Ooh, boy, I offended my stepmonsterinlaw.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Mr. Rilch and I are Back East Visiting the Folks*, which means I have to take my net access where I can get it. Our home base is MIL’s farm, where there’s no net access of any kind, not even wi-fi, which this laptop is equipped for. So right now I’m in a Panera while Mr. Rilch and his dad are at the golf club. I am also in the doghouse.

See, yesterday afternoon and evening was the Memorial Day cookout, after which I asked and was granted permission to use FIL’s wife’s computer. Which I did, and as far as I knew, nothing went wrong. I even told FIL’s wife when I was finished so she could shut it down her way. Well, long story short, when I got up this morning, FIL’s wife was out with her dogs, and according to Mr. Rilch and FIL, unpleased with me.

Of course it’s about the computer, but I’m still not sure what exactly. Mr. Rilch says she said I was “on it too long”. Well, maybe, but I was under the impression that she was genuinely absorbed in the movie she was watching, and that if she’d wanted to use the comp, she would have said so. FIL was more to the point, and said, “You didn’t leave it as you found it; that’s not good guesting…Some of her sites are missing.” :confused: I’m going to have to talk to Stepmonsterinlaw to clarify that one. Not only because I want to, but because I have to, since FIL said “Well, don’t apologize to me; apologize to her!”

:dubious: I’m still unclear on what I could have done, physically, to the computer, but who knows. As for non-physical damage, well, I know my presence was not required in the living room where the movie was being viewed. We’ve been through this before, with Stepmonsterinlaw and her bump-on-a-log routine. Maybe two hours is too long, by her estimation, but it was the length of the movie, and if she wanted to use the computer during that time, she should have spoken up. And I know I didn’t do anything to her settings or bookmarks, nor did I download anything.

:::sigh::: I just feel bad because I feel bad. There’s plenty of bad blood between Mr. Rilch and this woman, so it’s not like I wrecked a good thing. What I regret most is that I may have made things unpleasant between FIL and his wife, and that is why I was motivated to apologize to him – not because I thought it would take care of everything. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I am not a child, and I am not going to be sent to Coventry. When we get back to the house, I will ask her exactly what it was I did wrong, apologize for it, and then that better be the end of it. Even if I did make a mistake, well, adults make mistakes. Other adults forgive and move on.

And if it doesn’t work out that way, well, Mr. Rilch has already assured me that as nasty as this woman has been to him in the past, he won’t hold anything against me. Furthermore, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that nothing went wrong at all, and she’s just spoiling for a fight because she can’t go back on her agreement not to antagonize Mr. Rilch.

We shall see. And I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get back to this thread, but I’ll let you guys know.

*And just for the record, my gainfully employed husband and I paid rent in advance on the apartment we will return to, and are paying our own way to be here. We’re not destitute and homeless any more than we were last time we came east.

2

Does she use Firefox? Sometimes my bookmarks rearrange themselves.

Or maybe she meant that the autofill-when you start to type in an address in the URL bar, and it fills it out automatically-fills something different because of some site you went to.

Weird.

3

Even if you did accidentally delete a bookmark or two (which I doubt you did), I can’t imagine why she would get that upset about it. I’m pretty sure I could find every single one of my bookmarks again (and have done so before) with a little searching. I have bookmarks because they are convenient, not because my life depends on them. That’s just me, though. Doesn’t seem to me like she’s worth worrying yourself over. It also doesn’t seem like you owe anyone an apology, though if that’s the only way to smooth things over I guess you’ll probably have to, even though that will likely be her way of validating that you did mess something up. Kind of a no-win situation, isn’t it?

4

I hate it when something like that happens; it’s happened to me enough that I now try never to borrow anything; you just know that with some people, anything that goes wrong with the returned borrowed item, anytime in the next six months, is going to get blamed on you.

5

You need to define what she means by “bookmarks” and I’ll bet it’s not what you and I are thinking of re “Favorites” bookmarking. If you were traipsing all over the net and she only visits a few select sites it’s quite possible the links in the address bar got pushed down as these rearrange themselves dynamically based on the last sites accessed.

It’s possible these are what she is thinking are her “bookmarks” and ordinary browsing will rearrange these.

In any case it’s simple enough to pop up history and re-create them, but I wouldn’t bet on her doing this or allowing you to do it. The fact that she’s got one up on you in this “done me wrong” nonsense will not be an easily relinquinshed prize.

6

I’m the one who used the term “bookmarks”. FIL’s exact words were “Some of her sites are missing”. It’s probably what you and Guin said.

