Kids and keyboards

[KBCraig]

So. Secure OS aside, it seems that a rambunctious four year old can take down a perfectly good computer, by randomly pounding the keyboard.

Wednesday night, I came home from work at midnight, only to find a plethora of open browser windows, open Finder windows, and Lots O'Stuff that I haven't seen for years all splayed out on my desktop, rather like a frog in 9th Grade Biology class.

I set about closing all the windows and folders (which took some time; thankfully, he wasn't building backpack nukes while no one was paying attention!)

Quick summary: Firefox was broken. It insisted that it was a brand-new installation, and any history or bookmarks I thought I had were gone. Thankfully, I had exported those to my own domain as a web page, so I can still get the-ah from he-ah. No problem; I can rebuild all of those.

And then tonight, I went to do my regular perusal of the USENET groups to which I subscribe. Clicked on my Thoth icon, and... whoops. That's gone, too. And since Brian Clark took his ball and stormed off in a snit several years ago, there's little I can do to get back my favorite newsreader.



Anybody want a slightly used four year old?

[Beth221]

ill take him, if you throw in a leash and collar, like animal from the muppets!   

[Brock]

Does he/she/it have any usable skills?   

[KBCraig]

If moving and renaming system-critical folders is a "useful skill", then he has sKillZ in spades.

[Brock]

If moving and renaming system-critical folders is a "useful skill", then he has sKillZ in spades.

Now that's funny stuff!

[Raineyrocks]

 How about vhs and dvd players?  Little ones love to break these too.
When one of my daughters was a toddler she use to stick her toys and some of my "lost" items  in the vhs player.
My grandson used to put pennies in our brand new dvd player until it broke and my husband was so mad until I said, "maybe he's trying to pay for the movies he watches."
   

[AlexLibman]

Set up a screen saver for low idle time w/ password protection.

Slightly used four-year-olds used to be worth more before India started exporting them...

[Beth221]

how do you describe "slightly used?"  was is dropped on its head a few times??  a few dents and dings??  does it some with any upgrades like a college fund of some sort?

[CNHT]

Kevin he did not actually trash the APP did he? You can always get it back on the dock can't you?

ftp://anonymous:Thoth%40@ftp.sri.ucl.ac.be/pub/News/Thoth/thoth-183-x.dmg

[Rosie the Riveter]

Your four year old should meet my girls -- Moe, Larry & Curly but when they're together we'd better be sure anything that could be used as tool or other such contraband is under lockdown --

It might look like this

         

[KBCraig]

Kevin he did not actually trash the APP did he?

No, what got trashed were my Libraries, which took all my cookies, histories, passwords, shareware registrations, etc., etc. I still have the Thoth application, and I still have my registration code, but it's not working. And since the author has huffed off in a snit and dropped all support, I don't have a way to make it work.

Kevin

[CNHT]

Holy cow, trashed your libraries? :-(
How did he know how to do that?

[Spencer]

It sounds like you could use PawSense:

When cats walk or climb on your keyboard, they can enter random commands and data, damage your files, and even crash your computer. This can happen whether you are near the computer or have suddenly been called away from it.

PawSense is a software utility that helps protect your computer from cats. It quickly detects and blocks cat typing, and also helps train your cat to stay off the computer keyboard.

[KBCraig]

Holy cow, trashed your libraries? :-(
How did he know how to do that?

He didn't know, of course. He was just playfully pounding away on the keyboard. It's a Logitech with scripts enabled, so he opened multiple Finder windows, and unintentionally renamed some folders.

When I spent 15 minutes closing all those open windows, I didn't notice what had been done. By the time I figured it out, I'd already trashed the renamed folders. So, he didn't trash them... I did. But there were so many gobbledygook folder names, I don't know that I could have ever figured out what was what.

Yes, yes, yes.... If was doing nightly backups via chron job, I'd have a simple fix. Don't preach! 

This is a 1996 B&W G3/350, upgraded to a G4/733. I'm kind of limping along until my Valentines/Anniversary/Birthday/Father's Day present arrives: a loaded Mini, as soon as possible after 10.5 ships.

Edit: and when I get the new machine, this one will become the network backup machine.

[KBCraig]

It sounds like you could use PawSense:

Not really. He's never messed with my computer before, and I'm fairly certain he won't do it again.

If he proves me wrong, changing my energy saver/screensaver to require my password is only three mouse clicks away.