ALMOST HUMAN

It’s slowly been dawning on me that our GPS is more than a mere electronic device, I believe it’s almost human. Okay you skeptics, just hear me out: first of all is that sweet female voice; secondly this GPS of ours seems to have a mind of her own. For instance she tries very hard to keep us on the route we have set and doesn’t like for us to take any side trips or to deviate in any way from that route. After we have deviated three or four times one can literally hear the disgust in her voice as she says ‘recalculating.’ Sometimes she even gets willful and tries to force us to do what she wants us to by giving directions to retrace our steps back to the place we were instead of continuing from where we are. When she does this we have to put her in time out [turn her off] and let her meditate on her bad behavior for a while. We then  tentatively let her rejoin us [turn her back on] to see if she is willing to cooperate again. Once in a while she even gives us bad directions but I really don’t think she does that on purpose since road construction is always changing things…I don’t hold that against her.

In retrospect it isn’t easy owning a GPS, in fact, it’s quite a responsibility. It’s one we willingly accept though because she makes up for all her faults in places like downtown Atlanta where the streets are like a maze that can’t be navigated without her help. At times like that we’re happy to overlook her faults and let bygones be bygones.

I wouldn’t call her a friend but she is more than an acquaintance and certainly, based on the evidence I have, much much more than a machine….maybe almost human?

NUMBER PLEASE

I well remember the days when one picked up a rotary telephone receiver to make a phone call and a female voice would say, “number please”. I also remember that in some small rural towns one had to share a phone line with several other persons; this was called a party line. When sharing a line with other persons, one was assigned a ring number to go with one’s phone number; for instance, depending on how many others shared your phone line, your ring number could be anywhere from one ring to six rings. Everyone on your line could hear all the rings and anyone could pick up the phone and listen in to any phone call they desired. I really liked it when we each got our own private phone line and no one could listen in on private conversations….except for the phone operator.

It was even better when we graduated from rotary phones to touch tone phones and we no longer had to orally give the number we were calling before the call could be placed. Now with progress a constant companion, it seems everyone has cell phones; many persons have even cancelled their land lines, feeling they are obsolete. I suppose we’re still a bit old-fashioned because even though we each now carry a cell phone, we’re still tightly holding on to our land line.

Sometimes progress is good, other times it’s only frustrating. May I cite an example; no longer are we able to speak with a real person when we call our bank, credit card company, or utility company. Instead we get several automated options along with a couple of different language options. If we are not listening carefully we will miss the option that we want to punch in and have to start all over again. In some instances we do actually have the option of speaking with a company representative by staying on the line while music blares in our ear. If luck is with us, we will only have to ‘hold’ for thirty minutes or so, after which a person comes on the line to speak with us in a language that we cannot decipher but in no way resembles English [one of my all time pet peeves]; if we are unlucky we will be cut off after holding for twenty minutes. At that point, unless we are totally desperate to speak with a real person we just give up and let it go. I mean, who has the time to wait, especially more than once, to speak with a company representative when nine times out of ten they can’t be understood  anyway….and don’t you feel sometimes that they cut us off on purpose just so they don’t have to speak with us?

My husband calls our credit card companies regularly to check on our accounts and since he doesn’t wish to speak to anyone he uses the automated system. Since he’s done this a number of times it usually perks along smoothly and he gets the information he needs in only seconds. The other day however was an exception; the automated voice he reached would ask a question and then continue on to the next question without waiting for his keyed in response.  This kept happening again and again until my husband, not getting  the information he desired, got irritated and hung up the phone. Soon after that the phone rang, he answered it and the automated voice continued asking  questions without pausing. He once again hung up the phone with the identical result….a call back with that same voice asking rapid fire questions. The third time was the charm, after asking a few more questions the voice finally quit speaking. I’ve been trying to remember if that was on April fool’s day…if so, maybe that was the mother of all April fool jokes. Anyway, it was slightly humorous to observe since it was happening to someone other than myself, but I’m a little worried that may be the next step on this road we call progress.

Imagine this scenario: the phone will ring, we will answer it only to be harangued by an automated voice….and we won’t be able to stop the voice by simply hanging up; the phone will just keep ringing until we give in and listen to the whole stupid, nonsensical monologue to silence it. I don’t know about you but if this is on our horizon [and perhaps already here], I might just be willing to go back to the days when we pick up the phone to make a call and hear… “number please.”

