Adapt
Topic: Technology
The microwave died.

I was making some pre-packaged rice in a microwave rice cooker, because it's easier and turns out better than when I make it on the stove top (for me, anyway). When suddenly, the magnetron discontinued output of high-frequency energy. In short, the zoomie gun broke.

This device is rather crucial to the entire operation of the microwave. Inanely, the timer continued counting down the seconds of time that the microwave wasn't cooking anything. Everything else worked as well as it had yesterday, but the zoomie gun had had enough. No, I'm not going to try to fix it. It's a magnetron. If I had what I needed in-house to fix a magnetron, I wouldn't be living here, because I'd be able to afford better.

So it's broke. I need a new one.

Yes, that's right... I could take it to a microwave repair shop, but for what it would cost to get it fixed, I could almost buy a new one. And since I have family that works at Best Buy, I'll spend even less. They get a discount.*

But it's going to be a few days before I can go get one. So until then, I have to "rough it."

How in Hells did I ever cook before we had a microwave? I have things in my house that can only be cooked with a microwave! Every time I heat something, I can't just heat it in the bowl or plate I'll be using to eat it. I have to cook it on the stovetop, guaranteeing the need to wash an extra dish. All my popcorn is for the microwave. Leftovers, hot dogs, everything I used to heat in the microwave now has to be done conventionally.

I could order food delivery, but that's expensive after a while, and it has it's own adventures. Take, for example, Chinese food. They send you fortune cookies along with the meal. We ordered Chinese yesterday, and the obligatory cookies were there, right on the very top. Ghostwolf opened one that read, and I quote here,** "You are not illiterate." There's very few circumstances in which that could be wrong. Even if the person that got the cookie had someone else read it because the person that got it couldn't read, then the person reading it would be able to read. Any person reading that particular fortune is, by definition of the term "illiterate," fulfilling the prophecy. Some fortune writer somewhere is probably laughing off his wontons. "Hahahah! 'You are not illiterate!' I kill me!" is what he's saying, while his co-workers consider changing the term from "going postal" to "going fortune-cookie-writer."

Did you know that if you microwave a fortune cookie, it gets soft and you can unfold it? Then it's just a flat round cookie, all flexible and re-foldable in any pattern or shape you want, until it cools, at which point it's crispy again. That's really nifty, because then you can then invent, make, and insert your own fortunes and give it to someone else. Imagine when Ted opens his and it reads "Ted, floss more." Or "Ted, it's over. I'm dating a fortune cookie writer." "Ted, your lucky numbers are 29, 30, 33, 40, 41, 44." "Up yours, Ted." "You're not illiterate, Ted." The possibilities are limitless. And you can freak out anyone like that; it doesn't have to be someone named Ted. Just print it out, set it on the hot cookie, fold it up, let it cool, and give it to the person you want to mess with. Try it! It's fun!

It'll probably work in the conventional oven too, but the cookies would dry out fast. I'd prove it works in the microwave, but my microwave is broken.

It's amazing how quickly we adapt to something, and say "what did we do before we had this!" Then, it's gone, and you find out what you did before you had it; you did things the hard way; or, at least, you did things the time-consuming way. And it's really not a major inconvenience, but it sure feels like one.

Thank Gods my coffee maker still works.

---

*They can only use it for themselves or immediate family members, so they can't use it for you; I'm not going to ask my family to risk their jobs so you can save. You can't use my family members for that. Get your own.
**I photographed it for you, but it came out all blurry and illegible, so if you don't believe me, that's your prerogative.

---

Toothbrush
Topic: Technology
Look at this, will you? It's got an on-board computer that tells you when you need to change the brush head, tells you how long you've been brushing, how much of a charge it has left, and it'll even tell you in 13 different languages.

And it's a toothbrush! For Gods' sakes, what the Hells happened to plain old, ordinary toothbrushes? I use an electric toothbrush mainly because it's easier than using a regular toothbrush. But I don't need a freakin' timer to tell me I've been brushing long enough! It has "flossing action." I can get that too... I use a special thing called "floss!" I have a water pic too, but I got that due to a weird bit of dental work that needed attention. I don't need it any more, and so I haven't used it in a while. Regular floss works fine again.

Are we, as a nation or race, so easily impressed with technology that we have computerized toothbrushes? Will people actually buy these things? Yes, yes they will, because you could put turtle poop on a long stick and someone, somewhere, will have a need for it, and will be willing to pay you for it. A computerized toothbrush is going to be really, really popular, no matter how much they charge for one.

