Category: family

A new project and a rant.

So over the past year I have been trying to bridge the gap between my family and technology. I can hardly get my family to do a thing in regards to technology. Send them an e-mail I never get a response. They seem to want to use technology but don’t want to put the effort into learning how to use it. The other day I got a call from my mother saying “I lost everything on your stepdad’s user on Windows Vista! HELP!” I don’t know anything about Windows Vista. It’s the operating system I totally skipped over. I could probably do some navigating and figure it out. She hadn’t backed anything up but luckily a reboot solved her problem.

This prompted me to write up a long detailed e-mail on good backup tips and some free tools and general good advice about saving data. I didn’t get a thank you. I didn’t get one response.

E-Mail is my thing. I love e-mail I find it 100x easier to solve problems with an e-mail then a phone call. I am always on e-mail. You send me an e-mail it gets forwarded to my Mobile Me account which instantly puts it on my iPhone and boom I know you sent something and i will get back to you ASAP. To make things easier for my family I setup a Google Group so that you can just send an e-mail to 1 address and everyone gets it. But people seem afraid to use it.

Here are the current stats on the group.

185 Tristan
118 Mom
49 Aunt
31 Grandpa
31 Uncle
27 Cousin
20 Family Friend
20 Alex
15 Family Friend Old Account
14 Grandma

This has been up for over 2 years and doesn’t seem like it’s getting that much use. Getting people involved in the discussion on things like planning birthday’s is near impossible. My girlfriend her family seems to have e-mail and planning family events in the digital realm down. I don’t get why it’s so hard to reply to an e-mail or click a link and fill out a form.

I finally got my grandma hooked up with a Jitterbug cell phone. That is the oddest phone I have ever seen. Only cell phone I had ever used that has a dialtone when you flip it open. And that everything on the phone is either “Yes” or “No” Do you want to call Tristan?

My family has a ton of videotape so I got the means necessary to work on converting them to the digital format.  My desk is kinda loaded at the moment. Two Apple laptops got some VCR’s going here and just piles of technology at the beck and call to get all this done. Here is an picture of my desk at the moment.

Sent out an e-mail for that no response not a person in the world seems to care. I tested out the technology with my High School Senior Slideshow. I wasn’t in it but it was the only video tape I had around the house.

You can view that at the following link North Kitsap High School Graduating Class of 2001 But I would be careful. It’s 46 minutes of a slideshow of people you probably have no clue about. It was really just a visual test to see how well it worked. I also changed the audio to be a bit better quality.

But I hope to get on this project there are tons of funny. (Well I would find funny) videos that we recorded over our childhood years. That I would like to convert to a digital format. I don’t think I would want to convert them to DVD. Since would be easier to grab a video file and make a DVD if you so choose.

But anyways I guess I just wanted to rant that my family doesn’t use technology in a way that seems to be the most productive. Or seem to care about any of the efforts that I put forth into helping them. But what do I know. It’s late I am going to bed thanks for reading.

It’s March!

Holy Crap. January is gone. February is gone.  March is here. Last weekend was pretty fun. Friday night went and got some Sushi and it was freaking delicious. Went up to Lynnwood and grabbed some Blue C. Sushi.

After that went and checked out Slumdog Millionare. Which is a freaking great movie. I enjoyed it so much when the credits started rolling I brought out the Amazon app for my iPhone and ordered it on Blu Ray. Then the girlfriend said “You are such a nerd”. At that point I couldn’t disagree so after that we went home. When I got home I decided that I must have the soundtrack for this film. So I bought the soundtrack on iTunes and then burned it on a CD. I wanted to make a couple copies of the CD for my sister and a backup to keep in my spindle. But for some reason I was having difficulty making the CD into an ISO. WinISO, Nero, Toast Titanium just couldn’t seem to do it. So I gave up on the project and just performed this task via CD swapping. While this was happening I was playing some Team Fortress Classic and noticed it was 3am so I went to bed.

Wakeup at 8am because Saturday we went off to Kitsap County to celebrate my mom’s birthday. Recently my mom quit playing World of Warcraft. It’s been rather interesting to say the least. She has been playing online games since 2001 I would say. She got me Ultima Online for Christmas of 2000. I played it for a month and then asked if she wanted to play. Well that set it off so that my mom and my stepdad played games nonstop. Then one day my step dad decided to stop playing my mom didn’t. So now that she doesn’t have that outlet it seems like she has been trying to find a new one. Which can be daunting after 8 years of playing online games. I played Ultima Online for one month. Finished that and then in 2004 I was in the Beta for World of Warcraft which I played from April 2004 until May 2005. Then I played again in May of 2006. Since then I haven’t really been addicted to any other games. You can find me here and there on the XBOX 360 playing a game for an hour when I have nothing else to do. But I always get a tad freaked out playing video games I don’t want to find myself addicted again.

So got on the ferry and stopped by the Casino’s Resort in Suquamish. Stopped by the Spa and picked up a Gift Card for a 75 minute massage for my mom. Since trying to find out what my mom wants for a Christmas or Birthday present is probably one of the most difficult things alive. I usually find myself being met with.

  • “Oh I don’t know, You know me. Figure it out”

  • “Well you can’t really get me what I want. So perhaps a gift card”

If life was perfect everyone would have an Amazon wishlist and life would be grand.  So after that we swung by Central Market and had a mini lunch since Raleigh and I were starving. Then she wanted to go to Wal-Mart to pickup some items for various reasons. Then we went and hung out with my sister a bit.

Then went to Puerto Vallarta for lunch. It was all well and good. I had a large margarita and got a bit tipsy and made for an overall good lunch. I sometimes get the feeling my family doesn’t really get Raleigh. Or maybe they worry that she kidnapped me to Seattle. Who knows really. Only person who makes an effort to come see us is my sister Rachel. Rest of my family is kinda like “meh Seattle is far away”.  I am tending to see Raleigh’s point we make all the effort to go see them on Birthday’s and other occasions why doesn’t anyone come to our place to hang out.

So we make it a bit of an early day and head home. So that brings us to Sunday. Sunday was a bit of a chill about day and then we went to a Game Night with Raleigh’s family. This is always a bit interesting since they are a rather extraverted group. When I can be but generally I prefer to sit and observe. Sometimes I relate it to TV watching like when watching the Discovery channel and showing something I have never seen before. But every family has their odd behavior. They are into different things then I am. Doesn’ t make it bad or good just different.

Played some games had some food overall great experience. Went home and watched some Big Love. Was sad to see only 3 episodes left. I watched Flight of the Conchords and then passed out.

Monday comes around and another work week begins. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. I know most of my posts turn into 1000 word essays and I thank you for the screen time. Hopefully you will be glad that this post is just around 900 words.