The Confessions of a Non-Geek

     Well, I’ve reached a new low. Several weeks ago we bought a new Samsung 49” TV. It’s great. I had the Geek Squad come out and install the thing, and haul the old TV away. Mostly haul the old TV away. It was a heavy beast. 
     We recently decided to add a sound bar and woofer to the new TV. It looked like a pretty straight forward hook up. Two wires to the TV and the woofer just plugs into the wall and Bluetooth does the rest. So, I got it all hooked up. Shortly thereafter we (I) lost the TV remote. It’s a small, sleek, black thing, with only about four buttons along with volume and channel toggles. 
    Now the new TV had been synced to our Direct TV remote, so we didn’t have much use for the Samsung remote, but I still wanted to find it so I looked over, under, in, and around everything in the living room. No remote. 
    Then the TV and sound bar started acting funny. Just one of their tricks was to all of a sudden, without any help from me or the TV remote, ratchet up the sound from where ever we had it set to 100. Way too loud for anything. And the mute would come and go at odd intervals, again without the assistance of me and my Direct TV remote. Then it started getting creepy. I normally sit in my chair with the TV remote on the arm of said chair, my laptop in my lap, and supporting pads, pens, and a book to read on the floor next to the right side of the chair. The TV started to react to my getting up, or even making any sizable move. If I got up the sound would increase. If I stood up the mute might come on, only to go off again as I walked away from the chair. 
     We had a window that kept popping up, covering most of the screen, making available to us some adjustments. My remote had no effect on this window. Along with this window would come a loud one second explanation in Portuguese. We found that we just had to be patient and wait for this window to disappear on its own. This rogue window also seemed to be actuated most of the time by my moving around in my chair. 
     So, the Geek Squad person came. As I was explaining the mysterious happenings, he said, “I’ve been doing this for fifteen years and this has never happened before, but I’m guessing that your remote is in your chair.”       As soon as he said that I knew he was right, but being his first in fifteen years dumb enough to lose a remote in a chair then sit on it and wonder what was going on, did nothing to bolster by self-esteem. 
     So, we turned the chair on its back and looked and poked around. Then we put it back up on its feet and both of us felt in all the possible crevasses available to us. Then we turned the chair on its back again, and went through the whole underside once again. Now the underside of the chair is all black as is the remote. Finally, our Geek found the thing, almost as good as new, but certainly good enough to send out signals consistent with my sitting on it, or changing position, or working the foot rest. So, after hooking up the sound bar and woofer again, he left. Everything seemed to be working great. We’ll see. My experience has been that machines are more apt to misbehave when they think the only person around is someone who can lose a remote in his chair.

Is This Science or Just Wishful Guessing?

   
    You’ll be excited to know that scientists have found three teeth, a pinky finger bone, and a bone fragment from either a leg or an arm in a cave in Siberia. 
    From this evidence they have deduced that this was a 13-year old girl, whose mother was a Neanderthal and whose father was a Denisovan. They have also deduced that the mother and father mated willingly, and created a thriving interspecies family, proving that there was peaceful coexistence between these two species. 
    These scientists were excited because this has been the first evidence of these two species coexisting. 
    Wow! And all from two bone fragments and a couple teeth. 
    My question is, in what other disciplines can participants get by with such leaps of conjecture and not be ridiculed into the outer reaches of society?

Would It Be That Hard to Fix? 

