I encountered one of those interesting situations today. One where the solution was for me to sit in front of the computer and just fix the problem. Those situations do not often come up, but when they do I try to help the best I can. This was ten miles out in the country, a dialup customer, who had just purchased (well, is renting to own, to be more accurate, but that's another story) a new computer with Windows Vista. When I tried to describe the situation over the phone, she didn't understand, and I quickly realized it was one of *those* cases.

But what to do? This was an elderly couple, on a fixed income. They already overpaid for their computer, and while the computer guys should have set it up, they did not. But I could not get her through the route to get the dialup connection working properly. So I told her I'd drive out after work and should have her up within 30 minutes. I knew it would mean no pay, but sometimes principle trumps a paycheck. I drove out to a place even more remote than where I lived, back out along the highway, and went in. As expected, this was a very quickly resolved problem, and they were up and surfing in no time. I even set their home page to make webmail access easier. This was an old rancher and his wife. As I turned to leave, the wife went and pulled about ten pounds worth of beef out of the deep freeze. I felt like a country doctor, taking eggs and poultry for the kids' annal checkup.