Yeah but can you download a whiff of my cooking over this "Internet"?

(tags Windows, family, learning, training, remote-control, VoIP)

So I'm a bad son, not sharing this amazing thing called the Internet with my parents.

Recently I was getting my mom up to speed on her new PC, remotely. I was amazed at the state of technology today. I had that "when I was your age" moment, even though I wasn't sermonizing to any young whippersnappers. It was only a little while ago that I had to put in my own RAM chips in my Apple IIGS 1MB RAM expansion card, ahahha.

But anyway, after a long involved process of "Double Click the Installer; No! Your other left mouse button", we put Skype (Voice over IP) and Hamachi (Virtual Private Networking) together with either VNC (Virtual Network Computing) or Windows RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol). It wasn't straight-forward, but my mom doesn't quit, so it was gratifying to finally see her mousing around on her laptop with only the Pacific Ocean separating us.

Then she says, I gotta buy me this Q-bert from some online place, and fearing for my mom's relatively low experience with the scary Internet, I tried to dissuade her. But she wouldn't have none of that, so I watched her turn from Internet online shopping newbie to instant gratification expert in a minute. Then she said watch me play, and I'm like okay, you changed my diapers and stuff so I guess I got your back, etc. So I'm sitting here half a world a way, listening to my mom lose concentration on our conversation, and watching some impressive god-like Q-bert play via VNC at 10 fps, no audio. All the while, I'm transferring our family pictures to her computer so she can organize them and checking her other computer for updates. Guess I'm late to this party because I was still impressed.

That was about two or three weeks ago. The last time I talked to her, she was already subscribed to ABS-CBN (a Filipino television online video service) and legally downloading television programs like WoWoWee. She also found Napster, well, 6 years too late. I showed her iTunes Radio and also YouTube and Wikipedia. Oh yeah, she complains everyday about stock market numbers. I gotta get her onto Firefox and to stop replying to spam.