And I think that's sad.

USB
Topic: Technology
I got a new phone.

I managed to upgrade my old phone and replaced it with a Nokia 6101. I like it. And now, all the cool things I see that I have to tell you I'm not exaggerating or making up, I'll be able to photograph and show you, because it's a camera phone.

The USB cord that allows the owner to connect it to the computer, however, costs 50 United States dollars. Why? It's a patch cable! You can buy a cable that hooks a device that's a printer, fax machine, scanner, and internet telephone to your computer, but a phone costs fifty? But they got you by the unmentionables, because you gotta have it... it's too cool to not have.

I paid a dollar for one on Ebay. Screw you, Nokia.

USB is used for everything nowadays. I gues that's why computer systems are getting more and more ports. Keyboards are now sporting USB hubs, and my computer itself has six ports. My printer has a port on it, and it's hooked up to Ghostwolf's computer, which has eight ports on its own, plus another port on the Zboard. I predict that, eventually, your mouse will have a USB port.*

I was talking to my friend Joe on the phone this morning, and I realized that if they just set up the whole world with USB instead of phone, electrical, and cable wiring to your house, and if all your appliances had USB cords instead of electrical ones, things would be a lot simpler. Sure, they'd need to carry more power, but they will. Oh, they will. Think of it: you buy a television set, come home, plug it into one of your wall USB outlets, and bam! You have cable and power, all in one connection, with only one wire. No need for a cable box, either.

After setting that up, you go into the bathroom, plug your USB hair dryer in, and style away, you sexy thing!

Once your hair is bulletproof, you go into the kitchen, take food out of your USB connected refrigerator (has a television in the door, by the way, because you could), cook it on your USB powered stove, and sit down at your computer. It's plugged into the wall in a USB outlet, so you don't need a router or anything for your internet connection; it's all right there. Power, network, all of it. And it's a hub for the rest of your peripherals. No, it would not be wise to power your refrigerator from your PC's USB ports. But you could set up the lava lamp.

USB; the way of the future! The whole city, state, country, world unified in one network of brotherhood, information, and power!

My Gods... it'll be beautiful.

What? It's too expensive? Oh, come on... how much could it cost... whoah... that much? Oh.

Never mind.

---

*I may be wrong about that prediction, but it's funny.

---

SETI
Topic: Technology
The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (S.E.T.I.) project at Berkely has changed... well, at least the "at home" portion of it has. They still have a backlog of samples taken from outer space using the Arecibo radio telescope, looking for signs of intelligent radio communication. They still want you to use your computer's spare processor time to help them look. And it's still a project at Berkeley. But now they're using Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)* as a hosting client for the project.

Evidently, the idea caught on. It's also been used for a project to decode the human genome (I think that one's finished). There's a slew of participating projects in several languages, all of which have a goal that requires serious computing time, and all of which want your help. Computer time is expensive. The concept that your home computer can help by analyzing data clusters for them, effectively donating computer time to a project, has helped S.E.T.I. catch up a lot of their data, and other projects know a good idea when they see one.

Berkeley developed BOINC to facilitate these projects. They took a good idea and made it available to an even broader range of people, all in the name of science.

I get choked up just thinking about it.

---

*Acronym by some nerd that thinks it's just hi-freakin'-larious.

---

Devolution
Topic: Technology
We're intellectually devolving. It's been happening over a long time, but it's been happening. It started, probably, with the written word.
I know that seems counter-intuitive. The written word allowed communication, and records. It allowed history to be historical, and not just malleable word-of-mouth, shaped by each person's perceptions as they passed it on. With the written word, we didn't have to remember everything. We just had to write it down so that later generations would have the benefit of knowing it, without being told it.

But that's just the point. We didn't have to remember it, or pass it on verbally. Our brains didn't have to do as much work. It gets worse. We invented clocks. Time pieces that allowed us to determine exact times, or at least regular intervals. An hourglass might measure only 58 minutes, and another might measure 64 minutes. But it was close enough. Moreover, it was the same amount of time for each individual hourglass, every time it was turned over and a full bulb began filling an empty one. We didn't have to estimate the time, or derive it by solar reckoning. We would, within reason, know.

