Good tech, bad tech: just fix it.

I am tired of the latest, brightest shiny toy to come out of any so-called technology box. What I want is for the folks who thought they were so clever to invent things, to come through on FIXING what is already invented, not going on to muck up something new.

For example, take the cordless phone: great idea, bad ergonomics, and unreliable reception. Is it that challenging to take the old-time technology that made our corded phones connect so reliably and apply it to more recent "innovations"?

And television: it used to be so easy. Press one button for on/power; change the channel or the volume with two simple arrow points. HD TV? Hell to define it. No better definition, because the cable signal now pixilates at random. Make the signal too complicated, and the TV can't manage to make it smooth and constant, as the signal did so smoothly back in the day.

Hell to make the TV clicker work to get you to one of more than 1000 channels you may wish to cut back to a manageagble, say, 100? Can the video recording box manage to fast-forward or reverse as easily as a VCR? Not in my house.

Then, the cell phone -- may it rot in hell. How important are you? Do you need to broadcast your lovers' quarrels, your medical test results, any call other than say, can't make it on time, got an emergency going on. Are the recipients of these calls so stupid that they can't assume, as in other times, that you've been delayed?

More people than not show up less than on-time. Planes never do on-time, unless they are fudging the schedule. If you're not a cop or a fireman or, dare I say a doctor, on duty, on call, do you really need to chat on the sidewalk?

In the car -- no one ever promised driving excitement. Vehicles are simply transit. Perhaps distracting yourself with the radio is enough. Be daring -- have a cup of coffee. Try not to spill it. Don't give me your traffic updates. I promise: they're boring. Moreover, maybe you should keep your eyes on the road, cut down on accidents.

And ergonomics? Kids are going to text themselves into early arthritis, strange tendon problems, shoulder strain, back troubles -- then they will have to learn to talk. Wonder if they'll be able to catch up with their less technology dependent peers: the people you see having conversations, ordinary verbal exchanges, with one another. They are few and far between these days, at least in public.

If the techno-folks wanted to be useful, they might look into improving voice recognition software. At this rate, no one will be able to type -- or given how language has deteriorated, maybe everyone will get by with grunting. Once for yes; twice for no.

Apart from texting, which is for people who are too lazy or incapable of using a telephone for its original purpose, which was not to be Western Union on a regular basis, there is a problem with cell phones that makes me laugh.

It is this: an entire generation of people are growing up without having an unimpeded conversation, without interruption, either by another call or, to go back to the original technology complaint: IF YOU CAN'T GET A CALL TO GO THROUGH WITHOUT DROPPING OUT, what exactly was the point of losing the cord in the first place?

Then, the speaker phone: nice concept, lousy execution. Yes, you avoid ergonomic incidents, but the echos and sputters over the line make the conversation more challenging. And privacy? Long since gone by the wayside, not that most people seem to care, or even make a distinction between personal and business. Scary.

Granted, someone's good techno idea made blogging possible. A place for people like me to rant where we want, in case someone's listening, or, to be precise, reading.

Yet I can't help coming back to my first point: why can't technology be perfected before the next ingenious idea comes along? Short attention spans? Another failure of our time? If someone would take back fiber optics in favor of copper wires, we might be able to find out. And while the sole techno-perfecto in the land is at it, can't the digital camera shutter press in a timely fashion?

Why go forward when we haven't succeeded at backward? Alice wants to know.

As if Microsoft isn't bad enough...

Alice just bought a new computer, the last Windows XP machine to come off the assembly line. She is suffering technological difficulties, and sick to death of how wonderful the PC was supposed to make her life. Right now, she would rather have a hard copy of a newspaper, and not need to know more than the TV evening news has to tell her.

Although she has managed to keep most of the learning curve to a minimum, there are still a few hurdles to go before the machine is working perfectly. The computer guy (does not deserve the name "technician," though his invoice reflects it) managed to transfer data as Alice asked.

He could not, however, trouble shoot such common questions as, why won't the screen saver kick in when it's supposed to? Why won't the antivirus software run on schedule? Somehow, Alice expected a wee bit more knowledge from someone who bills himself as a computer tech guy.

However, given her last run-in with HP, she should know better. It doesn't matter what the native language is, ignorance is apparently in great demand for all tech support gigs. Where does Alice sign up? She wears her ignorance proudly: the exact label reads, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

The do-it-yourself age is highly overrated, Alice once again observes. If she had wanted to be a travel agent, she would have signed up for that gig. If she had wanted to develop pictures, she would have had herself a darkroom. Getting the photos from digital camera to computer is just one more technological nightmare, so far as she is concerned.

And one more tangle with Microsoft's monopoly makes Alice certain that she would like nothing better than to get a cease and desist order on the entire company. Let us have a few years to catch up before you try to sell us anything new. The economy sucks, and we're just not interested.

