The problem with the "parental resposibility" model that you mention is that it is parenting by proxy. Instead of teaching the children what is acceptable and why the rest is not, most parents take the easy route and simply block the "unacceptable" material.

My parents objected to MTV, so I was forbidden to watch it. Even if the technology had been available, they would not have removed the channel from the lineup because that teaches nothing. Too many parents want to have the onus put on schools, the community, or technology, and then bitch when the precious little ones end up as ill-behaved monsters with no concept of self-restraint.

One last question.

How do you collect your fees? Do you use a standard boilerplate contract to make it a binding, legal issue? Even so, I have worked freelance a bit and found people that were more than willing to accept service but balked at paying.

Any additional info can provide would be appreciated.

I contemplated doing this a few years back, but did not have the courage to go through with it. Mostly because of the unknown.

What types of repairs do you do mostly? Is it mostly dead NICs, or setting up new PCs, or something else entirely?

I worked for several years as part-time IT. The key is that the company was an nanoengineering R&D company. Everyone there was brilliant, but could do little with computers besides email and filling forms. I was the only IT employee for the company, but it worked because the entire company was roughly 50 people. I maintained the servers, installed the PCs, fixed the printers, and did break-fix on everything. Even with all that, 25-30 hours a week left me time to continue my education. It can be done, but from my experience it only really works at smaller companies that do not employee tech-savvy people for other roles.

I was always under the impression that this was a two-stage security system as well. There is the password ("Picard-four-seven-alpha-tango") and a voice-print analysis to confirm it was the correct person issuing the order.

Of course, I don't remember any time where Worf tried to use Riker's credentials, so I can't really back it up...