Abacus variations were created, and we had calculators. We didn't need to do the math in our heads or with pencil and paper. Now, we use computers to perform complex functions, instead of filling a chalkboard with equations.
We have computers that track shop inventory, order new inventory when a particular item gets low on supply, and even track losses due to breakage and theft. We don't think about these things any more. We don't have to.

And it's making us less intelligent in many ways.

I'm trying to avoid a slippery slope argument here, and also to avoid sounding like a Luddite. Understand right now that I'm in favor of technology.* But the point I'm making is that we learn higher functions, and rely on our technology to do the lower functions. We also rely on it to perform the highest functions, all so we don't have to. We've learned how to find the volume of an irregular solid using mathematics. We need a calculator to do the actual addition and multiplication, though. Essentially, although we can hit a comet from millions of miles away with a rocket (thanks to our computers), we can't balance a checkbook. But we don't need to... there's software for that.

I get a little jolt of satisfaction when I can get the check at a restaurant, glance at it, and give the server my money card. By the time the server has come back, I've already figured out the tip and the total. I just write them down and I'm done. I do this in my head without any tip calculators, or digital calculators, or anything but neuron-power. I enjoy the reactions of people I'm with when they see me do that, because they think it's hard. It's not, but they don't try to do it, because they don't have to. Why bother? There's a calculator on their watch.

We don't even have to remember our appointments. The dentist calls us, and reminds us the day before. Well, mine does, anyway. This is good for me, because I don't use my digital planner as well as I should. Luckily, their appointment schedule is computerized, and they can bring up the next day's appointments on a screen and call the people. I bet there's even a program function that will dial the number for them.

Someone in my home has photographs ready for pickup from Walgreen's' photo center. Their computer called the house... not a person looking at a screen, but an actual computer called the house, and a pre-recorded voice said they were ready.

We haven't reached a state where machines run our lives yet. They make our lives as we know them possible. We don't need to think. If we have digital television, we can even pause the program and go to the bathroom, instead of waiting for a commercial. And, if we do that, it creates a "buffer" which allows us to fast-forward through the commercials when they do come up.

We no longer need to change to suit our environment. We have the ability to change our environment to suit our needs. We don't have to find a cave because we can build a shelter. If it's too hot, we don't have to evolve more efficient means of cooling our bodies, because we have air conditioning. We don't evolve physically any more. We can only evolve intellectually, psychologically, or emotionally. And these evolutions require thought.

However, thanks to technology, we don't have to do that one thing that we should be doing, which is thinking. On the one hand, that seems to mean we don't exercise our brains enough. It's not a good thing.

On the other hand, that means our imaginations are more free to ask "What if..." and to postulate, conjecture, and wax philosophical. We can think in abstracts and develop new ideas which can then be tested with the technology designed to do the "grunt-work" of intellectual invention. This is a good thing.

Unless you have no imagination. Then it's a bad thing again. Please think. Imagine. Wax philosophical. Exercise your grey matter. The mind you save will be your own.

---

*If you haven't figured that out by now, considering this is a weblog, then it may be too late for you.

---

Whum
Topic: Technology
I put a DVD burner in Bob last night.

The amazing thing is that it went in perfectly. No hardware errors or anything. It was all jumpered, cabled, and secured exactly, the system recognized it instantly, the software installed easily. There was nothing craptacular at all.

Until I tried to use it.

The software left something to be desired.

Every time I tried to do something with it, I got the "Please insert a CD-RW" message. Which was odd, since I was trying to burn it as a DVD. All I wanted to do was test the DVD functionality, and it kept asking for the CD-RW. This got frustrating. It was supposed to cheerfully say "Okay! Burning now!" and little "whum-whum" noises were supposed to come from the drive as it did amazingly complex things with plastic, mylar, and a laser; things verging on the obscene, in a strange, technical sort of way ("Ah, mah leetle diskette... tehk mah data!" (whum-whum-whum...).

I tried burning a DVD (it was copy protected and said, essentially, "go whum yourself"), tried saving data to the DVD (which it recognized as a DVD but instead of burning onto it, asked for a CD-RW), tried burning MP3's onto it (still wants a CD-RW), and otherwise behaved in an amazingly annoying manner (didn't work). There's nothing functionally wrong with the drive. It passed all the analysis software tests, and writes properly. The software is the part which turned out to be craptacular.