On another note, here is some news from last week's Tactical Traveler:

Better Get That Icky Stuff Off Your Laptop's Hard Drive

"A federal appeals court in San Francisco has ruled that Customs agents at the airport don't need any evidence of wrongdoing to search the contents of a passenger's laptop, thumb drives and other storage devices. The theory supported unanimously by the court's three judges this week: A laptop is luggage and Customs agents don't need evidence of wrongdoing to search luggage because it is the equivalent of a border search. (The Supreme Court previously ruled that luggage searches at the airport are the equivalent of border searches.)

"All of this would be a fascinating legal argument in and of itself, but keep this in mind: The case began in 2005 when a Customs agent stopped a traveler on his return from the Philippines and asked him to turn on his computer. The agent then found images he believed to be child pornography. The flyer was arrested for transporting child pornography and traveling to the Philippines to have sex with a minor."

The world never ceases to amaze Alice, or perhaps dumbfound is the more appropriate response.

The printer ate my telephone cord...

...and other tales of urban life.

The weirdness began before Mexico. The No Exit personae were just one stop in the strange confluence of events that has been my life of late. (Hell is other people.)

It may have started the day the telephone cord inadvertently fell into the ink-jet printer, swallowed whole permanently. Bye-bye phone cord. Bye-bye printer. Hello Staples? What do you have in the way of new all-in-one-machines?

Print color documents, fax, scan, copy, enlarge, reduce, read memory cards, tap-dance, what have you. All the machine fails to do is Windows.

It does VISTA. I do not. Note to self: get XP drivers. Download from Web site?

When I packed for Mexico, I could not find my suntan lotion. I had the car service driver stop at the local 24-hour chain drug store at 5 am so I could pick some up en route to the airport. You don't want to know who else shops at that hour. I didn't.

What else? In my absence during the No Exit experience, I have a house guest arrive. My best friend from grad school is in town from Switzerland, where she has emigrated with her second husband.

America is on sale, and she has the empty suitcases to prove it. She is awake when my housekeeper, who is from Poland, enters. While I am sleeping, they discuss their respective situations as immigrants.

It is not, I admit, a coincidence that occurred to me, that they share emigree status.

Later in the day, after my guest leaves, the infant downstairs starts crying. I put on the Rolling Stones to muffle the noise. I dance to Satisfaction. CC, my best friend, is chez moi, her dog in tow. Shamrock barks to show her annoyance at the baby. The Visiting Dog Service of New York has arrived.

My one-bedroom apartment has no place for a baby except a walk-in closet. The couple downstairs, whose layout is identical to mine, failed to receive the memo informing them that the time to move out is between the conception and the delivery.

They complained once of noise from my apartment. I suggested the doorman read them the riot act, and they take it up with their landlord. They aren't supposed to be able to rent in this building anyway.

The Visiting Dog Service will return as needed. CC will teach Shamrock to stop barking when downstairs teaches their child to stop crying. Or when they move the the kid into their bedroom. It (gender undetermined) lives in the dining area, where I have my office. The wailing makes it hard to concentrate.

I am unreasonable, but not completely so: dining areas are for meals and entertainment, not for infants' slumber. Bedrooms have windows and closets, neither of which is included in the layout for this apartment's dining area.

By Wonderland city code definition, a "room" has windows; an "area" that contains them is rare. The floor plans don't call the dining area a slumber nook.

Just as I never enjoyed my upstairs neighbors' domestic disputes, I do not enjoy the downstairs child. Had I wanted to marry or reproduce, I would have. Neither experience is one I need to have vicariously. Years ago, had there been one more thud from upstairs, I was ready to call 911, fearing spousal abuse.

I set up the new all-in-one and realize the sole purpose of the fax machine. It's is for CC to send prescriptions to her pharmacy in Paris and me to do the same with mine a block from here. Without our meds, we wouldn't need it.

Then came the bizarre phone message: in my line of work, I have had clients ask me to be their executor, or a trustee in their wills. Depending on the circumstances, I may agree. Today, a stranger from upstate left a message: would I consider being a trustee if he and his wife died? I am not sure what to say when I return the call.

Do I start with, are you out of your mind? Or, are you terminal? I have no idea who this person is, much less whether I will still be working when his need for a trustee arises. Or why he would want to entrust his finances to a stranger. This is not where I would begin the conversation.

Where would I begin? With the digested cord? VISTA? The 5 am lotion stop? No Exit? The emigrees? The Visiting Dog Service? The dining room child? The fax discovery? The trustee request?

This week an expose of my prep school has made the cover story of Wonderland magazine, much to my amusement, following the Spitzer denouement on its cover two weeks ago.

One class ahead of me, like most of my fellow graduates, he was filled with the arrogance and hubris imparted with the diploma. I suspect, too, that he never got laid during his days there. That strikes me as a reasonable explanation for his choice of paid companionship.

