somehow. My boy is growing up so fast - he has hairy arms and legs yikes!! When I asked whether there was anything special he wanted for his birthday his one wish was to have the internet access in his bedroom. Until now I have fought against this because I like to keep an eye on what he is doing (not that I dont trust him of course lol). Anyway, the day has come and I have persuaded myself that as Secondary School requires a lot of his homework to be researched on the internet that it was a reasonable request. So I said that I would contribute half of the cost towards the necessary router etc to give him access to AOL upstairs.

Of course I should have known that the words 'plug and play' and ' easy installation' mean nothing of the sort! I plugged and it didn't play. I re-installed it, telephoned AOL and spoke to several AOL technicians in Mumbai, Calcutta, Canada and Ireland (all of whom had extremely strong accents and I had to keep saying 'pardon?' thus making myself sound like a total idiot), I finally managed to get the router connected and working on my computer downstairs.

Then I had to connect Jack's computer to the 'wireless' system - in total it took me almost 5 hours to get it working. I have every 'parental setting' known to mankind set up on that machine. I have tested it backwards and forwards, tried searching for every 'dodgy' word combination I can think of and tested that the settings for no sending or receiving of instant message or access to chat rooms actually works. I have set up a programme that reports back to me once a week to tell me what my ds has been looking at and what sites he has been visiting. My legs and back (as well as parts I won't mention!) were still and ached from sitting on a chair that was far too small for my ample proportions - by the end of it the chair, computer, router et al were almost consiged to the outside world via the upstairs window.

Imagine my dismay when Jack then announced that he wanted to change his bedroom around and move the computer to the other side of the room!!!

As he fell into bed tonight, exhausted from the day's activities, he mumbled 'thank you Mum for the best birthday ever' - the pain and frustration were all worth it


Happy Birthday Jack!!

:o)

3 comments:

Bob said...

Outsourcing! Ack.
Congratulations on having a teenager!
Great designs.

Unknown said...

Congrats on being the mom of a teenager! (I have 3!) and as much as I hear all the griefs of others...I love it and I still get hugs/kisses from my 16yo.

Isn't the world of computers fun?! I have to laugh as you wrote this...sounds like our computer stories...

I sent an entry...not sure if it means that same in the UK as it does here in the USA....I know there are some sayings/names that have a different meaning.

Sophia said...

Great post Tink! Congratulations to your son on becoming a teenager and congratulations to you on working out the wireless router! LOL