A few weeks ago I was sent to fix a computer that the lady was having trouble "turning it on". She of course was gone but her husband was there. I couldn't find anything wrong...everything including the Internet was working.
While I was there I noticed a bunch of Issac Asimov books on the shelf. Even me not being an avid reader have read many of his books.He was a great SCI-Fi author. It turns out that the husband had read them all. He is a retired electrical engineer who used to design cockpits for the airline industry. Unfortunately, he's now suffering from Alzheimers,
A few years ago, I had purchaced a 7-cdrom Issac Azimov software program about astronomy that I never used. So I offered it to him. Well he's not much of a computer user so he didn't know if he'd want it or not. I told hom I'd stop by and drop it off for him one of these days.
Last friday, the wife called me stating that she still was having problems "turning on the computer" and asked me to come over and look at it...she's 80. I thought this would be a good excuse to bring over the software for her husband. She was also stating that pictures on the screen would go black and white and then miraculously turn to full color again.
Wednesday evening I stopped by.
It turns out that her interpretation of "can't turn on the computer" is that she couldn't get into her emails because the DSL Internet was down. Apparently she had told Dell support the same thing as they sent me out with enough parts to rebuild the system when I was there the first time. Her color problem I found out was "after the computer had been sitting a while". I told her it was probably the screensaver or one of the effects that Vista has.
After getting her Internet working and straightening her out on what "I can't turn my computer on" means to the rest of the world, she asked me If I could come by some time and see what's going on with her husbands old computer.and they would pay me for my time.
No time like the present right?
I was a little suprised to find a DOS machine when I sat down at it. The husband had forgot how to get into his medical record and financial programs that he had been working on for 20 years.
I poked around awhile and discovered a menu program. A little more poking yielded a bunch of files written in Basic. Of course what I was seeing wasn't looking familiar to him so I was confused as he was. And my limited knowledge of Basic didn't help either but I did know how to load his files which was probably the biggest help.
It turns out that he had written a few programs in Basic that automated a lot of his record keeping. They would print out blank forms for him to keep manual ongoing data about his meds and Diabetic readings. Then he could go back in and input the data and produce the final copy for printing.
From what I understand is that when they got the new system they had moved his system and he has had problems ever since. The computer was in a different place, Not sure what that had to do with his memory problem but that didn't really matter.
Anyway, by the time I left he was sitting at the computer checking his records in the computer against what he had already printed and could turn on the computer and get back into his stuff. I don't know what they will do when the computer goes down. GWBasic won't easily run on Vista I assume and the system has been rebuilt 3 times already. the main thing is that he was happy again.
They offered to pay me for my time which I refused. It's not always about the money...but next time I will charge them when they need help. They were lucky that I still posess my DOS skills...few do these days.