The Joy of Technology

I look at this picture from a few years back and think…how cute – my kids will be computer whizzes when they grow up. I didn’t get to “play” with my first computer until 5th Grade – then have our first family computer in Jr. High.

This last week I regretted my previous excitement about my kids knowing how to “use” a computer.

In case you are not aware here is what we are working with here:

Taylor
Age 4
Blonde Hair
Blue Eyes
Super Sensitive Drama Queen that needs to know you are happy with her and cannot stand if you get upset

Jordan
Age 2
Brown Hair
Brown Eyes
Obedient, but defiant. How does that play out you ask? If you ask her to do something (help close a door, turn a light off, throw something away) she will do it happily 95% of the time. That same percentage she will say Please, Thank You, and You’re Welcome. However, turn your back and she will do everything her defiant little mind can think of before you notice.

Taylor learned how to use the computer correctly sooner then Jordan – not only because of her age, but because she has more patience to sit and try. Jordan however, lasts about 2 seconds before she decided to start a click-a-thon on the mouse or writing her own symphony using the computer keyboard.

Taylor has learned how to the computer on and off correctly. Jordan can turn it on (I mean is a big shiny button).

Here is how we think the story goes…

Jordan decided to exercise her skills last week and sat in front of my computer and turned it on while daddy was busy tending to other needs in the house.

After 5 seconds she decided she would rather play conductor and started to bang on the keyboard to listen to the sounds of the beeping (the computer yelling at her to stop) and the banging of her musical fingers on the keys.

What the computer took this to mean was a crafty way to navigate to the System Recovery Screen and start a System Recovery by wiping the hard drive to return it back to factory settings.

What this means to us losing all personal data from about April – to date. I don’t mind losing most files like game data, or website “favorites”, or even the occasional word/excel document. However, losing videos and pictures is a REAL pain – and slightly emotional I might add.

Luckily, Jordan’s drumming fingers also got bored so she turned the computer off part way through the recovery and stopped it. This means she “deleted” my files, but did not write over them.

This also means Mommy and Daddy get to spend several days trying to restore those files. Yay.

On the brighter side…I do like new things and I will kinda be getting a new computer when this is done – as new as 1 year old – returned to factory settings computer can be that is.