Anyway, whatever. Not the hill I want to die on. What concerns me is Mr. Rilch’s relationship with his dad. I don’t want FIL to be sitting on a tack because “Your wife messed with my wife!” and I don’t want Mr. Rilch to be in a position where he feels he has to defend me. What’s making me uncomfortable is that I haven’t heard Step’s side on this, yet FIL has found the time to pull the “You’ve been bad…Well, don’t be sorry to ME!” routine on me. My reply to “You didn’t leave it as you found it,” which would have been, “Well, I opened a separate window for my browsing, and I let her shut the computer down her way,” was cut off after “separate” by his “Don’t apologize to me; apologize to her!”

I don’t give a decroded piece of crap what Step thinks of me, but I do care about FIL, and that exchange hurt. Partly because I fear I’ve caused a problem for him, and partly because I never thought he’d go playground-monitor on me like that. As I said already, I will not be treated like a child. I will apologize like an adult, and if I’m never allowed to use Step’s comp again, so be it. It’s not something I was ever entitled to, and as mangetout said, it’s easier that way anyway. But I’m not about to have this hung over my head until somebody dies, and I won’t tolerate being “punished”.

7

Sounds like she’s either amazingly ignorant of how a computer/browsing works or is given to hissy fits over very trivial matters.

Next time I think I’d blow off using her computer and just watch the movie with her instead. You should though quote lines before the actors have a chance to recite them and vocally lament how the movie ends.

Rilchiam dear, you don’t deserve this pickle.

8

Sound to me like a case of this woman being extremely unsavvy when it comes to computers. I see a lot of folks in my job who have something happen with their PC they don’t understand and their reaction is to assume its broken and then get angry.

They will say the anger is directed at the PC, or the workstation, or whoever they thing caused the issue, but usually its actually caused by the fear that they have broken a really expensive machine they don’t understand coupled with the general humiltion they feel because they are beyond their abilities when it comes to understanding the computer.

Just the random thoughts that popped into my head anyway.

9

I’m thinking what astro said.

Both my mom, and my wife refuse to use bookmarks, instead scrolling through the address bar to get to wherever they want to go.

When I loaded Firefox on the Wife’s laptop, I showed her how to create new tabs, then save them as her homepage, so now her games, her Avon and her e-mail all pop right up for her. She thinks it’s wizardry. :rolleyes:

10

Putting together that he said the sites are missing and the address bar speculation… she does know that it scrolls? Right?
Buehller?

11

Sorry to hear of your situation.
But sometimes in-laws are just flat-out unreasonable.
And you should be able to tell your spouse and they should agree with you.
Fuck em.
And next time, bring a book.

12

Working in tech support, I have dealt with users whose sole method of finding the documents they edit every day is (in Word) to click on File and then click on the document name down at the bottom of the list. If somebody comes and works on their machine and edits a word document, they assume the file they’re looking for has been deleted and are hopelessly lost.

So, I’m agreeing with the above that some of her sites (most likely not bookmarked…) got shuffled off the bottom of the address bar list.

Hope you didn’t visit too many porn sites… :dubious: and I really hope you logged out of the SDMB…

13

Nah, she should read one of their books, and lick her finger every time she turns the page.
:smiley:
:wink:

14

Your father-in-law sounds like a real douchebag, btw.

15

T’was pretty sure others might share these two exact concerns.
Madagascan lemur clevage? Oh, I can explain that…

16

Sorry to hear what’s going on. There’s no worse feeling then knowing you’ve pissed off your hosts.

Although, I think your FIL is acting like a bit of an ass. If I were your husband, I’d be more pissed off at him for speaking to you like that while refusing to even hear your side, than at his dad’s wife. A gracious host does not chastise their houseguests like children over stupid stuff like this, family or no.

17

My former mother-in-law set a lot of little traps for me, too. Then her husband backed her up instead of insisting on her being rational. Then my husband had a talk with me explaining how I had failed all her little traps.

There was not one single thing I did that was ill-mannered or thoughtless. It was just her setting traps, and I’m not going to torture myself figuring out what I should have done differently.

Thank god they are my exes!

18

Word up! “Good guesting” indeed. What about good hosting?

19

Rilchiam

Now you see what you’ve done. You’ve gone and broken the internet.

20

I’ll reiterate what other posters have said: people use computers in all kinds of bizzare ways that would never occur to you. Some people put everything on the desktop, use the address history list as shortcuts, type in addresses everytime because they don’t know how to click on a link, and so on. I doubt anything you do would not annoy her in some way. If you take them out to eat she’ll think you don’t like her cooking, if you offer to do dishes it’ll be becuase you don’t think they are clean, etc.

Say something nice about her son in front of one of her friends and maybe she’ll forgive you. Try “He never forgets to open a door for a lady, you sure raised him right Mrs. MIL From Hell”.