Car Alarm Trouble

I can't believe I let this happen for the third time!!! The battery in the hand-held remote for my car alarm died. Unfortunately, the alarm was on when this happened. Which means when I open the door the alarm goes off. And the engine won't start. For a couple years I kept a spare battery in my glove compartment so I wouldn't be stranded. And I'm pretty good about just changing the battery every six months just in case. But it caught me by surprise this time. And it's not like they sell those itsy-bitsy batteries just anywhere. When I finally did hike to Sav-On, they did have the battery, but didn't have a little screw driver to open the remote. AARRGGHH!!! Once again, technology is fantastic when it works. But when something doesn't work out, I feel fantastically irritated and helpless!

I found fun!!!

I've discovered Monkey Mail!!! This site has no educational value except for the fact that it can make a technophobe like me actually WANT to use it, and that's no small feat. It's a way to send an hilarious message to a friend. First you choose your monkey (I think they're chimps). Then you select the outfit the monkey will wear, the headgear (toupes, hats, tiaras, etc.), the accessories (cell phones, bananas), and the glasses. Next you decide where the monkey will be (golf course, cubicle, bed, beach). Then comes the really fun part: you get to type in the words you want the monkey to say and choose its voice. The computer somehow makes the monkey say the words out loud in the voice you chose! Amazing! So you send it to your friend's email and they get a good laugh. This is the best use of technology I've seen yet! If you want to try it, go to www.careerbuilder.com/monk-e-mail. (Check it out! A link!)

Finally, DSL...I hope!

So when my dial-up AOL account, (which I can't even use to get onto blackboard!) raised the monthly fee to $25.99 a month and I received a promotion for sbc DSL for $12.99 a month, I knew I couldn't avoid making the change any longer. It's not that I didn't want DSL, it's that I dread any time I have to change anything techno that's even kind of working. And yes, every frustration I anticipated, and then some, was part of the deal. And it's not over yet. This is why I HATE computers more often than not!

Day one: Kimberly says Verizon is best, if they serve your area. I go on the website. I type in my address. It tells me, "Re-enter your address. You must use a street address. Do not use a P.O. number." I did use a street address. I didn't use a P.O. number. I check each box. It all looks right. I erase each box and type it in again, just in case. Same message. Hmm. Maybe it's because I put "Ave." instead of "Avenue." I change it. Same message. Could they want "Ave" with no period? Try that. Same message. Screw it. I'm using the phone. I sign out and call information. (No way was I looking for a phone number on the website - I'm already annoyed!) After weaving through a maze of "press 1 for...," I get a person, who informs me...Verizon doesn't serve my area. I'm done. I'll try again tomorrow.

Day two: My phone company is sbc. I also know I have colleagues with sbcglobal.net email addresses, so it must work. I find the website, and I get to the part where I can select either dial-up or dsl. I click on the dsl box. Nothing happens. I click on the dsl words. Nothing happen. I refresh the page. Nothing. I sign off the internet and sign back on and try again. Nothing. Time to stop before I throw or kick something.

Day three: On the website again. Clicking around the box in frustration again. Aha! I click on the spaceship picture, and voila! A new screen! But this screen is no longer sbc. I want sbc. I heard I should go through my phone company. This new screen is at&t/yahoo. Will this get me a yahoo email account? I want the one that's sbcglobal.net. Have at&t and yahoo arranged some pop-up to get you to their site when you try to get sbc internet? On the brink of computer violence again, I sign off.

Day four: So my dad says at&t and sbc are now one and the same. Who knew? Back to the website, click on the spaceship. I've got this part down! Now it's decision time: do I want 1.5 speed, or 3.0 speed for $5 more per month? I don't know! What's the difference? If I know my computer is slow, will 3.0 be better? Or is 3.0 for doing fancy stuff I'll never know how to do anyway? Oh, wait! There are extra monthly charges. So $12.99 might end up being $17.99 anyway. How much extra charges? I am still going to be saving money, right? Because I'm definitely not continuing this process otherwise. I've had enough already. I click on "details" to see what this is all about. Hmmm...six paragraphs of legalese. There are extra charges for this, for that and the other. They are not required by law. And nothing about how much. Ready to quit again, I tell myself it can't be that much and to continue on. So I click on the $12.99, and get some screen about technical difficulties and calling a number. Good! Now I'll get to talk to someone! Yes! I sign off the internet (dial-up, remember?) and get on the phone. "Due to an unexpected high volume of calls, the wait time will be at least 17 minutes. You can also contact us through our website, at..." Yeah, right.

Day four: Not willing to spend 17 minutes on hold for a long-distance number, I try the website again. This really can't be that hard. People manage to sign up for dsl every day. Okay. Spaceship, $12.99. Now I have to respond to whether my computer meets five different criteria necessary for the dsl to work. Great. I take a deep breath and look at the first one. I have no idea what it's referring to, but there's a "help" icon. I click on it. It tells me to go to my desktop. I know how to minimize the window, so I can do that. Then it says to click on "my computer." No problem. Now I'm supposed to see if I have a pentium processor, an ethernet card, 266 something-or-other or better, 64 memory somethings. I don't see anything about that on "My Computer"! I see my C drive, my A drive, File, Edit, Favorites. I click around. No help. Forget it.

Day five: Enough already. Time to call in the big guns. I tell a coworker I'll go out and get her a coffee from Starbucks if she'll sign me up for dsl. I come back ten minutes later, and it's done. Is it just me??? Can't wait 'til the kit comes in the mail...

More modern phone dilemmas...

One problem I have with technology is we can rely on it so thoroughly that we have no backup when it doesn't work. I visited my sister and her boyfriend in Boston over spring break. They both have cell phones and don't have a landline at all. I don't have a cell phone, and Dave's (my fiance) is broken. When someone calls it, we can hear them, but they can't hear us. So when my sister and her guy went to work, we were left home with no working phone. My sister resorted to calling us and giving us multiple-choice quizzes. The conversations went something like this:

Sis: I think you picked up. Press once if this is Dana, and twice if this is Dave.
Me: beep
Sis: Okay, press once if you guys are up, and twice if you're still in bed.
Me: beep
Sis: I'm getting off work early. Maybe we could meet for a late lunch. Press once if you are hungry, and twice if you already ate.

You get the picture. So yeah, cell phones are great if everyone has functioning ones. If not, it's worse than before they existed!

What happened to pay phones???

About a year ago I got rid of my cell phone. I couldn't resist using it while driving, I didn't like being expected to be always available, and I just resented that it seemed to have become a required expense. Since then I've noticed that it has become almost impossible to find a payphone when you need it, and that even when you do find one, it's often broken. I suppose it's a result of limited demand = limited supply, but it's made me think about how with the advance of technology, those without resources face more challenges than ever.

Also interesting is how some parts of the world are skipping technological steps altogether. I spent a summer in west Africa a few years ago, and was fascinated to find that many people had gone from no phones whatsoever straight to cell phones. Why bother with the in-between step of land lines? We're amazed here at what we can do now that we wouldn't have even thought possible when we were kids, but the changes are even more dramatic in less-developed countries where people are skipping from almost no modern technology to the very latest!