Where will it stop? Please: someone, anyone, a clue?

Do it yourself? Whose idea was that?

I guess I'm just an old-fashioned girl. While I am willing to concede some wonders of technology, in the customer-service arena, someone -- just about everyone who works for any entity, private or public -- has decided the customer deserves "care." Not "service." Not, "how may I help you?"


No, these days you speak or punch in your special number for whatever entity you are calling -- imagine an airline, if you will -- then the toneless voice inquires whether you are interested in type 1 (say or punch number now), type 2 (ditto), type 3 (more of the same), or whether you are a type 4 -- one who is more apt to punch O for Operator (pardon me, "representative").


If you are a type 4 person, you may or may not connect to a human voice, depending on whether the company can comply with a simple "help me. I'm the individual; you're Big Brother of the hour, and I have a few questions, none of which comply with the tone-free voice options."


Let us contrast the concept of procuring airline tickets using a travel agent versus directly interfacing (terrible word) with the computer to use frequent-flyer miles. In the first version, you pick up the phone, tell your travel agent of 25+ years where you and your mom need to go and what dates, and he procures the tickets and confirms your seats, and had the tickets in the mail months before we need to debate what to wear and how to entertain ourselves at our destination. One phone call, and you are ready to go.

In the second, more common, scenario, you are doomed from the start. To screw up the system, you want to book the same flight, different seats, for two people traveling together under separate frequent-flyer accounts. The computer lacks any comprehension of how this might be possible for the average traveler, following standard directions, to follow. Thus, we need not one, not two, but three human voices, because each is specialized in one department: the miles, the tickets, and finally, the reassurance that yes, you have achieved your goal.


Two tickets to Dothan. Alabama in January, the vacation spot of the see-and-be-seen, the once-and-again jet set. Sign us right up. It is the one place in the world you would swear no one in the world would choose to go, short of the occasion to celebrate your niece's one's first birthday. Apparently, you would be wrong. People are just clamouring to get on this little putt-putt Atlanta to Dothan plane. Seating is tight.


I hope they have left enough room to wind the rubber bands and that passenger weight is disbursed evenly. Otherwise, some of the overweight will have to get off the tiny craft and push downhill so we can get to the next stop. In Maine, as a child, I rode from point A to point B in a plane that required some of its passengers to do just that.


And that was before deregulation. In the days when the friendly skies bore some resemblance of being such. These days, not so much. Not at all, if you ask me. I suspect the airlines would be just as happy if I never showed my face, my pathetic Zip-Lock bag of miniature toiletries, and my shoeless, coatless, beltless, braless self again.

Not to mention the two checkpoints, 20 feet apart, to determine that my name hasn't changed and my boarding pass not been altered in the wilds of the airport corridor. If I didn't need a mode of transportation faster than a bus, I'd be happy to oblige.

However, this is the modern age, and the above is what is deemed a successful transaction between customer and airline. That is, assuming the planes leave at their appointed hours and the luggage is not lost in transit.

These days, we call that an overachieving act of transportation. Person A got from point A to point B in a close-to-timely fashion, with the help of bar codes, email messages, cell phones ringing at 2:52 am to confirm that the customer will rouse herself by 4;30 to make it to the airport.

For part II, try to call a computer company to figure out what quirks your machine has that the printed guide doesn't cover, and you are unable to get online to read the actual manual to try to troubleshoot the problem yourself.

For part III, try to conduct financial transactions on behalf of another person, over whom you have power of attorney and for whom the only financial transaction that matters is that her monthly check arrives on time, and try to comparison shop municipal bonds on her behalf.

Then, if you have any energy left over, attempt to change a halogen light bulb located where you will have to stand on the sink to gain access to the fixture.

After all this, eat some chocolate-covered pomegranate ice cream, have a cigarette, set three alarm clocks -- the TV, the radio, and the basic battery-operated travel clock -- and hope you make your plane. Then wonder how people with full-time jobs manage to get to pick up their groceries or dry cleaning. Be grateful that you are not among them. You wouldn't make it beyond the first day.

Do it yourself? Not if you can hire someone else to do it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Snow splash stops airline

I should be on a plane, bound for Cabos San Lucas with a friend. I packed last night for 10 days in Mexico, then checked my email to find the airline -- which, like ever other I've flown, shall remain nameless, unless you think about continental drift -- had cancelled my flight.

The airlines used to take real snow storms in stride -- this so-called storm hasn't begun to stick to the pavement. Now, the airlines are so frightened of bad publicity, it's as if they won't attempt to fly if the weather isn't perfectly clear, with no precipitation forecasts. Did the pilots forget how to fly with instruments? Even I know how to fly a plane, albeit not a jet, under clear skies.

