Jessamyn

A quick drop-in time recap from yesterday.

Ruth is my backyard neighbor who actually grew up in my house. She texted me saying she needed to learn "Word and Excel." while I don't teach classes, I don't mind if people come by and work on projects and ask me questions as they go. She didn't say who she was when she texted so I thought it was ANOTHER backyard neighbor and it was funny to figure it out. Doing a bit of "And how did you get my number?" questioning, people need to quit giving it out.

Sep 19, 2025 at 5:56pmWeb
Show threadJessamynSep 19, 2025
Dave wants to get "Gemini out of everything" and while I sympathized with this, I told him it was only sort of possible. Turns out his Gmail was trying to be "helpful" and showing him the reader view of some of his emails which he was not understanding and did not like. We installed an ad blocker (harder in Safari than it should be), turned off that "feature" and I think he is good.
Show threadJessamynSep 19, 2025
Ginna and Dana are an older couple. She is a bit of a ditz (self-proclaimed) and he is a pragmatic activist. I enjoy their company a lot. She has missing email that I think was missing the last time I talked to her which was a few years ago. Uses Mac Mail to import her Gmail, has a lot of empty folders in both places. I had tried then to talk to her about recovering it via Time Machine (hopefully) but she hadn't done that and was back with the same question so I gave her the same answer.
Show threadJessamynSep 19, 2025

Dana has duplicate photos everywhere and uses iCloud and Google Photos and wants to only pay for storage in one of them. It's no small thing to untangle, which service is sharing images to which other one.

I was fairly certain I knew what was going where, so Dana started deleting some "bear in my yard" videos (we all have them) from Google and then looking to see if they were still on his iPad (they were). Phew.

Show threadJessamynSep 19, 2025
I ended the day talking to Caitlin from the VT Council on Aging about resources available for older folks who need help with technology. They had a person in a job doing that, and they were really worried about future funding and wanted to see if partnerships could help fill gaps. I felt they might be able to and rattled off some good orgs to know about. Felt useful and like "Oh right, I've been in this scene for a LONG time now..."
Show threadJessamynSep 19, 2025

Final thing, my friend Taran from high school now works in a tech co-op in the Bay Area and has been branching out and doing some tech help at SFPL recently.

We've been trading stories and he asked me what was in my gear bag. I thought it was a good opportunity to ask myself "yeah what IS in there?" Enjoy. Descriptions in alt text. EOM.

Show threadscullySep 19, 2025
@jessamyn love that the bag is mesh. Mine is not. I have one of those key USBs too :) I think it has a bootable macOS on it (High Sierra?)
Show threadbruce obergSep 19, 2025
@jessamyn both lexar and sandisk sell dual flash drives now… usb-a on one end and usb-c on the other. really great for bridging between disparate systems.
Show threadJessamynSep 19, 2025
@bruceoberg That sounds useful. I basically have one USB-A machine, one USB-C machine and one that still has a lightning charger.
Show threadCainmark Does Not Comply 🚲Sep 19, 2025

@jessamyn

The paperclips are how I know you've had real world experience.

Show threadtaranSep 23, 2025
@jessamyn Here's mine!
Show threadHTTP 1.1/418 TeapotSep 19, 2025
@jessamyn I am the Speaker To Tech for some elderly relatives and holy shit I have no idea how people expect tech-challenged folks to navigate through the world without having someone like me on tap.