Advanced 6th Graders

Nearly every day Reagan or Abbie asks if they can get on the computer. Generally, they spend their time browsing the Barbie website and imaging new outfits, hairdos, love notes, or whatever else Barbie enjoys, but sometimes they want to make something all their own. Reagan does this more than Abbie, and Reagan loves to make things in PowerPoint. Now I'm a pretty computer savvy guy, and I can tell you that I am impressed when I see some of the things Reagan "makes up" on the computer. She'll have moving images timed to music dancing around the screen telling us how much she loves something. It's all girly, but it's also impressive.

Now keeping that in mind, imagine my frustration when a grown man can't figure out how to type a simple message in a blog comment. How hard could this really be? And no, I'm not talking about Jeffrey.

After reading yesterday's toothpaste entry, Dad wanted to post a comment. He went right in and typed everything up, hit publish, and was told that my blog doesn't allow anonymous comments. Of course he got me on AIM immediately to see what was the deal, and I explained that he needed a login.

He went through the process and got his login setup, and after checking on whether or not this was like a "CB" he chose "Mike" as his display name. After I racked my memory and recalled that CB's were the cell phones of the 70s, I suggested that he make his display name "double nickels" (that's CB lingo for "55mph" if you're in Megan's cousins age group) and it could double as his age in a couple of years. He didn't think that was nearly as funny as most of you do right now. :)

On with the story, though. So he gets his username setup and goes back to my blog where he retypes his comment. Then he tells me to go read it. Remember that I'm at work during all of this, so I didn't go out there immediately, I just figured I'd read it when the system emailed it to me, and shortly after I got an email notification of a comment. It was Melissa, though, not Dad. I started thinking something was amiss, so I actually went out to my blog to check. There was no comment there from Dad either, but he had asked me to read about five minutes earlier.

I got back on AIM and told him that I couldn't see a post from him. Was he sure that he had posted one? He wrote back...."do I have to push the publish button for you to see it?" Now didn't he already do that once back at the beginning of this story? Regardless, he finally got his comment posted, but the story doesn't end there. And I'm not even going into the "<lol>" issue, but I'm sure Dad's wondering how I got that to print.

Anyway, since he now had a login, he decided that he wanted to go ahead and have his own blog. He went through the whole process, and then contacted me on AIM again. "How do I put a link to your page on my blog?"

I asked if he had any sample links on his page and he started talking some crazy stuff about link colors. I said, "Just go to your blog site and tell me if you have a sample link to Google." Same crazy talk in response.

"Okay, let's do this a different way. Go to your dashboard."

"My dashboard? Don't I need to be at my computer to do this? I can't do it from the car."

"Yes, you need to be at your computer. Go to your blog dashboard." It took a bit, but he finally found it. I told him next to click on settings (the gear icon) and then to go to the template tab. He missed the part about the template tab and clicked settings and then the settings tab. We went round and round for several minutes about there not being any HTML code on the page when I finally told him to just call me on the phone.

We got this figured out, and he made it to the template tab. Now I just had to help him find his sample links that may or may not exist since we still hadn't see his actual blog. We found them. He complained about how "normal" people couldn't do this correctly. I quietly agreed that it took at least an Advanced 6th Grader.

He added our links, we published the blog, he got an error. What had gone wrong?? Something had been deleted during his changing of the sample links. How hard can it be to cut and paste? Apparently, it can be pretty difficult.

Finally, we got the links piece taken care of, and it was time for me to head home. We'd been at this for nearly an hour. On my way home, I called Caci to see how things were going. She asked me to hang on for a sec while finished talking with Dad. When she got back on the line she told me that she had just been trying (with little success) to help him fill out his profile information for his blog. Perhaps she'll post the details of that event for us all to enjoy.

Last thing: Before you even post a comment, Dad, I know that I may not have recalled some of the details exactly right, but as you always say, "My version is better."