What a Drag It Is Getting Old

Remember before the Internet?

Well, I do. If you were a quote-smart kid-unquote (i.e your parents were some kind of weird antisocial brainiacs), you were aware of the existence of such things as "personal computers," and possessed a vague foreshadowing that these exotic machines might one day break through the heretofore unbreached frontiers of geekdom and draw Mr. and Mrs. Everyfamily into the warm glow of their electronic embrace.

Then you shook yourself a little and said, "Naaaaaaah."

However, as it happens, the dang thing is just about everywhere these days (unless of course you work for a government agency). What isn't on the Internet? Everything is. Everything.

The quickest example to spring to my mind, just at the moment, is the lyrics to Cocteau Twins songs.

To be perfectly honest, my perception of the universe as I know it (or heretofore knew it) is rather shaken. I guess I was about eighteen, nineteen years old when I first became aware of the Cocteau Twins; but one of the most basic functions of the Cocteau Twins - as I understood it - is to provide lyrics with the profound meaning of which you cannot possibly find any faults, inasmuch as you can't begin to understand what the heck it is that they're singing.

Such was my life, from the time I was eighteen or nineteen until the age of forty; and readily can you believe what a happy, carefree existence it was. Then you go and find out that one of your favorite songs of all time contains such a line as

"Tis the lucky lucky penny penny penny penny"

in the midst of a whole bunch of other words that also don't make any sense, and, well, you get a little discouraged. All those years of smoking pot in college for NOTHING.

Ring In the Old

Just when I'd almost forgotten I work in state government, a reminder dropped into my lap in the form of some righteous blog fodd - er, I mean, in the form of this handy booklet, published during (I'd estimate) the Kennedy administration to train state employees how to comport themselves on that newfangled phone thingummy.

The kicker is that WE STILL USE THIS BOOKLET. I shit you not, it's still distributed to employees who have extensive telephone dealings with the public, apparently on the idea that the guy in the picture above is exactly what you hope people are imagining when they're on the phone with you.

Check out that phone - that is one high-tech piece of desk candy, n'est-ce pas?


Some things haven't changed much since the Kennedy administration, apparently - I swear I've worked with this guy.


And they were some sick little bastards back then too, weren't they? This is a truly disturbing image. The page goes on to tell you what not to say when answering a coworker's or boss' phone (remember that voicemail will not be invented for a few decades yet): he's hasn't come in, he left early, he's on break, I don't know where he is. Or "He was last seen going into the men's room with a newspaper tucked under his arm 45 minutes ago, and if he hasn't come out in twenty more minutes, I'm sending in a HAZMAT team."


Or "He preferred a violent, untimely death to the prospect of conversation with you."


Well, this is still valid advice, I suppose. Have writing materials. On your desk. Where you work.

I don't know, based on Mr. Question Mark's paper cutouts and the fact that this guy can take notes in the accumulated dust on his desk, something tells me the agency that published this booklet didn't have the highest expectations of its employees' productivity. Just a thought.


UR DOIN IT RONG!!!1!11!!!


Einstein? Seriously?? Given the rest of this booklet, though, I kind of think they're being sarcastic. The other guy looks kind of cool.


Um, because I've become convinced that I'm a frog and hopped onto a levitating lily pad, which just happens to pass right outside my caller's window?

The caller has no one but himself to blame; clearly it's after hours.


I keep in pretty close touch with Paoonel Heisii, myself.


Yes. These are detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to talk on the phone. I guess the agency was afraid the more subtle insults contained earlier in the booklet might be missed on its employees, so in one last desperate attempt, decided to make everything perfectly clear on the last page. "Our employees are such morons they don't even know which way to hold the phone," they are saying. "For God's sake. Are you paying attention to what we're saying here? This is the public you're talking to here. They can HEAR you."

Act your extension, not your IQ.

And So It Begins

Katie and I stopped by the AT&T store yesterday. For about a month, I haven't been able to send text messages, though I could still receive them. It takes time to get yourself worked up to do something, okay?

