Great Time to Be Alive
“Alexa, turn on the lights”. “Alexa, what’s the weather?” “Alexa, what time does the UNC basketball start today?” What a great time to be alive! Miraculously, “Alexa” answers these questions and performs these tasks instantaneously. In my car I tell Google to navigate to my daughter’s house in Washington, DC. Not only does “she” calculate the shortest route, but “looks” at the current traffic situation and adjusts the route as needed; again instantaneously. My wife and I comment on EVERY trip to my daughter’s that we could not find her house without GPS. We simply would find ourselves in a vicious loop in and around the Pentagon parking lot until we ran out of gas. It’s a great time to be alive.
Except when it isn’t. Just now, as I’m writing this, my wife tells me that she cannot access her voicemails on a new phone that she’s had a few days. She fiddled with the settings, and this and that to a point where the phone asks for her password. “What password? I don’t have a password”. “Here, let me try,” I cockily commanded as I took the phone from her frustrated hands. I helplessly tried for another ten-fifteen minutes, to no avail. “Here, let me try something,” she suggests. So, as she continues to punch buttons, I Google “How to retrieve voicemails on an Android phone”. Great, up pops detailed instructions, the second of which is “Enter your password”. “WHAT FLIPPING PASSWORD?”. Now I’m too frustrated to fool with it, so I’m back to my computer to continue writing about how great technology is. She continues to fiddle-faddle with the phone.
Although I had Netflix, I let it expire. Someone stole my credit card information, so I received a new card with a new number. Instead of trying to figure out how to change the payment information on Netflix, I just let it go. Now, on the rare nights that there is no ball game on TV, we watch one of several movies on DVDs that I accumulated when DVDs were the thing. It took me five, that’s right, five different remotes before I could get the DVD to play. One for the DVD player, one for the TV, one for the sound system, one to set the input on the TV, and the satellite TV remote just because that is what I normally use to watch TV. It finally worked. I realize that there are all-in-one remotes available that will operate all of my devices, but who the heck is going to program that for me? No, I’ll just use every remote that I have until both the audio and the video work on the screen. No problem.
We shopped at a Whole Foods recently in Washington, DC. Somehow, using hundreds of cameras, it “knows” what you put in your cart. It also “knows” if you take an item out and put it back on the shelf. Through pure magic, there is no check-out. You simply bag your groceries and walk out. Your purchase appears on your credit card statement. It’s a great time to be alive!
I went to the cardiologist’s office this week to get my pacemaker adjusted. It’s a semi-annual event. The tech that handles the devices for the office told me that they did not receive the report from the monitor that sits by my bedside that morning, asking me if I knew what the problem was. “No, I don’t know”. How should I know? It’s plugged in. I slept there the night before. How do I know what went wrong? Anyway, it’s a wonderful thing that they can monitor my heart remotely and the computer flags any irregularities, at which time they will call me; at least allegedly call me. The tech instructed me to unplug the monitor when I get home, plug it back in, then push the button the in center. I did and miraculously, it worked. The data flowed just as designed. The moral to this story is if you have an issue with any electronic device, reboot.
Wife’s voicemail is still not working.
Ironically, my brother, the retired doctor, called me the day after my pacemaker adventure and suggested that I buy a defibrillator. They’re very expensive, two-thousand dollars, but certainly worth it if the need arises. As I discussed this with my wife, who would probably be the one to use it on me if I have some sort of heart episode, she said, “If you passed out on the floor in need of a defibrillator, I’ll need to wake you up first to explain to me how to work the thing”. As of now, we are taking his suggestion under advisement.
As Christmas rolls around every year, I provide a list of potential presents that my two adult children can consider for me. At the top of the list each year is forty-five minutes of IT time. They both choose other great presents for me, but not that one. My son-in-law (bless his heart) still feels that he has to be nice to me, so he will work on some technology project for me while he’s visiting. The last time he explained to me how to use the sound system that I installed in the house fifteen years ago. Afterwards, I typed a cheat sheet with very simple step-by-step instructions. He laughed at me, but it’s absolutely invaluable and required, or all of his explanations would be for naught.
