Family Tech Support

From "Family Tech Support," a recent story on Slashdot:

For a month, my mother became really productive (mom's productivity is measured in forwarded joke emails), and then, abruptly, stopped being productive at all... I sent several emails which went unanswered... The next time I heard from her was on my answering machine - "You can cancel my internet access, I've packed up the computer and put it in the closet. Bye."

This makes me appreciate my mother's computer skills so much more. One of my pet peeves is when a person has a problem, but is unwilling to deal with it and resorts to ignoring it instead (or worse, complaining about it). My mom wastes no time in phoning or messaging or whatever it takes to let me know there's a problem. I have VNC set up to speed the troubleshooting process; failing that, we can work through most anything over the phone.

What she lacks in computer knowledge, she makes up in patience and persistence. I think that's a good lesson for us all.