I explained the problem to the friendly rep by the door and handed her my phone. "Oh, your mailbox is full," she said. "There's not enough memory to send or receive messages when you have that many in your inbox."

"I don't think that's it," I objected, "I can still get texts, it just won't let me send." But I emptied my inbox. "Here, let me show you the error message I get," and I composed a test message to Robbie and hit send.

"Yay!" Robbie texted back, because texting is one of our primary means of communication. The AT&T rep was very nice, and waited until I had left the store to laugh at me.

Katie insisted on loitering a while to play with the iPhone on display. She wants one, which means I get one - I can't very well buy my teenaged daughter a fancier phone than mine - but I found the touchscreen keyboard incredibly difficult to use, and kept missing and hitting the wrong letters with clumsy thumbs, and it doesn't work if you try to press with the tips of your fingernails. "Oh my gosh, I can't use this," I wailed, though Katie (who has a certain vested interest here) kept insisting I'd get used to it quickly.

Someone I once knew said he'd know he was old when a popular gadget came out that he was unable to make heads or tails of. "You know," he said, "like your grandparents with the VCR forever blinking 12:00. When something new comes out and I can't figure out how to work it, like that, I'll know... but I can't wait to see it!"

I hope the iPhone is not that gadget for me, not already, not yet, I'm too young!

Friday I visited a dermatology "medical spa" to have a mole removed, and while there I asked the doctor about how to offset the very beginnings of fine lines around my eyes that I'm beginning to notice. "I've read about retinoid cream, and how it lessens wrinkles by accelerating skin cell turnover," I said, "and I found some at the grocery store, but is there a brand you recommend?"

It turns out there is, indeed - in prescription strength, and they sell it for $83.00 a tube (but with a 20% discount it's only $66!), but the dermatologist, without half a moment's hesitation, cheerfully recommended Botox. "Look," he said, handing me a mirror, "smile, and I'll show you." He put his fingers beside my eyes and stretched the smile-crinkles apart. "Botox will just relax the muscles that squinch up your skin like that."

"I think I'll get the cream," I said, because (1) I think I'd rather get wrinkles than lose the ability to smile with my eyes, and (2) forget my incompetence with the iPhone, thinking of myself as a person who gets Botox would really make me feel old.

Act Your Age, Not Your Sleep Number

Spring has come to breathe a promise (or a threat) of the coming summer, and I find myself lying alone in a hotel room in San Angelo, trying to find my personal Sleep Number.

That's going to be the first line when I write my Great American Novel.

It's not right. It's an air mattress. It feels like an air mattress. Once you get it soft enough, it feels like a partially deflated air mattress in a box, and you can't really sit on the edge of it properly. The whole dual adjustable sides thing is wrong, too, because I'm here on business and this bed is MINE, the whole entire thing, not just half of it. Hell, I have TWO beds, that's how much I plan to spread out. And when I take a shower tomorrow, I'm gonna use one towel for my body and a whole nother towel just for my hair.

But I digress. All I'm trying to say here is that I'm not all that impressed with the Sleep Number beds, and I don't see why the Bionic Woman is so gung-ho about the damn things. And I wanted so badly, when I was little, to grow up to be just like her...

It's been a road-intensive weekend; yesterday, Tony, Robbie, and some other friends and I went on a day-touring trip Tony planned. We went to Marble Falls, ate breakfast at the Bluebonnet Cafe, toured Longhorn Cavern, visited the Devil's Waterhole at Inks Lake State Park, popped in for a quick peek at the dam on the dismally low Lake Buh-chanan, then finished the day with dinner at Chili's in Marble Falls, on the patio overlooking the water as the sun set.

Then the group separated and Robbie and I went shopping at Walgreen's. For some odd reason, this is one of my favorite things to do with Robbie - though basking on the rocks by the shores of Inks Lake with him like a couple of sea lions is giving Walgreen's a run for its money. But you can't buy (ahem) shoulder massagers at Inks Lake, or if you could you probably wouldn't want to, not that I would want to purchase such an object anyway, seeing as how I've got a Sleep Number bed here to keep me busy.

This is going to be a long week.

Get in the Car. Now.

