Technology Update

My phone.  Sigh.  I acquired a phone two years ago because my son, Bruce Wayne, won it in a silent auction but couldn't really afford the cost of the monthly upgrade it would require and gave it to me instead.  I used it for a while and just mastered the operating system (we'll just say it wasn't one of the more successful phone manufacturers we're dealing with here too) when my darling nephew (and he really is darling) dropped a can of spray oil from about two feet height onto the touch screen and shattered it.  I took it back and they offered to sell me for a very low fee a replacement phone of a more mainstream brand but I stubbornly refused feeling exhausted at the prospect of learning yet another operating system.  And now I have had this phone for quite a while, replaced the battery, and have been unable to be satisfied by so many of the features of this phone . . .

I'll not bore you with too many details, but if you're time is so darned precious you probably wouldn't be reading my blog anyhow so here we go: 1) several of the letters on the keyboard hit once will produce multiple copies of the letter needed--e and k most notably; 2) several other letters and the shift key and the alt key often have to be hit multiple times in order to work at all--c is the one that annoys me most as it is usually the first letter in the word and by the time I notice that it's not there, I'm three words down the line having never mastered the ability to watch keyboard and the screen at the same time on my phone.  On a computer I touch type, but one cannot touch type on a keyboard the size of a large postage stamp.  So I struggle between the pull of "typing" as fast as I can go, eyes glued to the keyboard, and watching the screen for errors that the keyboard is creating by its uneven response to my touch.  Grrrrrr.  3) Lately, sometimes, but not all the time, and never when the phone guy is in the room, my phone has developed this new and charming habit of going dark on the screen when the screen is slid back to reveal the keyboard.  In other words, I can't use the keyboard.  So there are a lot of things I can't do.

The good news, and I hesitate to characterize it that way because if it truly were good news, it would be that the phone company would out of some deep-seated guilt, gift me a much better phone from a much better manufacturer.  We all know that won't happen.

But I digress.

The good news is that the phone works perfectly fine so long as it's plugged in.  It texts, it calls, it goes on the web, it looks up stuff and slides back and I can use the keyboard (such as it is) to my heart's content.

A thought came to me today as I was contemplating this new phone "feature."  I have a phone.  It works.  I take a charger with me wherever I go.  I plug it in, it works.  I unplug it and it works.  I slide the screen back, it dies.  I plug it in, it comes back to life.  Everywhere I go I find a place to plug it in or risk its death.  I thought maybe this marks a minor return to a previous inconvenience of an old household phone that had a wire and had to be plugged in.  But then I realized that those old phones were actually wireless . . . the docking station had to plug in but the phone was "portable" as we would call it.  My phone, au contraire, is not portable at all.  It is not wireless, at least not literally, although the wireless signal still works.  But the phone itself only works when attached to a wire.  It has to be plugged in.

I have traveled back in time to remember my childhood days when a phone was a thing you had in two or three rooms in your house at most--kitchen, living room, and parental bedroom.  And you had to stay near it to talk on it.  It was a simpler life.  No voice mail, no answering machine, just calling and either you got them or you didn't or their line was busy so you might try again soon.

I want you to know this is not making me feel the least bit nostalgic.  It's not like Hostess Ding Dongs.  I'm just crabby.

Privacy

I don't think about privacy much.  I am somewhat cautious, and encourage my children to be so, on the web, about handing out personal information right and left, but I'm neither paranoid about it nor cavalier.  I shop on line, figuring that the dangers of handing out my credit card that way are at least as good as handing them out to the gas station attendant on a nearby "highway" who stole my credit card number a few years back.  And there's always the odds of getting mugged in Manhattan to think about and having my identity stolen that way.  I have had plenty of chances, after moving from a job in a "troubled" neighborhood to a "country club" neighborhood, of discovering that disloyalty and bad behavior and violations of privacy and betrayal are the purview of the wealthy moreso than the underprivileged.  No self-respecting drug dealer or gang member would violate individual privacy or even tattle.

But there is a new twist I discovered on the privacy issue last evening hanging out with Clark Kent.  I don't know if I've revealed this before about her, but she's a bit of a technology nerd.  Okay, maybe that's an understatement.  She's a colossal technology nerd.  She's the kind of person everyone I know goes to for help with their gear--laptops, iPods, phones, DVD players--whatever you've got, she's the most likely person in our circle to be able to make it work.  And she showed me a new privacy violation that has happened to her.  Not to her, but at her.  Her privacy is safe as long as I keep referring to her "Clark Kent" and not by her real name on this blog anyhow.

Last night she showed me the daily emails she is currently getting from . . . well, I don't want to disparage the inner-workings of an online giant like this one, but let's just say, a dating site.  And let's just also say that it's not a specialty site that focuses on a specific ethnic group or anything.  It's a monster huge gigantic site for everyone looking for a date.