Second Installment 

    On our first installment we discussed the last-century communication systems used by fast-food restaurants for the use of the drive-up customers. The equipment is a trial to both customers and employees. However, I don’t want you to think the fast-food restaurants are the only ones using ancient equipment for their communications applications. 
    One other industry that I’m guessing is using Polish, World War Two reject communication equipment, is the airlines. Before I retired I spent a lot of time on planes flying hither and yon. One of the things that constantly amazed me was---well, let me explain like this. I would be sitting in my seat, working on my next appointment, reading a book, or trying to catch up on my sleep. When all of sudden the Captain or a flight attendant would pick up a mike and try to talk to us passengers. 
    It was obvious that a message was being communicated. Now either of two things would happen. If I was sitting under a speaker the volume was loud enough to distort the words so that the message, which could have been something like this, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we are about to experience some severe turbulence, so please take your seats and make sure your seat belts are securely fastened. We are in no danger as long as the…” somebody in the background hisses at the speaker, “Don’t say that, how long’ve you been doing this?” 
    The sound quality resembles a person speaking around a mouth full of dirty socks. Like I said the volume is so great from the speaker over my seat that it further distorts the message so much that I have no idea what’s being said. The nearby passengers, who are not unlucky enough to be sitting directly under a speaker, can’t hear enough of the distorted message to understand what’s about to happen to us. Passengers would look at each other, shrug their shoulders and then react in their own individual way---copious perspiration, prayer, or a little moaning, revving up the vocal cords so they were ready to render some good screaming. Just to name a few. 
    Those passengers with little or no experience with flying wonder why the flight attendants are scurrying around putting the food service carts away, and buckling themselves into their seats. Those of us who have seen this before aren’t surprised when the plane suddenly starts lurching around the sky like a drunk bucking bronco. 
    The interesting thing is that the flight attendants and the pilots know that no one can understand what’s being said. They’re just employees and probably feel that if the airline owners want to save money with ancient communications gear that didn’t even work back then, (why do you think the Poles were surprised when the German Army showed up on their borders), why should they care.
    Early in my flying experience I used to wonder as I flew the friendly skies, when is something going to happen where my understanding their garbled message is going to make a difference between life and death. My life or death. 
    And why shouldn’t I worry. I was strapped to a seat in a tin tube at thirty-five thousand feet, flying through an oxygen-less atmosphere, my life depended on one hundred and thirty- seven thousand individual parts, any one of which if it stopped functioning, could plunge this ride of my mine out of the sky. 
    I found these thoughts somewhat worrisome for a while. I finally came to the realization that no matter what happened there was nothing I could do about it whether I could understand their garbled warnings or not. So, I quite worrying, and didn’t struggle to understand what the pilots and flight crew were trying to tell me. 
    But again, would that poor communications equipment problem be so hard to correct?

Would It Be That Hard to Fix? 

First Installment 

    Driving home from the wedding of our great nephew, Luke, and new great niece, Alivia, we had our radars tuned for handy Dairy Queens. We found one in Goldendale, Washington, and as we’d been driving all day we thought we deserved some health food. So, pulling in we drove up to the menu board and requisite communication system. 
   I ordered our usual, two medium cones, only this time we got really wild and made them swirl cones. [As my imaginary third cousin from Louisiana, Mary Lou Block, would say upon hearing my allusion to health food and while rolling her eyes, “Lord, help me over the fence!”] 
    I had to repeat my order three times because their communication system was the same as all other fast food ordering systems.  
    Let me insert a little rant here. We, that is the human race, can communicate with people in space, on the moon, or miles under the surface of the ocean, and make ourselves understood. It doesn’t seem to be a problem. I continually talk to people from India. I can hear them distinctly. I can’t understand their accent, nor do I want to give them control of my computer so they can fix some dire problem, but we do communicate. 
    Now at these fast food places, I cannot see the person I’m talking with, but I’m in close proximity. A stretched string and two tin cans would work pretty well. But no, they are using what sounds like pre-World War I equipment that has been through several bombings. 
    I repeated myself several times as did the order taker, and we both strained to understand what the other was trying to say. Most of the time, through the squeaks, squawks, hisses and clicks, it works, to a point. Not easily, but I guess they think the effort will make us hungrier. 
    Today, like I mentioned, I ordered two cones. I finally understood that I would have to pay, what sounded like $2.68 at the window. I was amazed, for this is a really good price for two medium cones at a Dairy Queen. 
    When I got to the window I handed the girl three dollars, and she handed me one cone and change. Then she started to close the window. She realized that I was watching her expectantly so she hesitantly opened the window and took a step back from her narrow counter but listened as I explained that I had ordered two cones. 
    She apologized, and went and got another cone. I got another three dollars ready to exchange for said cone. She came back, handed me my cone, but refused to take the three dollars, and apologized again for the mistake. 
    What went through my head as we drove away was, how many $2.68 mistakes do they make and how long would it take to pay off the investment to put in some half-way modern communication equipment. Just a thought. The cones were delicious and as it turned out the price was exceptional.

The News and What to Do With It 

    I glanced at a picture connected with a news report. It showed two young boys, I’m guessing at the gender, who were covered with mud, from the hair on their heads to their feet. In the background were a few other people, also covered with mud. 
    My first reaction was that these two children belonged to some remote tribe in maybe New Guinea or Africa. And not knowing more about it than that my second thought was, ‘Well that’s interesting.’ 
    The next instant my eye caught a reference to their being from Detroit, and my next thought was again, “How sad.” 
    I get put out with people who base their whole response to life around them, such as politics, for example, by just reading the headlines, and here I was doing the same thing. 