I enjoy telling Alexa to turn on and off the Christmas tree lights, however. No more crawling on the floor under the tree to unplug the lights. It’s a great time to be alive!
Another item on my Christmas list is for someone to set the clock on my truck. I even put it in a codicil to my will that someone please set the clock. I cannot “rest in peace” knowing that the clock is still not correct. Finally, my wife, getting sick of me continuously bringing up this rather minor request, called the man from whom I bought the truck. He printed instruction from Google, set the clock, and left me the instructions that are now securely stowed in the glove compartment. Hallelujah!
I love technology and it is indeed a great time to be alive. Growing up in the fifties and sixties was not all bad either. We had three channels: ABC, CBS, and NBC. The stations logged off the air at midnight and came back on at six in the morning. To be sure, sometimes there wasn’t anything interesting on any of those three channels, but I don’t remember a time. Now, we have over one hundred channels from which to choose, day and night, and more times than not, I cannot find anything that appeals to me (thus, the DVD adventures). By the way, to change the channels back then, one had to physically get up from the couch, walk to the TV, and manually change the channel. While up, you might as well adjust the rabbit ears (antennae) that sat on top of the TV to receive a better signal. I saw Robert Kennedy shot with only three channels, I witnessed Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald in real time, and yes, I watched Neil Armstrong as he spoke to the world “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”, all with only three channels.
Even with no remote, however, we were cutting edge growing up. My dad, a college president, had a recliner in the family room where we hung out together watching TV at night. Beside his chair was a phone on which he received many business calls. He really became tired of hollering at one of us to “turn down the TV” when a call came in for him. His Vice-President at the college , Dr. Holt, was an electronic genius for his day. Dr. Holt installed a switch that sat on the table beside the phone. Through a wire that he ran underneath the carpet to the TV, my dad muted the TV. Now THAT was technology!
My claim to fame occurred back in the late seventies, when the clothing store that I owned became the first small business in the area to computerize. I bought an IBM XT computer to help manage my inventory. One decision that I had to make when purchasing the computer was whether to buy one with ten megabytes of storage or one with twenty megabytes. Ten megabytes were a gracious plenty, but I opted for the one with twenty megabytes. Being a futuristic thinking person, I recall thinking that regardless of how technology changed, twenty megabytes certainly will handle all my needs for life. Ha-ha. I bought an external hard drive last week that has four terabytes, which is four-thousand gigabytes which is, well, I can’t do the math, but a WHOLE lot more space that the twenty megabytes that was going “to last a lifetime”.
Still no voicemail on my wife’s cell phone. Put it on the list for when the kids visit. By the way, it’s so amazing to think that when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, his Apollo spaceship had LESS computing power than my wife’s cell phone that we cannot get the voicemail to work.
I am so grateful to Al Gore for inventing the internet. (Relax, I know that is only an urban legend). Truly, the internet has changed and improved our lives dramatically. Before, when we went to a restaurant with family or friends, we had to talk to them. Thanks to Gore, we now bring out our cellphones and check the status of important world events without the stress of having to talk. How could I get through a dinner, for example, without seeing a cute picture of some distant acquaintance’s cat, or seeing a picture of another “friend’s” supper that she prepared that night? And how could I go thirty minutes or an hour without learning the stance of some know-it-all Facebook friend expounding on what our president should have done? And how can I survive without being told how Coach Hubert Davis knows nothing about utilizing his bench, (this from an “expert” who never even played high school basketball)?
Enough for now. I have to get out my five remotes and watch a movie while my wife tries to retrieve her phone from the river. Before she tossed it, I kindly encouraged her to call “John” at Customer Service, who, after a short hour-long wait, will certainly help her if he only could speak English.