Sometimes I wish I was a Techno Geek

Comcast finally got my e-mail service back up yesterday. They couldn’t say why it was down. Then in the middle of a business conference call last night, I lost both Internet and phone service, which are through Comcast, but not TV.

I had to hunt up the call-in code and get back on with my cell, then have the doctors on the call waste their time bringing me up to speed. About five minutes later, I heard dial tone, and it was back up.

This morning, I was on line to send something to my office, when it happened again. Phone and Internet—but not TV—out for about five minutes, then back up.

I have no idea if this was a local outage or just me, so I don’t know if the Comcast tech who took five hours to install our cable last Thursday screwed it up, or it’s just Comcast’s usual efforts to keep customers alert.

I was already frustrated last night with technology. I tried to hook up a DVD player to our bedroom TV. With the regular red-white-yellow cables, I get sound, but only a B&W picture. With an S-Cable, I get a color picture, but no audio. Huh? So the DVD player & the TV are OK. It must be a cable issue, which I’m too dumb to figure out. Any suggestions, please send to me at tartanmarine@gmail.com.

In the Corps, I was trained as a Radio Relay tech, a bad fit if there ever was one. Having a high GCT doesn’t compensate for lack of natural aptitude. But in the Corps, if you couldn’t get it to work, you could drop it on the deck, then ship it to higher echelon for maintenance. Maybe that’s why, after tech school, they sent me to the 10th Marines, and arty outfit with no Radio Relay gear, which used me as an FO. Say, maybe Comcast hires former Marine techs who were like me?

I’m not an “early adaptor” of technology. I view it as a tool, not a toy. I didn’t have a cell phone until 2002. I didn’t have a TV, VCR or microwave until after I left the senate in ’82. I don’t have a blackberry or iPhone, and have never opened the blue tooth that came with my cell phone. I’ve taken maybe a dozen pictures with my phone, but never figured out how to get them out of it.

I’m on Facebook & Linkedin because friends keep asking me to link to them, but I don’t use it. And I don’t send tweets to twits on twitter.

Increasingly I find technology and software has so many features I’m not interested in, that it’s impossible to use—the multitude of stuff I don’t want blocks the things I need, or makes them difficult to find and use. Forget “user-friendly.” Most are “user-hostile.”

And don’t get me started on my view of companies whose idea of customer service is to dump you into voice-mail-hell.

My motto is, “Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.”

So, yes, the word “dinosaur” comes to mind.