A good day
By M on Monday 4 December 2006, 23:19 - Journal - Permalink
Just like Friday, everything has gone according to plan today. The new
careworker, Jenny slipped into the role as effortlessly as Carol, and was
welcomed, just as we'd hoped, as a long-lost friend. She prepared sandwiches
for mum and dad, washed down by tea and fruit juices. I slipped away before she
did.
Later in the evening I returned to the house and found mum and dad happily watching TV. They both seemed in very good spirits. This echoes Rachel's observation, made earlier in the day, that mum seemed quite happy having spent the day at home while dad was away at day care.
The visit to day care seemed to go OK for dad. There was no outing, and the format was slightly different to what he has grown accustomed to on Wednesdays. I am sure he'll settle in just as well.
I also managed to solve a couple of computer problems; one for dad, one for myself. The problem dad had is indicative of his waning skills and comprehension. His diagnosis of the problem, given to me over the phone, was that he 'couldn't do a thing' with the computer. It sounded to me as if it had locked up or crashed into some non-Windows state. No. What he showed me was that one of the fields in his Calendar program was full of the character C, like this:
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
He couldn't understand what was wrong. Furthermore, he couldn't understand that the solution to the problem was to click on the field and hold down the DEL key. He no longer remembers the DEL key!
My problem was that I could not get all the machines I visit during my rounds (home, office, friend's offices, Greg's place) to access the WebCam in dad's room. The solution to this has been to set up the server to work with Java clients rather than Javascript clients. Now all machines appear to work properly.
That's all for today.
Later in the evening I returned to the house and found mum and dad happily watching TV. They both seemed in very good spirits. This echoes Rachel's observation, made earlier in the day, that mum seemed quite happy having spent the day at home while dad was away at day care.
The visit to day care seemed to go OK for dad. There was no outing, and the format was slightly different to what he has grown accustomed to on Wednesdays. I am sure he'll settle in just as well.
I also managed to solve a couple of computer problems; one for dad, one for myself. The problem dad had is indicative of his waning skills and comprehension. His diagnosis of the problem, given to me over the phone, was that he 'couldn't do a thing' with the computer. It sounded to me as if it had locked up or crashed into some non-Windows state. No. What he showed me was that one of the fields in his Calendar program was full of the character C, like this:
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
He couldn't understand what was wrong. Furthermore, he couldn't understand that the solution to the problem was to click on the field and hold down the DEL key. He no longer remembers the DEL key!
My problem was that I could not get all the machines I visit during my rounds (home, office, friend's offices, Greg's place) to access the WebCam in dad's room. The solution to this has been to set up the server to work with Java clients rather than Javascript clients. Now all machines appear to work properly.
That's all for today.
Comments
My mother killed two computers before I finally discontinued her computer use. Even playing Solitare had become so fraught with confusion that I suspect she heaved a sigh of relief.
Interestingly, she continues to play Solitaire with multiple decks of cards on her TV table stand. She also regularly peers over my shoulder to see what I'm doing on the computer, or I bring the lap top over to her if there's something I think she'd be interested in seeing. I long ago, though, stopped encouraging her to touch keys in order to trigger an action while I'm supervising. Her reaction was rather like the reaction to the "miscellaneous file" about which you wrote. Even if "something happened" she was so focused on the puzzle of the keys that she didn't notice the changes on the screen.