Jacob the Wiz

So today my three year old ran into our bedroom saying, "I wanna check my e-mail!"

Talk about surprising! What is a 3 year-old doing with an e-mail account anyway? He is always busy playing with my tools or pretending to. Just a month ago he was taking great interest playing with my screwdrivers, giving my wife a break keeping busy. She was on the chair relaxing and to her surprise he handed her the doorknob!

This kid is definitely an engineeer in the making.

I am supposed to be a network administrator, on the edge of technology, and it appears in about 8 years my oldest son is going to show me how to hook up our on-demand fiber-optic cable to our virtual reality 3D TV.

Using a Computer

So I sold my parents a laptop. Previously, they have been attached to an old desktop for the last 10 years - what an antique!

I know they are not the most computer compatible, but I told them that at the BARE minimum they had to be able to take it out of the box and plug it in before they call me for help. It could not be any eaiser, all the calbes are color coded, if you can paint by number you can plug in a computer.

True to their promise they did not call me until after they got it plugged in and powered up. They got stuck at the WELCOME screen. My mom could not figure out how to click the next button. After several minutes I figured out that she would put the mouse over the next button and press the 'Enter' key rather then click with the mouse. My patience was waning!

One the other extreme, I have a 3 year old who navigates on our home computer like a pro. He plays all these kids games on pbskids.org.

When it comes to tech support I must admit, I have less patience with my parents than with my clients. So at the office we have all agreed to provide computer support for eachother's family.