StarWarsHolidaySpecial.com

Fan site about the special...worth checking out for more details on the subject.

It doesn't have to be a moral hazard. Chances are, you will charge your family less than what they would pay at a shop. You probably also have better availability, and more liability (since I'm assuming if you do a bad job, you'll suffer a lot more than a stranger at a shop would).

I know many people would argue that its immoral to charge family for tech services, given that they've probably helped you, y'know, grow up safely and possibly even helped you develop those skills. But these are intangible things that shouldn't be measured or compared in the first place.

What seems evident about the original poster is that his family doesn't seem to value the work he does, since they proceed right ahead into undoing it immediately after he fixes it. If I were a mechanic who fixed cars for my family members at a discounted rate, I would probably be within my moral rights to threaten ceasing the discounts if it became apparent that they were abusing the car I was fixing and then bringing it right back to me. Clearly, they aren't being considerate of my time and skills, and asking them to consider compensating me financially can be a polite way of enlightening them on this matter.

I know a lot of people have a hard time mustering up the courage to tell their folks to pay up, but take my advise - you're doing them a favor in the end (not to mention giving them a lesson the value of what you do).

We often overlook the idea of using web sites as a form of expression, but that's exactly what a lot of the self-made websites were back then. And I remember seeing a lot of really amazing layouts being made by people who otherwise had no interest in anything techy, a little after CSS hit the mainstream.

Say what you will, but Geocities got a lot of young people - myself included - to get their hands dirty with web design. I, for one, will miss it.

That is a recipe for disaster waiting to happen. I've been in the unfortunate spot of representing a consulting company called in to configure a Mac OSX Server purchased by less-than-knowledgeable employees. It was a small business, about 5-10 people, that did contract-based graphic design/marketing. They loved Apple stuff, and were suckered into a completely unnecessary Xserve system, complete with overpriced external rack-mount tape backup drive. Being young and mildly tech-conscious, they overestimated their ability to manage this thing, doubtlessly egged on by some "whiz" at a Genius Bar waxing their balls about how well they'd be able to run it on their own.

Wrong. Granted, it's not hard to someone like me who does this sort of thing for a living, but managing backups was way out of their league. The backups weren't even running, though they remained blissfully unaware of this fact, and setting up network shares/user permissions was beyond their capability. This ended up costing them way more than ever needed to spend to get what amounted to a file server up and running, and I blame this on bad marketing.

Oh, we tried to convince them to sell their ridiculously overpowered server equipment before it depreciated in value, but they were insistent on using it, because it's Apple.

Misleading marketing like this is exactly what drives the borderline masochistic relationship Apple nuts have with Apple. All I can do is shake my head.

...call me skeptical on that one.