There's a special circle of hell for people who make slideshow videos of still photographs...

#FamilyTechSupport

Who moved the ‘print’ button in Apple Pages to be under the document name? In every other app it’s in the share sheet. You know who likes to print stuff, old people, and who doesn’t like change, old people.
#FamilyTechSupport

Just put another print button in the share sheet.

* phone rings *

Hey Dad, sorry I didn't answer this morning, I've been in bed with Covid

Oh, sorry to hear it, son! Well now that I've got you, I'm having a problem with the wifi...

#itlife #familytechsupport

It's the season of "On earth peace, good will toward men", according to Luke.

It's also the season of "Can you help me with $technicalthing on my $deviceIknowlittleabout?"

Related: I can't get my head around Apples iOS. It feels so clumsy compared to what I'm used to!

#familytechsupport #apple #ios #frustration

Today's friendly tip is #Windows centric, but something I got asked a lot by family members over the holiday period.
If you run into the dreaded "low risk space" warning, or just want to ensure your PC is optimal, Storage Sense is there to help.

Learn how to set it up correctly on your (or a family members) PC in this short guide video.
https://youtu.be/ij-JGEuwK6Q

Please #boost if you like and a sub to the channel would be legendary.

#Windows11 #FamilyTechSupport

Today's friendly tip is #Windows centric, but something I got asked a lot by family members over the holiday period.
If you run into the dreaded "low risk space" warning, or just want to ensure your PC is optimal, Storage Sense is there to help.

Learn how to set it up correctly on your (or a family members) PC in this short guide video.
https://youtu.be/ij-JGEuwK6

Please #boost if you like and a sub to the channel would be legendary.

#Windows11 #FamilyTechSupport

@bibliotecaria I feel your pain! My current challenge is dealing with the space-eating outcome of years of forwarded videos (as in actual video files, not links) in WhatsApp. Our elders do love to send a video! 😂😭 #FamilyTechSupport

Tech friends, is there something like an “Awesome Email Filter” compilation? Trying to avoid having to become an email admin this Christmas but family are getting hit hard by the gift card scams

#cybersecurity #spam #sysadmin #FamilyTechSupport

A lot of us in IT and Infosec are going to have friends and family getting gifts of Windows Home devices this holiday. There are a lot of Windows Home devices with small local storage drives and an SD card slot for expansion. The problem is that SD card is usually ripe for losing because it's exposed, and the card is not encrypted.

Windows 10/11 Home, with the right hardware, (IIRC, Windows Home + non-removable memory + TPM?) support "Windows Device Encryption" of the primary drive, but not most Bitlocker features like creating Bitlocker To Go volumes.

Home _does_ support reading and writing to Bitlocker To Go removable drives. It just can't create them.

You can help out your family and friends by using your Windows Pro, Enterprise, or Education machine to create a Bitlocker To Go volume with a strong passphrase, then giving them the SD card to live in their new Windows Home device as extra storage. Windows Home will offer to cache the passphrase, never asking for it again. The drive encryption then becomes invisible, but if the SD card falls out, their data is protected.

Even better if this passphrase handoff is an excuse to introduce a password manager into their life.

#holiday #techsupport #familytechsupport #bitlocker #windows #infosec #IT

Started this shortly after the US’ World Cup loss (😭). Realized I was gonna need another quart so headed to de pot. On the way I swung by my parents’ and walked my dad through creating a Google Home Routine so their exterior lights and Christmas lights can be coordinated and actually automated (emphasis on the auto). That was something I had been wanting to show him for a while and sounds like he’s really excited about it.

The main reason I went over is his older Win10 PC was stuck in a boot loop after some Windows update (and maybe his tinkering he admits). I recognized it was having trouble with the boot chain (MBR, shh), and he had even gone through some of the same steps. But he got cautious once it started talking about MBRs. He was really close, but because he has a bunch of drives on that PC (with some old Windows boot drives, ca. 2004) the regular fixups weren’t working.

I let bootrec splat down boot files and boot loader data for “ALL” boot arch’s and rebooted and prayed. We hit a BSOD which gave me mbamelam.sys as the culprit. That’s Malwarebytes antimalware early launch antimalware driver, or whatever. Windows has a helpful safe boot option to disable early launch antimalware protection so we did that, and got it to boot on through. Uninstalled MBAM until later, and he’s up and running. I was worried I was going to have to leave him hanging but so glad that’s resolved.

Now back to painting! 👍

#familytechsupport

My mother doesn't have a cell phone, tablet, or a computer, so in the evenings, she calls me on her landline and I read her the internet over the phone.

She likes me to describe funny animal videos, look up recipes, find ancestors' graves and tell her the condition of the headstones, and sometimes have text conversations for her with a friend who lives in another town, to save on long distance rates.

#connectingCommunication #FamilyTechSupport #storyteller #LoveMyTribe #landlinephone #moms

Updated a couple of old macs (2009 iMac, 2012 mini) this weekend using OpenCore. Works really well, and didn't have to even reformat the old OS that was on them. Might be something to consider when you're visiting family who are still running older machines Apple has stopped supporting. The update process is largely automatic, but it took about an hour for each machine to complete (both had SSDs) https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

#apple #legacy #opencore #familytechsupport

@p0lr My MIL never asks me to come over. So when she does, I know I will spend the next two hours getting viruses and bloatware off her Mac.

Every. Time.

#FamilyTechSupport