the vynsane asylum

...trying to talk your computer-illiterate father through cleaning out some malware from his computer, over the phone.

"No, dad. Go to this site. Don't search for it, type it in the address bar at the top. Why are you getting search results instead of the site again? Are you sure you're not typing it into a search bar? There's not a 'Y' or a 'G' besides it, is there? Oh, there's a Yahoo! logo? Okay, don't type it into that one. What do you mean that's the only bar? Okay, hit Ctrl-L...."

Every time I'm up there, I have to clean the computer, because I CANNOT convince them not to click on every damned thing that pops up. "No, if you get a pop-up window that says your computer is compromised, don't click it."

My mom is pretty similar - she doesn't click on everything, but half the time she doesn't get the difference between search and the address bar.

Her big problem is she doesn't know how to explain anything she is trying to do and uses the word "thing" to describe everything, as in "How do I get file X on the thing?"

If she calls for something simple, I end up trying to walk her through it for at least a half hour.