Please Forward Responsibly

Dear Mom,

Today I cleaned for one of my two Tuesday ladies. I managed to get her house cleaned and solve some computer problems for her. She's got several friends who send her forwards and is being inundated with stupid emails, sometimes several hundred a week. It's gotten where she hates to pick up her mail. I wish people would stop doing all that unnecessary forwarding of huge files. It's much easier and more responsible to send a link to a website where they can see the same thing without clogging up their mailbox. Or even worse, sending a picture of another kitten doing something inexpressibly cute, taking 15 minutes to download to someone on a dial-up connection. I have been known to plan revenge upon irresponsible forwarders.

Her grandson has been taking care of her computer, scanning and defragging, etc. whenever he comes over. Her Norton (!!!!akkk!!!!) anti-virus ran out several months ago and she's been surfing on a fast connection with no anti-virus since then(!!!!double-akkk!!!!). I downloaded and installed AVG Free Version for her, scanned and defragged and ran a virus scan. It caught one Trojan horse. Don says that means I should install Spybot Search and Destroy and Spyware Blaster, too. I'll do that next time.

This evening I got her a GMail account and we talked her through downloading and configuring Thunderbird so she's good to go. Now she can inform her close friends and relatives of her "good" address and let the rest wonder why she doesn't pick up their emails anymore.

I love you,

Lisa