Only here's the kicker: Clark didn't join the site.  Somebody else did and accidentally entered Clark's email address instead of their own.  And her (we think) daily reports from the matchmaking site are coming to Clark as to who might be perfectly suited for her dating hopes and dreams.  Which might be really fabulous if not for the fact that said matches are for the individual who put in the wrong email, who, as it happens, we can speculate, has little in common with Clark.

Clark Kent is my daughter, who graduated from an eastern college of note five years ago this month.  And although the graduation itself does not preclude her from being of a certain age, the odds are good that she is yet in her twenties.  And I will vouch for that being the case.  It's already hard enough for me to admit that I have a daughter who graduated from an eastern college of note five years ago this month, in that that makes me at least reasonably older than minimally 27 years by 20 some further years, given that I got married and had her after college my own self . . . but to suggest that the perfect "match" for her according to her daily emails, might be a gentleman in his seventies or eighties, is an insult to my slim grasp on middle age cause if she's that age, I'm 100 and change.  Which I'm not.

But the disturbing bit goes like this: her emails show little photos of gentlemen who belong to this site who are longing to find the perfect mate.  And a quick click on any of said photos will take you to a fairly detailed profile of said individual--location, age, career (or career from which he has retired), preferences about all sorts of very private and personal things.  It's beyond creepy.  Especially the shirtless ones.  But I digress.

What has happened here is that some dozens of elderly gentlemen in the midwestern portion of the US have unwittingly sent their fondest hopes, dreams, and best-foot-forward portraits, to a hip young techno geek who resides in New York City.  And she can't stop it, even though she might want to, because the mistaken email password on the dating site is unknown to her.

What are we supposed to do about this privacy issue, huh?

Credit Due

I don't know why I'm blogging.  I guess it's sort of a modern diary.  But it's not really.  I loathe the concept of updating people on the mundanities (is that a word?) of life . . . "ate tomato soup today; wish it was accompanied by a grilled cheese sandwich but I'm watching carbs" . . . This is really why I don't Twitter or Tweet or whatever it's called.  I'm trying to practice writing.  Practice expressing myself.  For no reason whatsoever.  I have no illusion of being a professional writer.  I think that career is now open to everyone with an internet connection.  But I do have to say that I read a few blogs myself . . . not anywhere near as many as I could, but still.  And I have to credit one of them with having an effect beyond the sheer enjoyment of them.  The Bloggess.

Regardless of how lousy I feel, and lately that's been pretty lousy, she makes me smile.  And laugh.  And cry with laughter.  And that's a gift.  And I want to thank her personally.

But as I mentioned in a recent post, I'm kind of withdrawn lately, compared to my old self at least.  So when my son, Bruce Wayne, and my daughter, Clark Kent, and I went to the event marking her book launch, I stayed in my seat while they stood on line to meet her, get her autograph, and take pictures with her.  My heart was full.

Roller coasters

I don't like roller coasters.  I wonder why anybody would like roller coasters.  I also don't like scary movies.  Unless they're really really funny.  I don't like jumping off the ground or being lifted.  I'm really just not very trusting when it comes to that sort of thing.  I want to have my feet on the ground at all times, except maybe when I'm sitting on a comfy couch with an ottoman or lying on a bed.  To be frank, I'm not even all that comfortable on a bicycle and any kind of skates or skiing or anything like that isn't so much fun for me either.  I'm a terrible swimmer and won't put my face in the water, except in a shower for about two seconds at a time and only if the water isn't too strong.  I prefer being the driver to being the passenger, which makes flying on airplanes really awkward for me.  I would rather do the cooking than be the guest too.  I even like throwing my own birthday party.

I don't really think of myself as a control freak, per se, although I might be interested to hear arguments on that from my family members.  Sandman is very forward about telling everybody that I'm "high maintenance."   I guess that means maybe I am a control freak.  So as I grow old(er), this seems to be manifesting itself in a general misery over doing much of anything.  I don't like anything anymore.  I prefer the familiar and comfortable.  I'm re-reading books and going to visit my favorite museum exhibits and seeing shows I know and watching reruns of old television series' and making dishes I used to like.  I've lost my will to experiment.  It's all kind of hopeless and a giant disappointment that I anticipate will ruin everything.  I only want to talk to old friends and then I prefer to listen.  I want to watch my children instead of doing things with them.

I used to be very trusting about loyalty and love and the bonds among colleagues and cohorts of various kinds.  That's all quite gone.  The more recent "friends" proved fair weather.  If I ask nothing of them, perhaps they won't disappoint.  A kind of personal "don't ask; don't tell" policy.

So being unemployed is really not my cup of tea.  I have no control.  Just anxiety.  It feels like I'm sitting at the top of the roller coaster, which I don't like to be on.  And I can anticipate only that unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach, approaching.  So how do I pick myself up by my own bootstraps now that I've given my boots to Peter Parker?  I need to embrace some adventure.  And it's just not in my nature.

Today, the president announced his support for same-sex marriage.  He clearly has a sense of adventure.  He likes the roller coaster.  I need to embrace that model.