Reminds me of when I learned to drive: my parents wouldn't let me behind the wheel if there were the slightest cloud on the horizon. Came time to take my road test, it was cloudy and pouring rain. I almost hit another car as I pulled out of the parking space to get into traffic. Needless to say, my three-point turn took four; I hit the curb when attempting to parallel park; and I had to retake the test another day.

These days, I could drive the car that parks itself. (I think it's a Lexus, though that is not a silhouette I recognize.) That doesn't interest me nearly so much as one that drives itself would. According to the commercials, the new Volvo reminds absent-minded drivers to stop before they hit someone. That is my kind of car, one that plays automatic co-pilot. That is a silhouette I recognize, one I want. It's the one that falls under the category of public service.

It would be lovely to have an automatic co-pilot in my life, someone or something to intervene and take over when my mind goes on cruise control. This is the major drawback to being single: the only person available to take up the slack is the same person who needs the rest. Granted, this is predicated on the concept that a marriage of two people, whether de facto or de jure is a partnership, which, from what I hear, doesn't quite seem to pan out that way.

Men are still considered "good husbands" if they "help out" around the house or with the children, while women are the ones directing the homefront, regardless of what responsibilities each spouse has in the world-at-large.

This division of labor is less discordant with my friends who are involved in gay partnerships. Yet the potential discord would be one reason why I live alone: there is no one to disappoint me.

In a sense, I am flying the airplane and I am the airport. In the air or on the ground, the one who declares it's a snow day is me.

How to hem a pair of pants

Alice and her mother, as it has been observed by many and verified by independent sources, are not the go-to women when your need is for something domestic. From an early age Alice learned how to hire the housekeeper (she has done a better job than her mother at keeping "help," as her mother would call it), realized that lightbulbs are best changed by those taller than she; that washing machines and laundry apparatus were best kept floors apart and not to be operated by Alice; and that her mother never applied needle and thread to cloth.

With the exception of sewing name tags (for which Alice had to demonstrate use of the sewing machine, a gift from her father, whose business was textiles and on whom Alice relied for lessons in all things domestic except cleaning, where he followed Alice's mother's need and hired out.), Alice's father taught her to sew and cook; her mother taught her to make the proverbial reservations and how to decide when clothing needed to go to the dry cleaner or the tailor/seamstress, depending on complexity.

The other day, Alice and her mother attempted a new venture: Mom had found a role of double-sided cloth-fusing tape from some long ago and far away venture of Alice's father, and Alice had velour black pants that needed to be shortened. First, where was the iron? Alice had to double check. Was it a steam iron? Check again. Now, the ironing board.

Alice purchased this full-size item several years ago, at The Croquet Player's request. He can wield his way around pressing croquet whites and dress shirts without a second thought. (He remembered to call Alice to inquire about the state of her ironing equipment, knowing full well that she was unlikely to have any on hand or to know how to use what she had.)

Perhaps he remembered her last demonstration of domestic impairment: she was at a college in the late 1980s, for a writing seminar, and her laundry had reached the breaking point, so she hauled it over to the campus laundry center.

Insert clothes, turn button to "permanent press," measure detergent and voila! Or, not so much. All of Alice's clothing that summer started as white, black, or pink. She ended the summer a study in pink. When a high school student came into the laundry to ask for advice, Alice was pulling out her new pink wardrobe. Her one suggestion? Sort your colors.

But I digress: this pair of pants that were not going to shrink to an acceptable length needed a hem. Alice's hands, still in splints, just weren't up to the task. Besides, she is middle aged and needs reading glasses to have half a chance of threading a needle. She also hasn't hemmed or sewed on a button in years, and manual dexterity is obviously not her strong suit.

Hence, the mother arrives, with cloth fusing tape. She measures the pant legs, determines a hem length. Then the fun starts: how to measure a hem. Does Alice have tailor's chalk? Try soap instead. As for measuring, they decide on three inches, and the total is marked to match the needed length.

This fusing tape requires a) a steam iron -- with water -- set on wool; a damp ironing cloth (previously known as a dishtowel), and a timer. Ten seconds per pressing. Mother lines up the cloth that comprises the part of the hem to be taken up, layers in the fusing tape, lines up the rest of the cloth, and says, "ready."

Ready is my cue to go to the microwave, hit the "1" button, announced the start time, and, ten seconds later, announce the stop/remove iron time. Repeat six times, with inspections between fusings. Finally, time to stash the ironing board away -- Alice's mother has trouble figuring out how to close it, Alice doesn't have a clue, but finally her mother hits lift-off.

We don't anticipate a repeat performance at any time in this decade. So, the next time you find yourself without a needle, and you don't want to Scotch tape, pin, or staple your hems, remember iron-on fusing tape is a no-fail option, guaranteed by the domestic incompetence of Alice and her mother. Just don't ask Alice to do it.