In the good old days when an error was committed there was usually a person to blame.

Today when looking for a location to place blame, while it should be placed on technology, or a glitch therein, there is no one with whom to speak about the error. Or if there is a person the blame comes back to you: you entered the wrong code, you waited too long to respond, you didn't push the right buttons.

Pushing the right buttons is what computers do. They push my buttons, the frustration, irritation buttons. Making matters worse they do not response with emotion. Calmly the screen reports that something is 'invalid,' and invites me to try another password or another access code.

I have access codes to web sites out the ying-yang:

NBC (so I can respond to the inanity of broadcast news)
CNN (see above)
Fox (see above - you get the idea - I'm an equal opportunity critiquer)
Amazon
CBE (Center for Biblical Equality - for obvious reasons)
Capital One (what's in your wallet?)
Blogspot (which comes up as a spelling error even though I'm on their site)
Facebook (which comes up as a spelling error even though I'm on their site...oh, did I already say that?)
Sunnybrook Farms (for their oranges not their retirement village of three-wheelers)
Lincoln Seminary (I'll be very glad when I no longer need this one)
Keurig
Harry and David
Overstock.com

...and on and on. A notebook full of access codes and passwords.

I long for the simple days of yore when all I had to remember was a two-digit locker number and the three-digit combination lock number. And even then all my friends had my lock combination so they could store their books and things in my locker when theirs was too far away from chemistry class.

And BTW, I hated that class. The teacher was also the basketball coach. Every time the team lost on Friday night we had a chemistry quiz on Monday. Like the sun rising in the East, you could set your watch by that chemistry quiz. Fortunately, the school had a fairly decent basketball team and the quizzes came around only about a half dozen times a season.

But I digress. Even with the increased security and many steps needed to access an Internet site, theft on these sites is rampant. Heaven forbid someone would access my Al Jezeera site and post something as if it were written by me. Or what if someone got on the CBS site and raved and raved about how complete their news coverage was, how very fair their interviewers were, how very competent the reporting, using my name? I would be humiliated and appalled.

And that's what I think about it.