Keeping Up With Tricknology

Last weekend we went to dinner at my parents' house to catch up with old family friends. It seems like computers come up in most conversations that Rob has these days, which makes sense since he is studying computer programing. While not a surprise, what I discovered at this dinner engagement was that my computer knowledge really is not that limited; well, at least compared to retired America.

While Rob talked about the wonders of computer technology, various questions came up like:

What do you do with encyclopedias now that we have Wikipedia and what about the lose of all of those high-paying encyclopedia sales jobs? or How does Google employ enough people to enter all of that information needed for search results?and How do you do a Google search anyhow?

The night of learning didn't stop with the functions of the internet. Rob happened to notice that he could access the internet network without a password, so security became the next topic.

It looked like my parents had been working on an insecure network. And, to top it off, it turns out that my Dad has (now had) all of his passwords in a folder on his desktop named "Passwords". Luckily Rob came to the rescue. He secured their network with a password of "Robert D****". Problem solved, or so we thought.

It turns out that the insecure line was actually a neighbor's that he had tapped into. Who's? We didn't know. My parents have an ongoing feud with one grouchy neighbor, so we hoped it wasn't him. I envisioned Rob going door to door introducing himself, saying "Hello. I'm your new password, Robert D****." Dad just said that Rob shouldn't mention where he had eaten dinner that night.

After about a half hour of frustration, Rob was able to get back into their network and switch it to insecure once again. Let's hope they don't have a "Passwords" folder, too.