HACKED

I didn’t sleep well night before last and had just managed to drag myself out of bed to the cooler than usual air [which should have been a clue that something wasn’t right with the world], when the phone rang. I answered it to a conversation that went something like this.

“Hello.”

“Hello Linda, how are you this morning?”

Lying through my teeth I said, “oh fine.”

“No…you’re not.”

And I, wondering how this person knew the real state of my feelings, brilliantly stammered, “What?”

“You’re in the Philippines, mugged and stranded without any money and I’ve been talking to you on instant messenger about sending you some.”

Well I knew I woke up in a different world every day but I had no idea that today it would be in the Phillipines…..no wonder I felt so lousy, that time difference is a killer!

So began my day and you guessed it, I had been hacked! I had calls all morning from people who apparently I was hitting up for money so I could get the heck out of there and get back home. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so aggravating trying to regain my identity.

I had to figure out how to change my password for Face book, which wasn’t really a big deal but when I tried to log on to my email account, my password and secret question had been changed just that morning [and not by me, I might add] and well, I couldn’t get in! I was in a state of shock, to put it mildly.

After wasting hours looking for a way to contact my email provider, I set up an alternate email address, called my email provider and waited the required amount of time listening to the quiet, ‘ soothing’ music, and then finally talked to someone who actually [surprise, surprise] helped me and sent a new password to my alternate email account.

About two in the afternoon I was in my original email account no worse for the wear, except that all my emails had been deleted…even some important ones that I felt I needed, and the worry that whoever hacked my account had gleaned some information [my address and credit card info] that they could put to use in some way. Hopefully nothing was explicit enough to be of use to them.

I had a relatively peaceful afternoon and was just beginning to think I might actually survive the day when I received another phone call that went something like this.

“Hello.”

“Mom you have a virus.”

“What?”

“I said you have a virus.”

“You think I’m sick? No wonder I felt so bad today….I wish you’d told me early this morning and I’d have stayed in bed and avoided  this whole day.”

“No your computer has a virus.”

And so it went; the day ended as it started, with a phone call about my computer. I can’t believe our society is so enthralled with computers and electronic gadgets that we make ourselves miserable using them….I can’t believe I make myself miserable using them!

I sincerely hope this doesn’t happen again; if it could happen to me it could happen to anyone. I’m very careful about whom I befriend on Facebook, I don’t surf the web, I don’t open email from anyone I don’t know, and I don’t let many people use my computer. My son said that more than likely Facebook and/or Yahoo was hacked and that was how my info fell into the wrong hands and not something I did wrong.

When all is said and done, the thing I feel the worst about is that an elderly aunt of mine got the email about my being stranded in a foreign country and needing money; her daughter said that my aunt was very worried about me. What a cruel trick to play on elderly unsuspecting persons.

As for me, the next time I wake up with the sense of something not being right, I’ll just stay in bed and see if that ‘virus’ will go away on its own.

RANTINGS

I am, to put it bluntly, electronically challenged. I congratulate myself that I am able to turn a computer on and off; I pat myself on the back that I have learned to send email and use Facebook [sort of]; I do the happy dance that I have a blog site and can actually use it; but anything else is way out of my league.

I bought a new large laptop computer a year and a half ago, thinking it would last for a while and therefore be an investment…..silly me. Since I am such a dummy, I paid extra to have the store set it up with everything I wanted on it, including the new fancy printer that I bought at the same time and an antivirus program. When I got it home and plugged it in, viola, everything worked perfectly. That’s the way I like it–no hassle, no fuss for me!

I was totally stoked about my new computer and the way things worked until a few months later when it started giving me problems. I won’t go into the ugly and trying details of getting them to repair my computer, suffice it to say that I eventually got it sent in for repair. Yes, I actually had a three years extended warranty and when I proved that I did they agreed to fix it after a bit more hem hawing around. They don’t keep a record of the extended warranties and don’t expect an individual to be able to produce proof of one. Well I had mine so all was well in paradise, or so I thought.

Imagine my dismay, no, outrage, when I finally got it back from being repaired and it didn’t have the extra things on it that I had originally paid to have added. Like for instance, my printer wouldn’t work because it was missing the driver; I had no antivirus protection and a few other programs were missing or outdated. Okay, I might have been able to live without some of those programs but a printer was essential. So I did what anyone else would do; I ranted and raved, cried and fumed, ranted and raved some more and then I rolled up my sleeves and added the driver for my printer. Now this may sound simple to you but believe me it wasn’t simple for me. I don’t even know what a driver is, much less how to go about adding one. Somehow in my desperate search for a solution I found what I needed to do and I just did it [don’t ask me how]…. and it worked! I have since added another antivirus program and updated all the other programs so ‘I’m back in business’ as they say.

