My wife got a call from one of my son's teachers in the mid-afternoon. The teacher talked about his poor and slow penmanship, and asked if he has access to a notebook computer. Fortunately, he has one here but unfortunately, he doesn't know how to type. He just knows how to hunt and peck. Jon was classified as "learning disabled" while in elementary school and only started improving when he entered high school. He's as smart as I am now (please, no heckling), but he needs a lot of practice writing and needs to learn how to type. The high school that both of my sons went to had a course called "keyboarding" when the older one took it. It was changed to "multimedia" by the time Jon took it. They didn't teach typing at all. I suppose they only teach typing now in vocational schools and colleges that have secretarial-related courses.

Jon's computer hasn't been updated or cleaned in almost a year. When I say cleaned, I mean both the exterior and Windows XP. I pulled it out and found tons of "crap program" shortcuts on the desktop and tons of other crap buried within the directories. I spent four hours uninstalling all that garbage and gave Jon specific instructions that his computer would only be used for school. Of course, it's not all his fault. Two of his cousins share his room and try to share everything else he has, simply because they don't have anything. While Jon was here and me and my wife were still working in the US, we made sure he had a notebook computer, his own television, plenty of clothing, and a monthly allowance among other things that I'm too tired to remember right now.

I installed a typing tutor program on his computer and he'll be practicing every day for at least an hour per day. It should take him no more than a month to master the keyboard. Teaching him to not install garbage is going to take a lot longer.

I'm currently in the process of downloading programs to add to, or replace, what he has on the computer. I won't mention any of them by name right now because I really don't feel like looking up links at this late hour. My wife's already snoozing and I'm in slow download mode (dial-up, remember?). I still have to run a registry cleaner, a spyware cleaner, and defragment the hard drive. His computer will be ready for him to use at school in the morning, and that's what counts.