If you really need to see somebody that badly, just go there.

This was not the intended message of the "How to conduct meetings via video teleconference" class I was in today, a class I've been enrolled in for the better part of a year. The panicmonger signed my former lead worker and me up for it. The idea was that we could use the most cutting-edge technology available to train our satellite offices on maintaining our database - a mainframe application that was implemented in 1995.

The software is gradually gaining in acceptance among older employees, which is kind of a pity, seeing as how it's been hopelessly obsolete for several years.

Nonetheless, the class was fairly instructive, once the teachers figured out how to get the equipment working. The first section of the course covered the multitude of reasons why you should conduct meetings via video teleconference. You don't have to travel anywhere, for one. And the face-to-face experience is just as real using our equipment as it is in person! Assuming that the person you're meeting with has a habit of breaking down into pixels without warning, and really enjoys doing the robot.

This isn't intended as a slam on video conferencing in general. A big part of the problem is that our equipment is (surprise!) a little bit out of date. The main camera, mounted on the back wall, comes with a tracking collar that the presenter can wear so that the camera can follow him as he walks around the room.

"Never use this," stressed the instructors repeatedly.

Why not? It sounds cool enough. But there are several good reasons (and I am not making these up, these are the actual reasons they gave):

1. You have to move very, very, very, very slowly, and not have long hair, or the camera won't be able to track you, and your conference might freeze up.
2. Your conference will freeze up after an hour or so anyway.
3. The tracking collar must be charged up before each use, but you have to watch it carefully while you are charging it, and remove it from the base as soon as the light comes on, because it doesn't shut itself off when the charge is complete and will be destroyed; and it can't be replaced because
4. the manufacturer no longer makes it, and although you can find a replacement on eBay,
5. eBay is not a state-contracted vendor.
6. Also, you'll probably forget and wear it to the bathroom.

Still, for the general purpose of a stationary, wall-mounted camera, it does fine, and the only difficulty we had was that our remote instructor couldn't demonstrate it properly because it broke when she tried to turn it on. "Hmm. Smells like smoke," she said, using the smaller, supplemental camera. "Here's the part you shouldn't touch!" She pointed to the power button.

The most entertaining part of any course is the universal frustration that students experience when dealing with unfamiliar equipment. Have you ever noticed how huffy people get? It never fails. "Here, hold down the 2 button for a little longe -" "I AM!!!!!!!!!"

And of course it always turns out they were doing it wrong.

Here are a few actual student questions from today's session.

"How slowly do you have to move to use the tracking collar? Would you show us?"

"Does the gray remote go with the gray monitor and the black remote go with the black monitor?"

"Which way do you turn the volume knob to make it louder?"

Me, I'm spending the rest of August on the road.

There's More To Life than Duct Tape

You remember those detachable-face car radios, right? It was supposed to be a great theft deterrent that you could pop the face off and put it in a little pouch and carry it with you whenever you left the car. I knew maybe two or three people who actually did that. Everybody else just left it in place until the radio got stolen or (much more likely) the spring-loaded clamps that held the face on got loose or broken, so the radio no longer worked, and they had to go out and buy another one.

I have a detachable-face radio in my '92 VW Golf. When I bought it, you couldn't get a radio without that feature, which was a real pisser because my previous radio had one, and before I'd had it very long it got loose and turned itself off whenever you drove over a bump. So I asked the salesman at Best Buy if they didn't have maybe just one piece-of-shit, cheap-ass car radio without a detachable face? They did not. But the salesman assured me, over my protests, that the problem with my old radio must have been a fluke, because the faces never come loose and stop working.

Well, guess what? It did. In your face, Best Buy salesman!!! Who's laughing now??

Oh yeah.

Anyway, in preparation for a weekend trip to Houston, which did not happen because the sister temporarily in Houston (who lives in Connecticut now) never called me back, and the sister in Austin could not bother waking up for the trip anyway, I went out and Krazy-Glued the face onto my radio. And you know what? It works now! I rock. Didn't I tell you I rock? I am so resourceful!

Watch it be stolen by tomorrow morning.