Enotes

A few weeks ago, hurried and on my lunch break, I stepped into the Barnes and Noble bookstore in downtown Royal Oak. My goal was simple: purchase a newspaper. Every Friday I cash my paycheck in Royal Oak and then take in lunch somewhere in town. But I'm one of these people who can't eat alone if I don't have something to read. Hence the newspaper. My usual provider, the gas station by the bank, was out of papers, so I remembered B&N. The bank took longer than usual, so the sands in the hourglass were dwindling. But hey, it's only a newspaper, right? The newspapers at B&N are located behind the cashier's counter. They're not self-serve. So first I had to wait for a cashier, which knocked off precious seconds from my meal time. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part came when I voiced my request. "Detroit News," please, I said to the college-aged cashier. He retrieved it. I had my dollar ready, eager to pay, leave, and l...

I am reminded of the words from time to time, spoken some 30 years ago by my father. My father was a computer programmer, starting in the early-1960s, when the computers he was working on filled entire rooms. While I was in college, taking an obligatory computer class to placate him, my dad told me something that still resonates with me today. "Someday," he said, "people will do everything on home computers. They'll even do their shopping from home," my father told me, as if he was letting me in on a secret. Damned if the old man wasn't right. But I wonder if even he could have imagined just how right he would turn out to be. My father passed away in 1996, just before the Internet really took off. Ironically, this great computer soothsayer never owned a PC of his own. He did, however, buy me a Commodore 64 in 1985. Computer classes, back in 1982, were punch cards and boring program writing and amber text on a dark brown screen. Nothing close to...

Have you heard what you read like? The great thing about e-mail, texting and other forms of digital communication (like in chat rooms or forums) is that it's quick and convenient. The not so great thing? It can leave too much open for conjecture. There is no tone. There is no facial expression. There's no inflection. And that can lead to hurt feelings. Hence emoticons---those little faces that are there to help the text along, with smileys, frowns, winks, etc. Facebook is becoming less of a social media site and more of a public forum for debate on everything from sports to politics to what kind of dish detergent to use. In the heat of the Tigers playoff run, I have engaged in many a discussion on Facebook about baseball and the team, and what is needed going forward, etc. Some of the discussions have gotten a little heated. But the heat was turned up because some comments, sans emoticons or any other buffers, read pretty cold and terse. Email can be like that t...

Is there such a thing as down time anymore? You know, just some quiet time where we are unplugged, disconnected, disengaged? I strode into our favorite pizza joint on Saturday night to pick up a carry-out order. It's typically very busy on weekend nights and this was no exception. As usual, there was a line of people waiting to be seated. On the five chairs available sat five lucky folks who didn't have to stand. They were waiting for both carry-outs and to be seated. I had to chuckle. Each of the five had their mobile devices out, and each were scrolling up and down the devices with their thumbs, using the touch screen feature. Being nosy, I peeked and a few of them seemed to be scanning their Facebook accounts. But the sight of all five of these folks---and I don't know if any of them knew each other or not, because they weren't talking---thumbing up and down their mobile devices, their faces lit by the device's glow, was comical to me. But it was also a s...

You ever get the feeling that retail companies make changes that are for their own good, as opposed to that of their customers? Or, to be more specific, they purport to use the wonders of technology to ostensibly make things go smoother for us, when in fact you get the sneaking suspicion the advantages are enjoyed totally by them. Take voice activation, for example. You likely deal with this all the time when you call the (ironically) phone company, cable/dish company, or any of the major utilities. The recorded message comes on, asking you, basically, what the hell you want. If there was a human being on the other end of the line, the conversation would be about as brief as this: Human being at company : Thank you for calling Acme Company. How may I help you? (or, "How may I direct your call?") You: Hi...I'd like to discuss my bill please. Human being: OK, let me transfer you to the billing department. You: (delighted with the efficiency) Thank you! E...

Do we have so much more to say to each other in the digital age, or is the digital age tricking us into thinking that we do? Did we talk to each other as much as we appear to do nowadays, before there were cell phones to blab into? If we did, then our every spare moment must have been spent in conversation. I'm sorry, but I don't remember that. So I suspect something else. Who is everyone talking to on their mobile phones? And what are they talking about? And, most importantly, why is there so much to say in the freaking car? I would have thought that, by now---well over 20 years since people began acquiring mobile phones---the novelty of yakking into a phone while driving would have worn off. Apparently not. Chances are that the next time you see an ill-advised move on the road by a fellow driver, or tardiness in responding to a green light, the offender has a cell phone pressed against his or her ear. And it's happening a lot---seemingly even more than j...

I'm about ready to rip the phone out of the wall. All four of them. You ever walk by those skeletons of days gone by---the pay phone? Or rather, where a pay phone used to be? The useless wires dangling from the back of the unit, the actual phone itself long gone? That's what I'd like our bedrooms and kitchen and basement to look like---the remnants of where a land line phone used to be. They say that the land line is about to go the way of the pay phone . That time can't come soon enough, frankly. The only reason we have land line phone service, nearest I can tell, is to be harassed at all hours of the day and night. Because it certainly isn't to make phone calls, or to receive any meaningful ones. My wife and I use our cell phones to place calls, even from the home. Same with our daughter. My wife's mother, who we live with, takes only a handful of calls a month---usually from doctor's offices, confirming appointments. And mom-in-law doesn't really plac...

There are some words that just get overused to the point of losing much of their meaning. Hero. Role model. Cute. To name a few. Oh, and "genius," which I am convinced most of the people who use it couldn't even properly define it for you. But there are also times when those overused, borderline hackneyed words and phrases are quite apt and can, for that precise moment, be used like a square peg in a square hole. We lost a genius yesterday. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Inc. who passed away after a battle with pancreatic cancer at age 56, was a genius. He was every bit of one as Edison and Einstein and Fermi. What is genius, then? Part of it is affecting people's everyday lives, for the better. Whether you embrace technology or not, you'll sound foolish if you try to argue that Jobs' computer chip-based creations didn't positively impact the vast majority of the people who used them. Jobs started Apple in his garage, the story famously goes. That's ...

Including area code, there are 10 digits to any garden variety telephone number. Tell that to the folks at Progressive Insurance. I'm sorry to pick on Progressive, but they're the most egregious example of what's been making me cranky lately. I find that as I get closer to 50 years old (I'll be 47 this summer), it doesn't take much to crank up my crank machine. Progressive, if you'd like to call them, pumps a phone number that defies logic and that makes its own rules for dialing. 1-800-PROGRESSIVE. The "area code" for purposes of this number is the toll-free 800, thus leaving seven digits to dial a proper, legal phone number. "Progressive" contains 11 letters. I think you see where I'm going here. What the Progressive people want you to do is use the name of their company to better remember their phone number. On the surface, I understand that sentiment. Two problems. One, you have to dial four superfluous numbers. Two, the new "sma...

First, it was that you couldn't get a human being on the phone when you called (insert company). It's still that way, of course, but now I have a new beef. You can't even get a human being on the phone---when YOU'RE the one being called! I suppose they're called "robo calls"---the phenomenon of automated systems dialing you with pre-recorded voices on the other end of the line. Some of these calls are slickly done; they start out sounding like a real person. Technology has improved. Time was, pre-taped messages sounded, well, pre-taped. These new calls sound like people, because there isn't that AM radio-like hiss or static. I've been fooled. I got a call several months ago from some financial planning dude named John Stephens. He sounded very casual and friendly. "Hi, this is John Stephens," he said in a manner and tone that suggested that he and I were longtime friends. I actually started to talk to the guy---before finding out that he ...