The plan was to have lunch near the park and then walk to the botanical gardens for a photo shoot.

Since I am not only a daughter but also one with Geek-Like Tendencies, I ended up getting a wee bit sidetracked by my mom’s computer and phone system.

“Phone System” is an overstatement. Unless you consider a series of extension cords an electrical system.

Ever since my mom got DSL, the speakerphone in the kitchen stopped working. It’s an ancient wall phone and when mom is puttering around in the kitchen, she puts callers on speakerphone so she doesn’t have to hold the phone.

Now that she has DSL and the DSL filter on the phone, she can hear callers but they can’t hear her. She has to actually use the handset to speak with them. Mom is not so up with this sitch-ashun. Nails. Eyes. You know the rest.

A couple of years ago I had purchased her a nice cordless phone for her bedroom and of course selected one that had a speakerphone in the base AND the handset. I also got her a headset. I pondered her current phone sitchashun.

I pondered my mom’s electronic Wall Of Privacy (she once had a phone stalker). I looked at her Caller ID box, her answering machine and almost broke out in hives at the tangle of phone cords, power adapters, 2-prong-to-3-prong-to-3-way-adapters stacked up like Legos.

Deep breath…deep breath. Where is my freakin’ Quiet Space?

I then realized that the cordless phone base could be moved to the kitchen. If that worked, I wouldn’t have to get another phone. It took me a while to figure out which cord was the actual phone line: Hmm, this is going to the answering machine…and this one is going out of the answering machine to the caller ID and …this is routed out of…

I am reasonably handy and was able to get her phone system up and running and I called her on my cell phone to test that the speakerphone worked both ways.

One chore down…

It was time to tackle the Big One: Microsoft.

Uh-huh. Remember that animated short, “Bambi vs Godzilla”?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mom had already tried calling AT&T. Who then routed her to Microsoft. Who then told her that her Outlook 2002 was old but she could pay $49.95 for tech support. Mom then called me.

I had installed Outlook 2002 on my mom’s PC and while she could receive email, she couldn’t send it. We both have the same DSL provider and I was able to configure my Outlook 2000 to work. Yes, I have XP running on my laptop and my mom is on a Vista PC but still…

I’ve attempted to get her outbound email working twice in the past. Both times I was tired and wanted to get home and if I couldn’t figure it out in 10 minutes I was stopping.

This time I was going to focus. I was going to beat this problem.

I tried everything, clicked every freakin’ Advanced Tab, used different combinations of ports, even tried my settings.

I am not exactly ignorant of POP3 and SMTP server settings. The lunch hour came and went. Mom popped open a container of yogurt and ate it while looking over my shoulder. I was hunched over her keyboard.

We were both hungry. I gave up. Like Bambi, I was flattened. I configured Microsoft Mail that comes with Vista and … no problems.

Arrrrggggh.

Mom didn’t really care. She just wanted email. I wanted to wrestle that thing to the ground and win.

Maybe I AM a Geek.

But even a Geek has to eat.

Coming Soon: Lunch and a Photo Shoot. Maybe.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I then deactivated the Threaded Comments plugin and restored the original comments.php file. Problem went away.

Since the Threaded Comments plugin seemed to have affected all new posts (or even older ones, I didn’t check) I have deactivated it.

It was fun while it lasted but I don’t have the time to muck around with my theme’s stylesheet or the plugin!

Maybe not. I don’t blame you.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a few months, you may know that:

• I’m four-foot-ten-and-three-quarters.
• I’m not so good with snow.
• Someone called me a banana.
• I don’t have much stuff.

Based on these few clues, you may have formed a very vague picture of where I am doing all this writing.

I also blog on the road. Plop a laptop on a generic desk in a generic hotel that caters to business travelers and that’s Ms. Q On the Road.

No wine unless I do room service.

If you formed any picture, I hope it didn’t involve doilies and innumerable porcelain figurines.

I thought I’d give you a small peek at my home office:

Does it live up to your imagination?

