however, there is the part where if i call him on it i will end up doing all the family tech support rather than about half. which i’m not excited about.

Since my husband died last year, my mother has not called on me for tech support once, and although I find this a tad weird (As I found her previous behaviour a tad weird) I am NOT complaining.

I do the odd fix or fiddle with the computers of a few friends, but it is not so much a "Called in to fix their computer" as a "can you see what's wrong with this?" I think that is because most of the people I have that kind of relationship with at the moment are at least as adept as I am….

Oh, though of course I do tons of IRC tech support.

Since my husband died last year, my mother has not called on me for tech support once, and although I find this a tad weird (As I found her previous behaviour a tad weird) I am NOT complaining.

I do the odd fix or fiddle with the computers of a few friends, but it is not so much a “Called in to fix their computer” as a “can you see what’s wrong with this?” I think that is because most of the people I have that kind of relationship with at the moment are at least as adept as I am.

I think they just don’t want to learn how to use a Mac. Bastards :P

Ever since I started seeing my partner, though, they started calling on Him for tech support. This has nothing to do with the fact that He’s a man and everything to do with the fact that He’s a computer genius who can code circles around the most experienced coders. So He does the tech support at home too.

It’s odd, because I’ll get job “opportunities” wherein they find out I have computer experience, but they don’t want to hire me with that sort of title, so they’ll hire me as just the average joe, expect me to do the entirety of that job, and pay me just “a little extra” to also do any IT/web design work that comes up on top of it. And it’s never really been worth it.

I mean, it’s not really okay when your boss starts asking you to design and coordinate her daughter’s birthday invitations for free, when everyone else at your job title level and pay only files papers and answers phones. Mostly I handled that one by quitting shortly after. I’m still sort of unofficial helpdesk for small issues at my current job, even though we have a dedicated IT company to call, but it’s so much easier for someone on my team to say “Hey, how do I fix this?” to me and have me set it up in ten seconds than spend 2 hours or more on back-and-forth emails to the IT guys trying to have them diagnose it remotely. One of these days I will just get a real tech job.

With the family/friends thing, I’m pretty direct about the “if I have time” bit. I like to help them out, but constantly troubleshooting wireless issues or Windows having a breakdown or setting up new equipment and programming their telephones, etc… gets time consuming. If it’s an emergency, that’s one thing, but otherwise, it can probably wait until I have my situations sorted first. Also, we don’t tally it, but I think in general I do end up trading favors with people, basically, so I might set up a computer and someone will help me fix my flat tire or buy me dinner at some point. So it all kind of evens out.

Mr Bene is a Brit, so we have considered Canada as a potential alternative living location for the future.