Too Many Mistakes ?

Being the proud father of 2 daughters, age 18 and 15, actually means living together with 3 ladies.
Don't get me wrong, I am spoiled. ;D

A couple of years ago, we decided to get ourselves a PC at home, so we went of and bought a state-of-the-art desktop, with XP, Office, .... the lot.
I could work from home, avoid traffic jams, the girls could do some research for school and the wife could plan holidays on line.
At the end of the 1st week, the youngest daughter ran up to me and showed me an Excel spreadsheet containing a time schedule of who could use the PC at what time of the day.
She was so proud that she had created it...... you know, things have to be organised.
When I looked at the schedule, my name was at the bottom and if I wanted to use the PC, I had to run the ' graveyard shift ', after midnight.
Because she was so excited about her list, I did not ask any questions ( Mistake 1 )
From that day on, whenever I wanted to use the PC during normal hours, I received some strong " Access Denied " signals from the ladies.
Conspiracy, .... that's what it is.

A couple of months ago I started developing a cunning plan to solve this issue, and I decided to get myself a Mac, without telling anyone.
Probing the girls if they knew anything about Mac, if any of their friends had a Mac, ....... if they used Mac at school.
I was relieved to hear that Mac was unknown in their world, and I thought they had no idea what I was up to, ..... however, I made mistake number 2.
( Clean you browser history from time to time )

Saved some money , ordered the Mac and when I was ready to pick it up from the shop, I asked the girls if they wanted to come along. ( Mistake 3 )
The youngest one went to the shop with me, and long after I paid for the Mac, she was still fiddling around with an Imac she found in the demo area.

Have the MBP now for 3 weeks and this morning when I woke up, I went straight to the table where I left my Mac yesterday evening only to find that it was gone.
There was no sign of burglary so I was relaxed, thought I left it somewhere else and decided to take a shower first.

On my way to the bathroom, I passed the bedroom of my youngest and heard music, so she must be awake already.
In the shower I was listening to that music and all of a sudden I got this very strange feeling in my stomach ..... The songs I have been listening to was exactly the playlist I created yesterday evening in iTunes ........ on my Mac.
A coincidence ... I don't think so . Oh my God .... tell me I am wrong.

Walked over to my daughters room to find her sitting on the bed with the MBP.
" Good Morning daddy, did you sleep well ? "
" iTunes is awesome compared to Windows Media Player and copying music into a smart library is so easy. Justin Timberlake latest CD went in there like a flash "
" I clicked on this green fluffy icon at the bottom which says Adium, found the name of myself and my sister, and I could chat with her immediately. "
" Clicked on the post stamp with the bird inside and after 5 minutes of configuration work, I could pick up my Gmail "
" Pretty cool he....... So much easier than our big PC"
" I am gonna tell my friends at school that I work on a Mac"

I was about to say something to her, but when she looked at me with these steel blue eyes and a smile from ear to ear, I grew weak.
I hate it when she does that to me ..... and she knows.
Mistake 4 was that there is no password on the Mac when it comes out of sleep mode.

Turned around, walked away and closed the door. On her door there is a big sign that says " Verboden Toegang " which is Dutch for " Access Denied ".

Should I be worried now ?

From experience, I know that there is life after love, but is there still a life after loosing a Mac ?

Thanks for listening.
McBie

ohnoes

the good thing is they discovered the world of macs.
the bad thing is they discovered you have a mac...

do they just grab the computers without permission? if so, it seems you are too lenient on them, become stricter.
if she/they really love using the mac, create user accounts, and password lock yours.
or just get them an macmini/iMac desktop although that would be really spoiling them and more money gone from your wallet.

be stricter with them, and DON'T BE AFRAID!

Draw up a spreadsheet in Numbers or better still, Use ical to give yourself preferred usage hours before they do ;D

don't give them the password

Give them an account but set the parental controls to log them off after 15 minutes so you can go use it

you keep the mbp - and buy them a macbook to share.

Or better yet, sell that PC box and buy a mini to hook up to the PC's monitor, KB and mouse. They can use that while you use your MBP uninterrupted and take any extra money made from the sale to offset what you paid for the MBP.

I usually don't say much about parenting, but it does sound like there's a little too much leniency going on. Maybe it just sounds that way from your story, and at the least it sounds like you're a very good and caring father. But just remember that if your girls think, or know, they can get away with things in the house, then they definitely know they can get away with things outside the house. Just something to think about.

Parents are not "friends" of their kids. They are parents. Say "No"

But like fleurya said, maybe its just the way you wrote it out that made it seem to soft.

i would build an underground bunker with biometric locks and put your computers in that so no one can touch them..... or just buy everyone their own mac.

Or you could just install Linux on everything and hope they don't figure that one out.

babarnette said:

Or you could just install Linux on everything and hope they don't figure that one out.

Click to expand...

or BSD


or even MS DOS...

but don't get carried away...

Your Mac has officially been burgled. Sorry to hear.

I lived with 4 women most of my life... 3 sisters + mum. Dad works a lot. I know your pain =P Thankfully, my Mac is my Mac...