GreatRidge Station

About a year ago, I wrote about the $500 pencils. I did not understand why anyone would consider such a purchase as either 1) necessary or 2) not the stupidest waste of money to be found.

Oh, wait. I may have found a competing product.

Years ago, my piano teacher once described a man so lazy that “His self winding watch ran down.” Not an easy thing, since such watches (even in those days), wound themselves with an occasional walk down the hallway or while handwriting.

Well, lo and behold, if that is too much work, we now have the Orbita Watchwinder, for only $295. Just so you know–this only winds self-winding watches–no stem-wound or quartz movements need apply.

The whole concept seems almost surreal to me. And that is proof-positive that I am not, and never will be, a member of the leisure class. I’ll take care of my own self-winding watches, thank you very much.

By the way. This is in no way meant to impugn the firm that sells these products. I’ve purchased a few items from World-Lux, and since they are an amazon partner, I can tell you that they appear to be an ethical company, and one that is easy to work with.

I think I’m losing my edge. I called up AAA to cancel my membership.

It did not go well.

• I don’t do well with phone-mazes. This amounts to a game of pick the least irrelevant of all the following irrelevant options. For hub-cap polishing advice, press or say 1; For information about where you put your keys, press or say 2; If you own a pre-1940 automobile in any color other than black, please press or say 3; If you wish to add family members, please press or say 4. (Incidentally, I’m not sure I want AAA involved with any “begetting” that might happen–seems irrelevant unless you own a Nash).
• Wait times. It’s never a good sign when the phone-maze tells you: “We are experiencing higher-than-usual call volume. Your wait will be more than 10 minutes, and less than 12 years.”
• Hold-messages. “We’re more than just automobiles. We’re also cruise vacations, and overseas travel experts.” Yeah. If I had the money to go to any of those places, do you really think I’d be calling you from Minnesota during a snowstorm?

With all of that happening, you can usually add an obnoxious customer service person to that list. Not this time. Much to my surprise, she was quite helpful and courteous. As I hung up, I realized that I went in “loaded for bear,” but instead, I think I might have actually been polite.

How unusual.

I can’t tell you how many times I have told my students “As if you needed more proof that I am a total geek…”

Two weeks ago, I was working on a project with one of my colleagues at CSF, and I used my laptop computer all day. I came home, fired up my laptop again, and…nothing. I have no idea what happened, but all the memory fried, and the boot sector on the hard drive went out. Fortunately, I did manage to save all the data from that system.

So, two days later, I’m working on my desktop system, figuring that I’ll need to use that for a lot of my work. As I’m backing up files…blink. The power supply blew out.

I have another system that runs Linux, so I decided to set up my e-mail on it so I wasn’t completely in the stone age. Two days later, I turned on the system and..pfft! I burned out the power supply. So, I have three very nice boat anchors, and I managed to kill three computers in five days. Evidently, we had a power surge that turned my Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) into a computer eater (one of my surge protectors gave its life to protect my scanner and my office stereo). Other than clocks needing to be reset, computers seem to have taken all the damage (I’m currently working with the company that made my UPS to work out a settlement).

I could probably come up with a comedy routine along the lines of “You might be a geek if…”

The truth is that not everyone has three computers to burn out, so I guess that makes me a geek. Further proof of geekdom: My wife’s computer and the computer by the treadmill are both fine.

Jack Clayton Swearengen wrote about our utter dependence on technology, and these past couple of weeks have made me think a lot about his ideas. I work in at least two “people oriented” professions: Teaching and Ministry. Curiously, I found myself as helpless in those areas as I was in my two technology oriented professions: writing and consulting. At one time, technology was a want in my world, but some time over the past seven years, it has become an essential. That fact alone is a bit terrifying.

I, however, count my blessings. It’s true that there are very few people who can say they killed three computers in five days. But the fact is, most people do not have three computers to kill. My colleague, Brad, pointed that fact out to me, and I think it is great wisdom.