There’s an interesting article in newsweek which has spawned an more interesting thread at slashdot (and now a post at boingboing) about how most people of the X-Y generation, 20-35 year olds, will spend a good portion of their thanksgiving visits with the ‘rents doing on demand tech support for the family. Wow.

You mean these kids aren’t called all the time by random cousins wanting to know if they can replace a power supply and fix a machine that survived a major surge or two during hurricane Ivan?

Cody’s family does not expect us to show up at most of their weekend get-togethers. No one ever asks us to bring a pie or Cody’s great green chile cheeseburger egg rolls. But we are called upon on a fairly regular basis to walk people through Norton installations, how to resize a photo, or installing Service Pack 2. We are on-demand tech-support every day. I just wish these folks would remember that Cody sleeps during the day and works at night.

We are also a repository of dead hardware: “hey, the guy at best buy said this had a virus so we had to buy a new one”, or my absolute favorite “this printer doesn’t work with our computer so we thought maybe you could use it”…”That’s because it’s a daisywheel printer for a very old mac”. Sometimes I feel like a weird computer age version of “Sanford and Son” (Not to be confused with Fox’s next big reality tv hit: Stepford Wives and Sons). Except we’re white and roughly the same age and married and live in a fairly good neighborhood and don’t own a very old truck. Never mind.

The good part is my Dad’s an old-school geek and buys and sets up his and mom’s systems himself. Hell, he used to to that for a multi-billion dollar telecommunications company he can handle a home network :p So we actually will get to relax at christmas.