What you see displayed here are my:

• Dell Inspiron 9300

-Intel Pentium M Processor 730
-1.60 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
-17 inch UltraSharpâ„¢ Wide Screen UXGA Display with TrueLife
-1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz 2 Dimm
-256MB NVIDA GeForce Go 6800 Video Card
-60GB Hard Drive

• Microsoft Wireless Mouse
• 320 GB Western Digital backup drive (I have to follow my own advice).
• Glass of red wine (a required peripheral in the world of QMusings)
• Zire 72 PDA (yes, Palm OS – I try to support the “little guy!”)

Unseen:

• 10-minute Uninterrupted Power Supply
• Wireless router
• On-it’s-last-legs HP color DeskJet
• Brother 4-in-1 Printer/Copier/Fax/Scanner.
• Crosscut shredder
• Rusty, my faithful guardian of notes.

If I’m not on the road, I Work From Home. My work laptop is not as nice as my personal one.

Besides giving you a peek into my life, I’m also entering Mr. Gary Lee’s Best Home Workstation contest. I’ve checked out the other entrants and while I don’t have multiple monitors or a hyper-peripheralized, screaming machine, I do have a nice glass of wine.

Cheers!

Jessie from BlogSpoke began the discussion, John from Finding the Money jumped in and Ms. Q put in her 2 cents.

There is a difference between those who hope to make money from their blogs and those who write about how to make money from blogs.

As you can see from the few ads I have on my site, I hope to make a few bucks for my efforts. Luckily, I have no driving need for the money and can look at my slowly accumulating Adsense account with a bit of wry amusement. I don’t think there is anything wrong about writers who hope to be rewarded.

What I have noticed is the proliferation of blogs that focus exclusively on tactics to increasing blog income and traffic. Now I am seeing an increase in posts complaining or at least remarking on all the “blogging for money” blogs.

Is there a Blogging Backlash?

Do people want to return to the idea of original concept that blogs are digital communities where individuals share their observations, thoughts and perhaps intimate peeks into their inner lives?

While I don’t think we can return to what some may think of as “the good old days” I think we can remind ourselves that blogs are not just for financial enrichment but for social and personal enrichment.

Christian from Peogles posted the question, “Community, Social and Personal Blogs: Where Are You?” and wrote, “Isn’t a blog supposed to be considered a daily journal of your environment, observation, interest, and life in general? Whether it is about TV shows you love, movies, or music. Or if its humor that gets your heart going, or life journey questions that you often want answers to?”

Ricardo from Unloaded remarked: “I had always read that to have a blog with a following, you had to focus in on a niche and never deviate from that. I think it’s totally wrong. A good blog should be able to go wherever it wants to go as long as it’s an honest place that readers can connect with. And if it’s genuine, they will connect.”

I’ve read the same advice – stick to a niche and have consistent content if you want to gain loyal readers. I agree with Ricardo – readers don’t need you to stick with a niche to become a follower. In fact, we should all hope to become our own niche.

Didn’t blogs start out by being whatever the writer wanted it to be?

Wasn’t it all about “My Blog, My Rules?”

I follow certain blogs and it’s truly the overall “vibe” that grabs me – I don’t care if they don’t stick to a particular topic. In fact, it’s more interesting if they write about a variety of subjects.

I write all over the place and at one point I wondered if I should worry about it and try to focus on one topic. Then I realized, hey, my blog is not a service, it’s ME and I don’t want to change who I am.

What I have found is that loyal readers, like friends, want the big picture. They want to know you. They want to know that you have fixation on public restrooms and that you’re four-foot-ten-and-three-quarters…short.

Am I tired of blogs about blogs?

Not really. I read several blogs that focus on blogging and making money from blogs. I think they provide valuable information. I would like to increase my number of readers – what blogger wouldn’t?

I find that there are still plenty of “old school” blogs.

How about you? Do you feel there is a blogging backlash?

Her last one had “bit the big bullet in the sky” so I had get a new one.

Mom likes to twist up tired old sayings. It is not intentional. At least, I don’t think so.

If you ask her what she means or correct her, she’ll shake her head, sharp and quick, like a cat with something in its ear. She’ll make her squinty eyes squintier (she’s Chinese, too) and state, “Well, you know what I mean.”

I purchase this new computer and have to get a Vista machine. Great. I was hoping to get XP because that’s the operating system that my mom is used to. Then I figured I might as well bite that big bullet in the sky and get the latest OS.

I also purchase 3 years of extended support because:

• I have no experience with Vista
• I don’t want to be the only one “on call.”