I mentioned it to my resident geek, who said "Oh, using Nero's freeware that came with the drive?"
"Yes!"
"We get this a lot. There's no documentation or anything that says to do this, but on the StartSmart menu, in the upper right corner, there's a couple of icons. Default is CD. You have to click the one that says DVD."

Why? The software can detect what kind of disc is in the drive! Why the Hells don't they at least say "The disc in the drive is a DVD, and the software is currently configured for CD. Would you like to change discs or configuration?" That'd be like a line of code.

I never even noticed those icons. And there's nothing in the help files that I could find either. But I tried clicking the DVD icon. It works. And when you do that, the software is actually very convenient.

It's the documentation that's craptacular.

Brains
Topic: Technology
How many times have you thought to yourself "I need an undead mustelid. If only I could install Linux on a dead badger!"
Well, now you can! Just follow these easy instructions, and you'll have an undead badger powered by an open-source operating system, and in less time than you'd probably spend installing Windows XP!

Remember, though... raising the dead may have negative ramifications on your immortal soul's final destination. Consult your religious leader for help. They've probably done it before, and can give you a few tips.

Gestalt
Topic: Technology
Ahhh... sweet harmony. Opposing camps have come together and formed a more perfect union, established balance, and ensured domestic technology, provided for the common sense, promoted the general welfare and ensured the blessings of... something.

I've long said that Apple Macintosh computers are superior to IBM / Windows based systems in many ways, but that I didn't use them because they lack market support, and they can't be easily upgraded by the user. I expect all that to change.

Soon, say around the year 2006, Macs will be built using Intel processors. It's decided. Motorola will just have to go back to making citizen's band radios and telephones... Goodbye, Moto.

I've seriously considered switching before. But if I can switch and keep market support by using a hybrid platform, maintaining an Intel processor, it just whets the appetite a little more.

I know what I know about computer hardware because I use an IBM system, and I couldn't afford to buy a new one every time I wanted to upgrade. I also couldn't afford to pay someone that knew what they were doing to upgrade the system I already had. I had to do it myself. If I hadn't, I'd probably still be using a 386 DX with a 20 meg hard drive and 5 meg of RAM.*
The beauty of a Mac is that you probably won't need to upgrade often, and you'll probably not learn a lot about its inner workings. But you won't have to. Oh, I know there's complete cyberwonks out there that change their Macs as regularly as they change underwear.** But they don't do it because they have to. They do it because they want to. Often, from what I've seen, it's easier and more effective to just buy a new Mac when you want to upgrade. It's also more expensive. This is why Mac is still in business.

I recall when OSX was released that a lot of third party RAM upgrades became useless because the new operating system wouldn't recognize them. Apple said that "feature" was added because those RAM chipsets hadn't been evaluated for their reliability, or had been evaluated and found to be unreliable. Therefore, in order to maintain reliability in the system, the OS wouldn't recognize or use those RAM chipsets. Which meant that a large number of Mac users suddenly had less RAM. There were 3 ways around it: they could buy "better" RAM (that is, RAM that had been approved by Apple as acceptable), they could retrofit their OS back to the previous one, or they could download a patch and install it. The patch thing only came out as a result of several million angry customers swearing they'd have Steve Jobs' guts for garters if they didn't fix the problem. Presumably, Jobs likes his guts where they are, because the patch was issued.

That kind of highlights what I'm saying... which is, Macs are proprietary. They don't like ham-fisted monkeys poking in their innards, messing about, changing things. It's creepy. It's eery. It's unwholesome. It voids warranties. It's... well, it's fun, but they don't like it.

IBM systems are a nightmare of compatibility issues. They need upgraded regularly, or they'll get behind the power curve and you won't be able to run the software you want. And don't get me started on the operating systems and prevalence of virus activity. But most software is written for them first, and much of it never sees a Mac hard drive.

Why is this? I don't know. I think computer companies just like hurting their customer base. And we, apparently, like being hurt.

I know I do. I'm a Windows user. And with this new merging of Intel processors in Apple computers, I can be hurt by both worlds.

I know. An optimist would say "the best of both worlds." I'm not an optimist. My glass is not half empty, not half full. My glass is twice as large as it needs to be.

It's a compatability issue.

*Actual system specs. Everyone started somewhere. Snigger if you must, but I learned a lot from that old computer.
**Once per week. Generally speaking, cyberwonks in all platform camps aren't all that hygienic.

I Love Technology
Topic: Technology
The phone rang. We answered it. It was a fax machine. We hung up the phone.