     In Ottawa, Ontario, that’s in Canada, they have an annual ten-day music event called Bluesfest. This year, as they were constructing a stage for the performers, they discovered a Killdeer’s nest with four eggs in it. This brought the whole operation to a halt. They are now waiting for Environment Canada to decide to either move the nest or to incubate the eggs. 
    I couldn’t believe what I was reading and what they were considering. Incubate the eggs? Really? That meant that they were separating the children from the parents, just because the parents had made a poor decision. Now if someone I could mention, but won’t, had suggested separating these kids from their parents, the Internet and all the other media out there would have lit up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and be having a field day castigating the perpetrator of such an idea. 
    Right now the Canadians have a guard protecting the nest. 
    Also, it seems that in Canada the Killdeer is a protected species. If Canada needs more of these birds there are many areas in the USA that would probably be glad to ship them some Killdeers. Just a thought.

Scare the Money Right Out of Them 

    Inducing fear of being unhealthy or creating hope for an easy cure, is a huge industry. I’m not talking about valid medical establishments who freely make their findings available to the public or give advice based on their experience, research, or observations. In this category I would personally put the Mayo Clinic and many other fine establishments. 
    The ones I’m talking about come in two forms---those that scare people into action because they are afraid of becoming unhealthy and those who create the hope of a quick cure for whatever ails them. In either case it turns out to be quite expensive. 
   Many years ago, these people would have been traveling from town to town in a horse-drawn wagon, selling some kind of elixir that would cure anything, and if you had nothing it would prevent you from succumbing to anything. And while you waited to see if it was working, it gave you a nice little buzz so that you didn’t care anyway. And even then, it was quite expensive. 
    Both of these approaches to relieving people of their hard-earned money seem to follow the same basic script. They take bits and pieces of real or imagined medical information and by playing on people’s fears or hopes entice them into buying their pills, potions, magazine, or books, to solve or prevent the onslaught of medical problems.        Their common claim to fame is that because whatever they are selling is so revolutionary the big pharmaceutical houses or the American Medical Association or the US government are trying to shut them down, and unless you act quickly they won’t be around much longer to sell you whatever they’re selling. The reason these entities are trying to muzzle these people is that it will put big pharma out of business, make the AMA embarrassed because they didn’t come up with this miracle cure themselves, or embarrass the government because---well we’re not quite sure. But the short version is that you had better spring quickly for whatever these guys are selling because tomorrow their product will probably not be available. 
    Just one example. Some doctor takes a second grade multi vitamin and adds a minuscule amount of frankincense to it then claims that this remedy comes straight from the Bible. And that it will cure anything that is wrong with you, from baldness to sexual dysfunction. 
    And then there are the thirty-minute infomercials where the speaker keeps telling you that he is about to tell you the secret to his longevity or whatever, but first he would be amiss if he didn’t share four or five testimonials from people you never heard of and who’s opinion means zilch to you. 
    He keeps looking over his shoulder, claiming that the AMA is hot on his heels, and are about to shut him down because they don’t want his healing expertise in the public domain as it will cut into the vast profits they derive from treating whatever he/she is claiming to be able to cure.            Numerous times he just about spills the deep secret, but never quite gets there, until finally he tells you that all you need to do is subscribe to his newsletter, buy his book, order a three-months supply of his pills, or a case of his special lotion, to gain the healthy state you’re entitled to.        These infomercials are the slickest marketing cons going on today, but it is just one small piece of the industry that has grown up and seems to be doing well, playing on peoples’, fear of being unhealthy, or hope to stay healthy. 
    Not one of these forms of marketing, either fear or hope, offer anything to relieve the mental anguish caused by their products not working.

When Did We Become So Delicate? 

    I know that medical knowledge is progressive and changes every day. We don’t bleed people anymore, doctors now wash their hands between operations, and medical people don’t give their patients drugs like laudanum. We may be using things just as detrimental to our health and just haven’t figured it out yet. 
   Along with these innovations comes a plethora of information about things that may be harmful to us. Like gluten, aluminum foil, plastic bottles, just to name a few. Most of these things are products we have been eating or using for years, and now all of a sudden are told they are best avoided. What happened to us? It seems that we are suddenly a lot more delicate than in the past. 
    My parents and certainly their parents would be astounded at all the suggested things to avoid. If Mom’s kitchen had been deprived of butter, whole unpasteurized milk, (the folks owned a dairy), cream, sugar, and just plain iodized salt, (not even gathered in some foreign country or body of water), Crisco shortening (fat), and then the pièce de résistance --- non-fluoridated, non-treated water that came out of an irrigation ditch, she wouldn’t have been able to feed us all those delicious meals. And the amazing part was the lack of sickness in the family.     And as for anything “low fat”, “reduced calorie”, or “organic”, they hadn’t even been invented yet because the health paranoia hadn’t set in yet. 
    If we ate that kind of stuff today we’d be sick all the time and demanding the attention of health practitioners of all disciplines. Like I asked at the beginning, “When did we become so delicate?”