In hind sight I guess I should have sent the computer back to them, but I’d have had to pay the shipping myself and well, I didn’t want them to touch it again. I’d like to report that this has been a learning experience but I’m afraid it hasn’t been. I don’t really know anymore than I did; I remain clueless and after what I’ve been through, I can honestly say I don’t really care. I’ve come to the conclusion that it was just an accidental fluke, or blind determination, that I was able to fix the problem concerning my printer. However, I must say that it was rather empowering to be able to fix it myself instead of paying someone else to do it. Humm, I wonder if I might have a second career in the making? Naw…I don’t think so, not in this lifetime!

THE LAST STRAW

Maybe I have a poor attitude, maybe my zest for all things media has lessened, or maybe the barrage of emails and Facebook posts has finally unhinged me, but I feel I must protest. The endless emails suggesting that if I don’t send said email on to all my contacts [or post someone else’s post as my own] shows that I am not a christian, not patriotic, don’t love my country, don’t support our soldiers fighting for our country, nor do I love my son or daughter, strikes a strong cord of distaste with me. If that’s all it takes to prove one’s allegiance to something then that proves nothing at all. The guilt trip that is laid on me with these kinds of emails, doesn’t work on me, it only makes me mad and I refuse to participate in passing on the information or posting it even if I agree in principle to the content.

If the way I have lived my life is not proof of my faith, love and allegiance then nothing I can send via email will change a thing. How absolutely shallow to think one can click a button and send on some random email thereby securing  a place in the heavenly courts above by doing so. One can verbally profess anything [in this case one doesn’t even have to speak a word, just click a button]  but one action, observed or unobserved, on the part of an individual is worth a thousand words. I truly hope we don’t find ourselves falling back on that old adage,”do as I say, not as I do.” Let us live our lives so there will be no confusion between our words and our actions….and let us live our lives to be a true statement of our beliefs.

THE NATURE OF CHANGE

We’re not the same person today that we were last year and we’re certainly not the same person we were 10 years ago. We are constantly changing and evolving. Some of the change happens because as we get older our understanding matures and we see things in a different way; some of the change happens because we must change to accommodate the changes around us in other persons and in our daily environment; some of the change we can attribute to our continuing education and willingness to learn—old dogs can learn new tricks, maybe not as easily as the young pups can but we certainly can learn new things. Part of the change we experience happens because the world is constantly changing in technology and if we don’t change along with the times, and gadgets, we won’t be able to function in our world.

When my older children were growing up home computers were just beginning to be available. Who knew that we would soon be doing our banking, bill paying, and shopping with a computer?  Who knew computers would make encyclopedias obsolete; that any recipe we wanted would be available to us with a click of a button? And who knew that we could talk to our friends and family using a computer, not only sending pictures and letters to them but that we could see them, in real-time, face to face as we talk?  Computers are so common now that we have computerized cars, sewing machines and house hold appliances. I’m certainly not very literate when it comes to using a computer but even I can and do, use one [or several] every day.

A few years ago our children decided that we needed to have a cell phone because of all the traveling we do. I was hesitant about getting [and using] one but now it seems to be a  necessity…we’re totally lost without it available at hand. Our own personal cell phones are relatively simple although they have many more capabilities than we have knowledge to use. Other phones though are amazing, being actual mini computers; one must be more intelligent than I to use them efficiently.

We have bluetooth in our car as well as an mp3 player, we have a GPS that we have actually learned to use and now I have a Kindle that  instantly puts thousands of books at my finger tips. What’s not to love about technology? How old-fashioned and labor intensive the older forms of learning seem now.

As important as it is to change and keep up with the times, the most important change one can make is the one that occurs  inside oneself,  purposefully and willingly. This change is made to accommodate a growing spiritual awareness and the evidence of a creator waiting to bless our lives as we reach out to those around us. The willingness to love others and to forgive imagined or real slights, expands and enlarges our soul changing us sometimes beyond recognition. No we aren’t the same today as we were last year;but if we are changing as we should change then we are better than we were last year….and hopefully we will just keep getting better and better.