Wrestling with the new tech

By John Gierach Redstone Review

LYONS – Lately I’ve been wasting what seems like an inordinate amount of time wrestling with technology.

For instance, when my old coffee maker gave up the ghost after years of faithful service, I found that with its replacement, brewing a pot of coffee now was easy enough (you press the “brew now” button) but it took me multiple tries over three days to convince it to brew a pot at a predetermined time the following morning the way my old coffee pot did so effortlessly.

I blame my confusion on the peculiar syntax that’s generated when directions written in Chinese are translated into English by a computer program and not proofread by a human, but it may also be that I come from a bygone era and anything much more complicated than an on/off switch is above my pay grade.

And, by the way, why does a device that performs a single task need a control panel that looks like the bridge of the Enterprise?

Not long after that, in preparation for a fishing trip to Minnesota, I went online to buy my nonresident fishing license. I’ve done this often in recent years, so I clicked the “existing customer” box as usual and entered my information, only to have the computer say “Nope, never heard of you,” or words to that effect.

So I ran through it again to make sure I’d entered everything correctly, and when it still didn’t work, I took a coffee break with a cup from the coffee maker it had recently taken me three days to figure out how to operate.

Half an hour later I went back and tried the only end run I know: I entered myself as a new customer, set up a new account and bought my fishing license in a matter of minutes. (Few of us understand how computers work, but by now we’ve all learned that you can’t argue with one, or, to be more precise, you can argue all you want, but you can never win.)

This episode was especially annoying because I know from experience that if I’d been on site at a bait shop or convenience store in rural Minnesota, a pleasant middleaged woman would have said something like, “Don’t worry, hon, we’ll figure this out. Would ya like a cup of coffee while yer waitin’?” As it was, I had to settle for fooling a robot that, ironically, had insisted that I check a box marked “I am not a robot.”

The day before the actual trip, I went online to check in and print my boarding pass, only to learn that, with this airline at least, paper boarding passes were no longer an option; I could have a QR code or nothing. So the next morning at curbside check-in, I displayed a screengrab of my QR code, the man behind the counter scanned it and handed me – you guessed it – the same paper boarding pass I used to be able to print for myself at home. Somewhere in the bowels of corporate America, this makes perfect sense.

The last time I’d boarded a flight with this airline I was that it would eat my life – in part because I’d seen it eat the lives of others – but there didn’t seem to be a way around it. the only one in line with a paper boarding pass and the guy at the gate looked up at me and said, “Old school, huh?” This time I left the boarding pass in my pocket, scanned my QR code and didn’t even rate a glance. Once I was in my seat with my rod case and pack stashed in the overhead bin, I wondered if I’d made a breakthrough or become another electronic sheep and decided it didn’t matter. By that time the next day I’d be in a friend’s drift boat casting bass bugs on the St. Croix River and that’s all that really mattered.

The latest wrinkle is that I don’t get a cell signal at home. When people ask where I live, I refer them to the coverage map in the Verizon ads with the blank spot covering a mountainous strip of southern Wyoming and northern Colorado and say, “I live in that blank spot.” At first, I meant it as a joke, but was surprised at how many people were satisfied with the answer.

It was fine for a while – even sort of a relief – but now there are too many online transactions that require a security code that you can only get by text. Of course, there are now cell phones that will work off your home WiFi signal and the time will soon come – if it isn’t here already – when I’ll have to get one. That will mean, at a minimum, the added expense of buying the thing in the first place and the time away from my real life and work it’ll take to learn how to operate it. So I’ll jump through that hoop any day now, as well as subsequent hoops as soon as they become unavoidable, but I have no illusions about ever catching up, let alone getting out ahead of it.

I have to say that I once saw all this coming and naïvely thought I could decline to participate and just stick with a typewriter, a land line telephone and the good old U.S. mail. But I got a computer when too many of the editors I work for began to insist on digital submissions, bought a cell phone shortly after someone spirited away all the pay phones, and it mushroomed from there. I correctly foresaw

Continued from Page 1 cated throughout town. So far this year, there have been 15 reported cases.

In recent cases, the suspect(s) have used spray paint and thick paint markers to tag road signs, utility boxes, flagstone, concrete, bridges, and playground equipment. The suspect(s) are believed to be committing these crimes during the evening and late-night hours. At this time, there is no information indicating the graffiti is gang-related.

I understand that this is a function of age, but it’s actually nothing new. When I was a little kid in the 1950s and we got our first black and white TV, my maternal grandmother – who was born in the late 1800s – would listen to it, but she was so accustomed to radios that she couldn’t get the hang of watching it. Unsurprisingly, she said she didn’t understand it.

By the time my mother was as old as her mother was then, she’d developed such a phobia about computers that she wouldn’t even enter a room that contained one. She’d peek in through an open door, say, “That’s nice,” and then skitter away like a shy housecat.

I’m unquestionably my mother’s son and my grandmother’s grandson, but I may have learned something those two old ladies never did: namely that it’s pointless to explain that things used to be simpler and easier because they aren’t simple and easy now and never will be again.

Due to the patterns and frequency of these cases, the suspect(s) are believed to live in the Town of Lyons. The BCSO asks if you see any suspicious activity or see anyone you think is tagging property in town immediately report it to BCSO dispatch. Call 911 for emergencies or 303-441-4444 for non-emergencies.

The BCSO is investigating and would like to hear from anyone with information on these cases. Please send any information you may have on these incidents or suspect(s) to Town of Lyons Sergeant Cody Sears at wsears@bouldercounty.gov.

The BCSO associated case number is: #23-04116.

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