Saturday, 9 March 2013

My Dad learning how to BCC

We all have parents and the older we are, the older our parents are most likely to be. Take me, for example. I was in second year university when Google first launched. Whilst this makes me a dinosaur in comparison to my two year old daughter who wields the iPad like a second limb, it does mean that my parents grew up in an age where things weren't really connected and user interfaces had actual levers and big, shiny buttons.

I say all this as a justification for the following post. Throughout my childhood I've watched my father struggle with technology much like a mountain gorilla would struggle trying to work out how to change from the Central Line to the Northern Line at the Bank underground station. I don't blame him for this but it does provide amusing whimsy when he grapples with the next evolution in technology.

Below are a series of emails he sent to me and my sister, trying to work out how to send an email using the BCC field. His intention is to send funny emails - or 'funnies' - to a select group of recipients, but not have any members of the group know who they are - hence the need to add them in the BCC field. I'm not quite sure why, perhaps there are members who hate each other and if they discovered they were both receiving the same spam from the same person, it would be the last straw and they would have a duel to the death.

I think it demonstrates great perseverance in the face of stuff which just doesn't and will never make much sense.

Attempt 1 : My dad tries to BCC us