Tech Support, How May I Help You?

I'm somewhat of what you might call a geek, or a nerd. As such, I often get called upon to provide assistance to friends and family on matters of computers and the like. Now, if I am physically with whatever object you need help with, I've got no problem at all helping you out and doing whatever needs to be done. The problem comes from when I need to start providing remote assistance. I hate having to provide support over IM or the phone. It's not that I don't want to help the person, or even that I don't want to take the time. Really, I'm more than happy to help you, that's not the problem at all. The problem is that if I am not sitting there in front of the thing, my tech ability seems to just go out the window. I can remember just about everything, except I'll always manage to forget something minor. Also, most of what I do to fix things is just an instinct of what to do. That is useless when I'm on the phone. So my problem with providing remote help is that it usually makes me look like I don't know what I'm doing. I've got a real knack for walking someone through something, telling them with all confidence that it will work, and then the dumb thing doesn't. This happens more often than I'd like to admit. Usually, I can ask some questions, or think about, and realize what I did wrong. Usually, the problem is that I missed something. If I do this once, I am usually forgiven. After the second time, they begin to lose faith. I feel pretty bad at this point, because it has probably been about 30 minutes, and I still haven't fixed your problem. I feel really bad because I know that if I were there with you I could have the stupid thing done in under five minutes. I'm always impressed when people have the patience with me for me to go over something three times until it's right.
Tonight I was helping a friend get her wireless router set up. I was trying to get her to set a password and secure the thing so that she wouldn't have everyone leeching off her and slowing down her network. This took a number of tries between her card not supporting all encryption types, my forgetting to tell her she has to specify which key is used, and my trying to figure out if the default setting on her router was open or shared. Eventually, after much of her patience, the thing worked.
So, the next time you want to ask me for help, remember that I don't mind helping, but you might have to deal with my brain dropping the ball. If I get to souding agitated, know that it isn't you, it is that I'm mad at myself for not getting whatever it is working yet. The best thing you can do is have me fix your problem in person. I'll have you setup in no time, and will walk you through it so that you can learn how to do it. All I ask is that if you need help with Excel please, please, understand the concept of selcting multiple cells. That is all.