Little Vultures

[DrFaroohk]

Major pet-peeve for me: Computer time and respecting another's. I love being on the computer more than anyone else probably does - I'm at home here. Whether I'm playing WoW, reading facebook, wikipedia, TV, whatever. but I respect other people's computer time. And when someone else is on the computer, even though I really want to be playing WoW, I realize it's their turn and we have to share and I also *gasp* find something else to do!

I know it's a novel idea, but I manage it and I think other people should too. It is simply wrong to stand there breathing down someone's neck unless A) they've been on there for like 20 hours or B) you have something very important to do immediately or C) It's your computer and its a guest hogging it.

[telecom_goddess]

This is why I'm glad there is a computer for everyone in the house.

[DrFaroohk]

lol We have two. But as they are of differing qualities, and the only computer saavy one in the house is me, I am the only one who ever uses the shitty one.

And of course there's always the option of...FINDING SOMETHING ELSE TO DO! ENTERTAIN YOURSELF FOR A FEW HOURS! I do it all the time. There's more to do than computer. There are dishes to wash, laundry to fold, Xbox games, movies, books, exercise equipment, toys, blocks, dolls, guns (toy) the phone, neighbors, a car, food to eat, whatever you want. It's all there. The computer is not the whole world.

[Boozy]

We have a home desktop, my husband's work laptop, and smart phones (which are mainly good only for light surfing and e-mail).

Before I sprung for a new, decent desktop, I was always asking to use Mr. Boozy's laptop. He was easy going about it so long as he wasn't working. But if he had a report to write, my game of Chuzzles wasn't going to take priority.

I'm assuming everyone in your household uses the computer for recreation? If so, then I agree that "first come, first serve" is the best policy.

[blas87]

When I was younger (in the early days of ICQ and MSN Messenger), our family PC was conveniently located right in the middle room of the house (between the kitchen and livingroom), and my mother used to vulture the hell out of my brother and me.

Thankfully, my brother built a computer that we ended up having upstairs at the next house we lived at, and mom must have decided that it was too much work to walk upstairs to spy on us on the computer, because she never bothered us after that.

[ZedOmega]

Basically the way we've got it set up in our house is that we split ownership of our own computer. We split the cost for it when we got it, so we decided on equal custody. Sure, I'm on it almost constantly when I'm not at work, but if Ms. Omega wants to get on to do some work, the first thing I tell her is 'logging out now' before I do exactly that.

Granted, we tend to sneak up on one another when the other's on the computer at the time, but it's okay.

[LexiaFira]

lol We have two. But as they are of differing qualities, and the only computer saavy one in the house is me, I am the only one who ever uses the shitty one.

And of course there's always the option of...FINDING SOMETHING ELSE TO DO! ENTERTAIN YOURSELF FOR A FEW HOURS! I do it all the time. T whatever you want. It's all there. The computer is not the whole world.

it sounds like the computer has become the whole world to some of them. or its the whole well so and so is on it so I HAVE to be on it now. Because its being used its suddenly popular.
I say this having dealt with watching a family turn down right nasty over not being able to share their one computer and being vultures about it to the point a virus was purposefully put on it to deny everyone from it for a while.
if there are other diversions then go to them or if its that bad no one use it?
There has to be some repercussion if this is going to be an issue?

[aurelemsrealm]

Computer time is not a big issue for my wife and I. We have a desktop and a laptop. Our daughter is not yet old enough to be interested in using the computer other than she sees Mommy and Daddy, and wants to mimic what we're doing at the time.

I take the laptop with me when I go to campus or the library. Otherwise, I generally use the desktop in the home office since that is where I spend most of my time at home. My wife usually uses the laptop in the living room while she is watching TV. The only time she uses the desktop is when she wants to print something. So, we trade off pretty well on computer usage, and rarely have to interrupt each other.

When I still lived at home with my parents, I was the first one to buy a computer. This was in the days of dial-up. I set up and paid for internet service since I was the only one in the house who had a computer. My sister tried to be the vulture, but our parents called her down since I was the one who paid for and maintained the computer and internet access. My parents would only use the computer if I was home in case they ran into problems.

[telecom_goddess]

I owned my first computer 20 years ago, and it was a dual floppy with no hard drive and no online access at all. Second one had a 20 meg hard drive and I bought an external 2400 baud modem for it. Oh and this was DOS based I didn't use windows until the third pc I believe lol. And that was 3.1. At first the computer was all mine....then it became a shared one for quite a while. Then it got to where I had my desktop, ex bf had his desktop and oldest daughter had her desktop. Now I still have that desktop but don't use it much anymore. I also have my laptop, the two girls in the house have their laptops and the only one who doesn't have his own is bf but he doesn't get on it much anyway. Plus everyone has a smart phone.