Over the past week, I've had the distinct, um, pleasure, to be working up in Cleveland in a deserted office fairly close to my mother.  This is generally too close for comfort, with too much mixing of personal and work lives ("Joe!  Do you want to eat mashed potatoes or rice with the chicken tonight?!"), it's generally better than the alternative, which is sitting at my parents' extremely poorly heated house with limited internet connectivity all day.

Being so close to Mom, I'm able to see how the other half interacts with their computers (yet again), and I just loved an exchange I overheard between Mom and her computer today (Mom talks to the computer and usually reads the dialog boxes aloud.)  Outlook, like Outlook often does, froze on her, and the solution was obviously to pull the plug on the computer and start it up again.  The computer doesn't like this, but Mom cares not.  Miraculously, the computer boots directly back into Windows, automatically opens Outlook again, and tells Mom that something was up before with the program.  Would she like to open the program in Safe Mode?

Mom responds with, "Of course I want to be in Safe mode.  I always want to be safe.  I always want Safe Mode.  Joe--what's Safe Mode and how can I make sure that I'm always safe?"

Oh interface designers of the world, please think long and hard before you name something.  "Safe Mode" is a bad name.  So is "Windows" (overloaded term anyone).  Illegal operations scared the crap out of Mom.  Firefox is another horrible one.  Mom has no idea what a program called "Mozilla Firefox" could possibly be for.  "Internet Explorer" makes more sense to her, but I stopped getting questions when I renamed the icon "INTERNET WEBPAGES".  Word is "WORD PROCESSOR" and Excel is hidden from sight.  I can't wait until she gets Vista in about six years and never, ever clicks on the Start menu again because there are no words there.