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.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Sunday on our way home from brunch my phone rings. It is one of our 17-year old twin grand daughters who asks, surreptitiously, if are we still in the area. Seems they have locked their keys in the car. Their parents are away for the weekend. I ask them to call the parents to see where the extra keys are. They call and report back that the extra set of keys is in the console of the car in question.
We drive back to the church parking lot. My husband, more an attorney than a car thief, cannot break into their car. I go into the church to see if anyone from the church's Prison Ministry is around. I assume that one of those guys ought to know something about getting into a locked car. No luck there.
In the meantime my husband drives around to pick me up and sees a parked car with a magnetic sign on its door, LCD Locksmith. He also sees a woman and a teen walking toward the car. He asks them if they know how to get into a locked vehicle. The woman says that the business is her husband's but she has watched him open car doors so perhaps she could help since his tools were in the trunk of her car.
A little balloon pump pulled the door away from the frame just enough for her to insert a metal hook. In less than a minute, she was in the car.
My husband is thinking that little balloon pump would be worth its weight in gold in a family with teens or forgetful adult drivers. I think our daughters, and probably your truly , will get this little device for their next birthday.
And that's what I think about it.
We drive back to the church parking lot. My husband, more an attorney than a car thief, cannot break into their car. I go into the church to see if anyone from the church's Prison Ministry is around. I assume that one of those guys ought to know something about getting into a locked car. No luck there.
In the meantime my husband drives around to pick me up and sees a parked car with a magnetic sign on its door, LCD Locksmith. He also sees a woman and a teen walking toward the car. He asks them if they know how to get into a locked vehicle. The woman says that the business is her husband's but she has watched him open car doors so perhaps she could help since his tools were in the trunk of her car.
A little balloon pump pulled the door away from the frame just enough for her to insert a metal hook. In less than a minute, she was in the car.
My husband is thinking that little balloon pump would be worth its weight in gold in a family with teens or forgetful adult drivers. I think our daughters, and probably your truly , will get this little device for their next birthday.
And that's what I think about it.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The United States of Shame is a web site that lists all the states of the union and labels them for what they are worst at.
Some examples:
Washington - worse state for bestiality
Colorado - worse state for cocaine use
New Mexico - for being anti-social
Florida - for identity theft
Oklahoma- for female criminals
West Virginia - for heart attacks
Tennessee - for corruption
Maine - for dumbness
And on and on.
Makes one proud to live in the good ole' US of A where people have the time and patience to sit around gathering statistics about which state has the most folks sleeping with sheep. It is very important to know this before one makes a decision about where to spend their retirement years. At retirement ones body slows down making it less and less successful at outrunning a farmer who may have to settle for an ovine. I'm just sayin'.
Ohio is the nerdiest state (glad we moved from there). And we didn't move to Minnesota where the ugliest residents in the country live. We moved to the least green state where residents not only use their own resources with abandonment, they use your resources also. We are the most environmentally unfriendly of all the states....so sue us.
And that's what I think about it.
Some examples:
Washington - worse state for bestiality
Colorado - worse state for cocaine use
New Mexico - for being anti-social
Florida - for identity theft
Oklahoma- for female criminals
West Virginia - for heart attacks
Tennessee - for corruption
Maine - for dumbness
And on and on.
Makes one proud to live in the good ole' US of A where people have the time and patience to sit around gathering statistics about which state has the most folks sleeping with sheep. It is very important to know this before one makes a decision about where to spend their retirement years. At retirement ones body slows down making it less and less successful at outrunning a farmer who may have to settle for an ovine. I'm just sayin'.
Ohio is the nerdiest state (glad we moved from there). And we didn't move to Minnesota where the ugliest residents in the country live. We moved to the least green state where residents not only use their own resources with abandonment, they use your resources also. We are the most environmentally unfriendly of all the states....so sue us.
And that's what I think about it.
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