Ryan, the Family I.T. Guy.
So, I still live at home. I rent out most of the basement. A large room, bathroom, and access to laundry, and enough room in a spare fridge to store my own food. Sometimes I can go a whole day without seeing my parents, and I can do so for a laughable $400 a month. Obviously still not an ideal situation for someone of my age, but the economics of the area I live in, and my career choices have nearly made it necessary for now. But anyhow, I’m getting really off track of my main point. That being that the biggest price I pay at times is being the household I.T. guy.
My parents both have a PC laptop each, and my sister has a brand new iMac, and an old PC laptop I sold her. All of them have basic computer knowledge. But none of them are willing to read, or do anything that would require effort should something go wrong. Add to that the fact that I have a desktop running vista, a MacBook, and 2 gaming consoles, and suddenly simple things like changing the wireless network key becomes a real pain in the ass. That’s 8 machines I need to get onto and type in a 24+ character network key, and that’s just if things go as expected.
Last week I had to re-install XP on my Mothers laptop, and get all Her apps installed. Later on that day, I hear the complaint that Facebook is gone. I come upstairs expecting to see that the network is down, or she had typed in the wrong address. Nope. Facebook merely wasn’t in Her bookmarks any longer. I bookmark it, and restored the glory of Facebook to all of mankind (you can all thank me later).