See, we don't have a fax machine. We don't even normally connect a computer to the phone line, unless we have an important fax to send or receive. And we weren't expecting one.

Fax machines are wonderful devices that allow the sending of documents from one place to another, assuming neither place has the wonder that we call "internet" to allow for similar document sending in the form of a graphics file. If you send a fax to a computer, it'll save the document as a graphics file anyway.

The benefits to fax (short for "facsimile," because it sends a facsimile image of the document) had an immediate impact to the business world when the fax machine was first introduced. It allowed deals to be closed much more quickly, because they didn't rely on snail mail or courier to deliver documents from, say, Los Angeles to, say, Minsk. The time saved by this is impossible to fully appreciate unless you go back to the old way.

Nowadays, with email, documents are shared even more quickly. Fax machines are actually out-dated and less effective now. Within my lifetime, I have seen the invention, implementation, and decline of the fax machine. It is now obsolete; not to say archaic.

So this ancient technology called my house and wanted to talk to ancient technology that I don't have; that is to say, I have an emulation of it, but I don't keep it connected to the telephone line. That's where my phone is. As I said, we hung up the phone.

And, later, it called again. We hung up again.

And, later, it called again. We hung up again, more annoyed than the previous time.

And, later, when the phone rang again, we let the answering machine get it. Answering machines are another marvelous invention, allowing telemarketers to sell at you even when you're ignoring them. We figured that when the person attempting to send the fax connected to an answering machine, they would stop trying. No such luck; the fax machine kept trying.

Finally, I dialed the ever-popular *69, and obtained the telephone number. My daughter plugged the number into Google, and got the business name, and a phone number for their voice line. We then called the voice line and told them to cut it out. They agreed, and we only received one more attempt.

The woman that answered was apologetic. "It must be my boss. He doesn't know how to use a fax machine."

I kind'a figured as much.

Appreciate Your Local Mad Scientist
Topic: Technology
There's so many machines. So very, very many. And we never think about them. But nearly every item in your home, from the flooring to your ceiling fan, has to have had at least one of its components mass-produced. And someone needed to invent a machine to do it.
Someone invented a machine to roll toilet paper onto the roll and then glue the end sheet in place.
Someone invented a machine to screw caps onto bottles.
Someone invented a machine to mass-produce electronics components.
Someone invented a machine to wrap saltines in sleeves, and then stuff four of those filled sleeves into a box.
Someone invented a machine to make the box.

Submarine sailors have a legend about a certain piece of equipment on board their ship which nobody really understands how it works. According to Submariner Legend,* the inventor wasn't mad before he designed it, but went mad immediately after. By all accounts, the equipment should not function, but it does. And it can be mass-produced. True story. Because if it wasn't a true story, I wouldn't be able to tell it. Whether or not it's factual is completely up for grabs.

But the point is that there's people out there... oh, call them mad scientists, deranged technologists, or, in extreme cases, engineers, that design machines that make our day to day lives possible. Someone invented a mass-produced method of cooking, canning, and packaging chicken noodle soup. That couldn't have been easy.

And yet, these heroes of our society go unsung. Oh, granted, they put a lot of that onto themselves. They have press conferences that go along these lines:
Inventor: "I have developed a device that will revolutionize our society, and make possible our wildest dreams, at almost no cost! All our energy and natural resource worries are over!"
Reporter: "Why are you wearing hip-waders and swim-fins?"
Inventor: "I fail to see how that is relevant to this press conference."

But in large part, the marvels of machinery they construct are simply out of sight, and therefore out of mind. I recently received a unique gift from my daughter... it's a toy lobster with a body made from a plastic slinky. The entire thing is covered in velveteen, including the plastic slinky. Someone made a machine to mass produce that.

And I know a lot of you are thinking "Yeah... sweat shops. Brilliant invention." I'm not talking about that kind of assembly. I'm talking about the machines that put the bottle caps on our bottles of beer. The machines that mass-produce windshields in the exact shape and size needed for a specific make and model of car. Machines that assemble replacement windshield wiper blades. Machines that mass-produce screwdrivers, flash-lights, light bulbs, lamps, wall-sockets, combs, hair brushes... things that can't be made by hand.

Someone invented a machine to do all those things. And they deserve recognition, and congratulations.

Thanks, all you mad scientists. And congratulations.

*which is as reliable as any other kind of legend... that is, it's not.