Perhaps the hivemind would help me brainstorm a solution to this problem. Faux-niece (my BFF's daughter) is 18 and has a job, and she needs to learn to drive asap. Because her mom is worn out from driving her to work and now to school. They live in a rural area and everything is far away, and there's no public transportation. (Also, if she doesn't learn to drive soon, she'll have spent ALL of her inheritance on clothes and make-up and there'll be no money left to buy her a car.) This sitch is getting dire. But her high school doesn't offer driver's ed (wtf), there are NO driver's ed schools within a reasonable distance, and her mom has wisely decided it would be a disaster for her to teach the kid herself. And they really need her to be taught on an automatic transmission, but both their cars are manual, so she needs a teacher with a car she can learn on.

How do people learn to drive?

Rant incoming!

Last week the person who manages our technology insisted that my old tower be replaced with a new laptop in a docking station. I protested - pointed out that I never travel for business and was perfectly happy with the old one - but he said it was necessary. Lost almost an entire day as the person who did the actual work set up the laptop, connected everything, then had to attach an external CD drive to install all the special programs I use.

And it's been almost nothing but issues. There are a bunch of extra email boxes I monitor - we use them for mass emailings so no one (except me) gets the huge numbers of bounce-backs from either "out of office" messages or bad address notifications. I'd sent the manager a list of those email boxes and he later came by with a print-out to check off the ones I said I needed. New computer's set up and none of them are there, including one I'd discussed with the guy the day before. So I sent him a message listing the email boxes I needed ... and he comes back with a new print-out to check off and I start rattling off the addresses and he tells me to slow down so he can mark them off on his print-out. I came in Monday and one of the email boxes was the wrong one ... and I couldn't access the office calendar.

Got that straightened out, but the new computer is noticeably SLOWER than the old one - I have to sit and twiddle my thumbs as programs open, files save or download. They keep telling me there's no reason for it and I must be mistaken.

They forced me to a new version of Internet Explorer, which is the best browser to use for updating pages on our website, which was built in Sharepoint. New IE doesn't work with the older version of Sharepoint we have ... tabs don't come up, it takes multiple tries to get to the HTML and, frankly, it's a bitch having to do all the work in the HTML code. I can work with Chrome, but that inserts weird code that messes up the layout of the pages and affects the way things work.

So our manager guy is out this entire week, only sporadically available by email ... and tech support is not being very supportive.

I am NOT a happy camper. I've seriously considered digging out my old tower and putting it back.

I've seriously considered digging out my old tower and putting it back.

If you've still got access to that machine and you can set it up without help--that you likely wouldn't get--I say go for it.

And they really need her to be taught on an automatic transmission, but both their cars are manual, so she needs a teacher with a car she can learn on.

You can go from manual to automatic pretty easily. Nobody taught me now to drive an automatic. One day I got into an automatic and just figured it out on my own.

Don't know what to do about a teacher. Any family or friends that can help out?

Automatic is fairly easy I'd say ... I never learned manual, but I'm naturally shiftless.

I've seriously considered digging out my old tower and putting it back.

Worth a try, but it may not work if you have to log into a domain. The computer name may have been removed from the domain.

It really sucks that they did that to you. Seems like they should have tested things out a little better beforehand.

You can go from manual to automatic pretty easily.

That really isn't the problem. The problem is, teaching her to drive is going to be difficult enough, that neither her mom nor I want to do it. Learning on an automatic will be much easier than on a manual. And they don't have an automatic. She needs a driver's ed course but there's none around.

Borrow a car with automatic? if absolutely no other option, rent one?

That really isn't the problem. The problem is, teaching her to drive is going to be difficult enough, that neither her mom nor I want to do it.

Oh yeah, that totally makes sense.

That's wild that there is no driver's ed around. I took driver's ed and "learned to drive" an automatic, but then once I had my license, the only cars I had access to were manuals, so I still had to go to a parking lot with my father. (And if it had been just my mother, I would never have learned to drive either.)