Knowing Your Weaknesses (or This Is Why I Pay For Tech Support)

Today I had a Skype conversation with the 17 (soon to be 18) year old that handles all of my tech stuff for Moms Need To Know.  I am 42 years old and the extent of my formal computer education was learning how to use an Apple IIe in 1986.

(Note:  "Cron" is the return email on an automated email from my hosting service that I get almost every day telling me that something is wrong with my site, but everyone including my hosting service tells me that it is nothing to worry about)

• Mindi:  MITCHELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Mitchell:  yes?
• Mindi: It's fixed....my site was down for about an hour because there was some sort of node or tumor or wart or something 😉
• Mitchell: 😉 it wasn't Cron?
• Mindi: Cron still emails me
• Mitchell: (headbang)
• Mindi: today spamd and httpd and cPanel ChkServd got pissy with me
• Mitchell:: oh apache?
• Mindi: and they tried magic, but it took a while
• Mitchell: toni had an issue with httpd too
• Mindi: I guess magic...they said "A restart was attempted automagically."
• Mitchell: (headbang)

Note: Mitchell tends to bang his head quite a bit whenever we are talking about tech stuff

And THAT is why I don't try to do certain things myself. Wonderwoman is a myth, be it in the tech world, being a mom or any other aspects of your life.

Know when to ask for help! There are so many people that are more willing to spend 6 hours because they are determined to fix things themselves, when they could pay someone $50 to fix it for them. Consider the value of your time vs. the money that it would cost to fix the problem (and save yourself from stress).

And consider how much you really NEED to know. I can probably live my entire life being happy to never really know who "Cron" is, or how to change my own oil in my car or how to sew my own curtains. For some things, it's time to stop worrying about saving a buck, just have it done by someone else and move on to more productive activities.

(and if you are a blogger using Wordpress, I can't recommend My Frugal Tech more!)