22 Nov

it might be time to mention the kids in Africa

Talk about your first-world problems…

Scene: Saturday afternoon. We are in the car driving around doing family things and talking about not much when a little voice from the back pipes up.

BIANCA
Me go Oma’s house.

This has been a regular request the last week or so. I’m touched that (a) she calls mum Oma and not “that mad bat” like she did that one time, and (b) that she obviously loves to go to visit.

 NICKY
This is the road we go on when we go to Oma’s house but we’re not going today. We’ll go soon.

BIANCA
Me go Oma’s house NOW.

DAVE
You like Oma’s house don’t you? What would you do there?

BIANCA
Play with the baby TV.

(Bianca calls all tablets “baby TVs”. We got my mum an iPad last year for Christmas. It has some games on it that we can’t get on our Android one.)

DAVE
So the only reason you want to go to Oma’s house is to play with the Baby TV?

BIANCA
Yes!

NICKY
Does that mean if I get an iPad I don’t have to go to my mother’s anymore?

DAVE
I’ll pay for that!

General guffawing ensues about this idea.

DAVE
… really, you can have an iPad if you like.

NICKY
No, it’s all right.

DAVE
Let me get this straight. I’m offering to buy you an iPad and you don’t want it?

NICKY
But I don’t NEED an iPad.

 BIANCA
ME need iPad!

 In other news, my mum is coming to Melbourne for a check up on her bionic ear on Monday and she voluntarily suggested she come and stay with us for the rest of the week. I’m looking forward to it so much that I’m taking time off work and even getting B out of childcare. No doubt Bianca will be thrilled to see her — as long as she brings that baby TV.

19 Nov

Naked on the internet, or, where I’ve been the last few weeks.

How paranoid careful are you about your internet security?

I hadn’t used my laptop for a while because I mostly use it on the train and for one reason or another I hadn’t been taking it along. I finally cranked it open a few weeks ago at home and it wouldn’t connect to our home network. Or rather, it said it was connected, but there was no internet access. (Oh, and no access to anything else either, so not sure what that ‘connected’ status was about.)

I asked Dave what the password was but I had it right already. I grumbled about this for a few days (I only remembered I had the problem when I was trying to use it, and I only tried to use it when Dave wasn’t around) then I had a bright idea. I’d use my mini wi-fi thingy I had for the train! I’m a genius! Except that didn’t work either. So the problem was with my computer, not the network. I faffed about with all the firewall settings I could find and when nothing worked took the laptop to Dave like a Labrador with its favorite deflated ball.

“It’s the firewall,” he said in his best Aww, it’s so cute how you’re not technical way, and tried all the same things I did. When that didn’t work he decided the wireless card was dead. This made me sad. But! Then I thought of actually plugging it into the network port in the study, you know the one we made our poor friend Phil crawl all the way under the house to install. So I did. And you know what?

Nothing.

At this point I was so frustrated I uninstalled my McAfee virusthingy. I figured it couldn’t get much worse. And the internet worked! An automatic update must have put it into lockdown mode, though I still don’t know what the heck it was that changed. So now it’s working but I feel all nervous like I’m sitting here with my arse hanging out in public because I’m all bare and unprotected. In the olden days I would have been fine leaving it like this because hey, I don’t visit porn sites and I don’t open email attachments but now, who knows what shenanigans my browser’s doing in the background? Maybe those guys who keep calling from India to try to convince me they work for my ISP and need my password have got on already. Maybe they’re watching me right now.

Dave’s going to install Microsoft’s free security thingy tonight, but I’m still left with questions. Like, what the heck got changed? And, is the built in webcam on my laptop showing off my butt to its best advantage? Do I just abandon my expensive McAfee subscription? I feel more protected with it but it’s probably all for show. Is this proof that I am now a complete PC luddite and need to do some learnin’? Or should I cave in and buy a mac? (PS. I’m not going to buy a mac.)