When the PC arrived all I had time to do was hook it up – I connected the monitor, mouse and keyboard and made sure that it had a working dialup connection.

Mom is on fixed income – no DSL for her.

Vista was easy enough to navigate but it is different than XP. I was glad I had purchased the support, as I would have a difficult time trying to walk my mom through a problem using my XP system as a guide.

Prior to my mom’s PC kicking the bucket, we managed to back up her files onto CDs. She calls me up telling me that she wants to copy the contents of the CDs to her hard drive but she can’t quite figure out how.

I figured, “no problem.”

I know – you’re all slapping your foreheads at the hapless heroine of this piece.

I tried to walk my mom through viewing her files but the start button wasn’t called Start and “My Documents” was not called that either. I finally told to have her right-click “something on the lower left-hand corner” and search for “explore” which got the file explorer open.

Then I tried walking her though viewing the C drive and figuring out what letter designation her DVD drive was assigned.

Based on her rapid-fire listing of what she was seeing on her screen, it was not the same as XP. I asked all sorts of questions like “Is there a “My Computer?”, “Do you see ANY listings like C, D, E?” and nope, nothing matched. My brain crashed and I told her that I couldn’t walk her through the CD-to-PC transfer without having Vista myself and she should call Dell support.

I figured that they could figure out how to walk her through it easily enough.

A couple of days later my mom calls. She’s totally frustrated.

“I called up Dell and I was trying to configure that weather widget and I couldn’t and then the Indian guy wanted to remote control so he could do the pointy thing and then he said I needed broadband or something or I could buy this Microsoft package to help me learn how to do stuff.”

Mom is not only ABC but also OCD and ADHD. I’m not kidding.

As usual I’m stunned by her pauseless delivery and have to rewind the tape to figure out what she said.

“What’s up with this weather widget and I thought you wanted to copy the photos from your backup CDs to your hard drive.”

“Well you know how I like knowing the weather and Vista has this weather widget so Manoosh uh, Manesh, uh.. I wanted to get his name right, why am I always getting these Indian guys I can barely understand, and then he says I can call him Mike.”

So Mom and I go back and forth like this and I can see she ended up with one of the more impatient support guys. We’ve had good support from Dell and like most support services, it all comes down to the individual. Mike wanted to use Remote Assistance to take control of her PC in order to show mom what to do – he didn’t want to walk her through the process on the phone.

I am sure that Remote Assistance would be too slow on dialup, which is why Mike insisted my mom needed broadband.

I was a bit annoyed by his response – I mean, what’s so difficult about explaining how to copy files from a CD to the hard drive?

Plus the whole weather widget thing was confusing.

“Mom, why were you asking Mike about the weather widget?”

“It looked cute! You know how I like knowing the weather.”

“But mom, if you were on the phone with Mike, you couldn’t get the widget to work – it would have to be connected to the Internet to get the information.”

“Ohhh…no wonder I was getting ’service unavailable’ – but why didn’t Mike figure that out?”

She continues with, “I wish I had gotten that other support guy – he was from Dallas and he was really good! I could understand him and he was fast!”

I reeled her back in before she veered too far off on a tangent and asked her what else happened on the call with Mike.

“Well, he’s telling me I needed broadband so he can do that remote thing and I say that my daughter got me this support so he could help me and why wasn’t he helping me?”

By now I’m leaning against my kitchen counter uncorking a fresh bottle of wine listening to her on the headset.

“And then he says why doesn’t my daughter come over to show me how to copy over the files!”

What. Did. He. Say?

“I tell him that you don’t have Vista, you don’t know Vista and that’s why you got me this support. He said he’s going to call me back tomorrow. Why am I getting these Indian guys? Why don’t I get someone I can understand and who can understand me?”

After hearing how the support guy wanted me to help her, I wasn’t up to defending him. I was irritated by his comment and frustrated for my mom’s sake.

Mike doesn’t call when he says he will and I manage a quick visit to my mom’s to show her how to copy the files to her hard drive.

Mom’s not stupid and she’s managed to move from Windows 95 to XP Home and now she has to learn Vista.

“Why do they keep having to change stuff on me? I can’t find anything anymore! They are just out to get your money!”

You said it, Mom.