Keep a Kid Occupied

A mom came in with her 6 year old boy today. As you can imagine, a computer center is probably one of the most boring place on Earth for someone his age. He started running around in circles - I would too if I was in his place. So I had to come up with something fast to keep him occupied.

Luckily, on the other side of our whiteboard is a pad of paper with a ziplock bag full of water based markers. I got him to sit down and draw. He would get bored every now & then, and I'd go over to his drawing and ask him to fill in the blank spots. Eventually, I had to bring up a Matisse on the screen to show him how drawings can be filled in.

Next time, I'd use someone other than Matisse as an example - too many nudes or near nudes to filter around.

Setting up Skype for guests

Helped an older guest set up Skype so that he & his wife can communicate with friends & relatives back in the Philippines.

Ironically, I set up my own Skype only a day earlier.

Trackpad vs. Joy Stick vs. Mouse

An older guest came by with his laptop asking David & I to help him with learning Microsoft Word. After much fiddling around on my part, it turned out that he already knew how to use MSWord. He just wanted to learn how to indent & outdent the first sentence in every paragraph.

What's the lesson here? What folks say is not necessary what they want. And they know more than they (or I) think.

Oh, almost forgot. The whole point of this post was Trackpad vs. Joy Stick vs. Mouse. Turns out that for this guest, the Trackpad was very difficult for him to use; he didn't have the flexibility in his fingers nor the fine muscle control.

He liked the little blue sponge "Joy Stick" in the middle of his laptop because it's not as sensitive as the Trackpad. Overall, though, the mouse worked the best for him - it allows him to use the big muscles in his arm rather than the small ones in his hand and fingers.