As it turns out, I have an earned reputation for fixing, assembling and configuring machines, computers and more. Lackaday, it seems most folk are quick to blame a poorly maintained inanimate servant for its failures. Often, it only needs a tweak.

My alleged magic is nothing more than applying an understanding of components and functions.

That came to mind this afternoon when my wife noted that one of the electronically controlled garage doors would not close with the remote controls. I looked out the back door and from 30 feet could see the issue.

The little beam at the base of the door track is part of a safety system. It won’t let the door move when something is in the way. It’s an ignorant optical/mechanical system and doesn’t know if that something is a human body part or a car trunk or a rake. If its light circuit is broken, it stops the motor. Period. The way I grew up, I notice such things and file them in wetware just in case.

I could see that number two son’s mountain bike was just inside the beam area. To the unusual who grew up taught to file away how things work, that was instantly obvious. I long ago accepted that even the otherwise bright generally would not see that. I liken it to my poorly developed musical skills and senses. I have musician friends and a musical spouse who hear notes and keys that are just music to me. I love music, but can’t begin to replicate it or explain how to make it.

Who You Callin’ Loser?

Specifically in the computer/internet world, there are derogatory terms for the ignorant and unobservant. Perhaps none is more common among the cyber-savvy as luser. A pun playing off a combination of user and loser, it expresses the exasperation of support types, sys admins (those bastard operators from hell) , and we alpha geeks who put together and troubleshoot family and friends’ system.

Given the rapid changes in and spread of technology, one slice of logic would suggest that oldsters are bound to be lusers and youngsters computer, internet and new media experts. Sigh. Not so.

To the contrary, from what I see, most 20 somethings and teens fail in far more ways than not being able to make change without the cash register lighting up the amount. Most are users only, a.k.a. lusers. They learn now to apply the most basic functions of software. They never went through any process that required them to understand what goes no behind the scenes and are helpless when anything unusual occurs, as it frequently does.

Indeed, as I am wont to allude to, these become the Eloi. Even if they have good hearts, the processes that keep their world perking are unknown.

In that tedious sniping between the Mac and PC universes, we see variations. The Mac types are compelled to say their computers are so superior that they plug in peripherals and connect to this or that without having to do or know anything. Isn’t that wonderful?

Well I suppose in the Eloi future that might be OK, if all systems were perfect. As a PC alter kaker, I know better and recall observing and working with my wife’s company’s struggles in the original Mac office decades ago. Mac lovers said their machines were well worth the 100% or more premium because they just worked. That is, until that bomb appeared. They worked until they didn’t. Then what?

Somehow, the Mac failure was supposed to be substantially different from the PC’s blue screen of death. In reality, both meant you had to reboot the computer to try again. Somehow the Mac folk had to feel their double-the-price failure was a better one.

The double seeds were planted way back then (nearly 30 years ag0). One was the Spple system and the other was the Microsoft fantasy.

The Apple system was expensive for two reasons. One was simple greed; they made everything proprietary and did not let anyone make cheaper versions, thus keeping the price up. The other was that they required much faster, more capable and expensive processors, with obscene amounts of RAM to hide the functions. The Mac was plug-and-play with peripherals before the PC because the operating system did tons of work behind the scenes.

For Bill Gates’ minions, they spawned the software version — that each of us is a perfect multitasking machine in a human’s shell. That’s absurd on the face of it. The vast majority of us do one thing at a time well and our efficiency deteriorates badly beyond that. Multitasking is cruel overload for nearly all of us.

Yet, managers love that concept and love to tell their lackeys that they expect them to use every second, meaning keeping open many documents, spreadsheets, email and more, spinning from one to another like a honeybee in a field of flowers. It is a recipe for assured failure, one that both bosses and workers cook from daily.

Me Worry?

So in this century, we allegedly have kids born tech savvy. They grew up with the internet, computers, smart phones, social networking and infinite varieties of applications for all those.

But big sigh, ask a teen or 20-something how anything works or what to do when it doesn’t and they are Eloi quivering before you. It’s like asking a high school or college student at the register to handle making change on a $41.67 bill when you hand over $50.17. If the register is not ready to do the calculation, the kid almost certainly can’t. If a software package punks out or the cable modem stops downloading, the lads and lasses get that idiot look.

Can you blame them? Well, yes.

I think of oldies, my late mother for one and a 93-year-old UU minister friend for another. They came with great period names, Wanda and Farley.

Wanda was sort of retired, although she never got the hang of not working and not volunteering. She grew up in a manual typewriter world, was a manager in the IBM Selectric days, and in her late 50s, semi-retired and moved to Santa Fe, learned to use computers in a state job. She then wanted 1) to communicate with distant children and grandchildren, and 2) to build and maintain a database for a local community college’s library. I got her the hardware and software (including what she needed for her impinging macular degeneration) and taught her how to use email, DB software and more. I set up her systems but, she was an ace.

Farley was a bit of a harder sell. He was interim minister at a Boston UU church were I chaired the board. His son and I worked him from different towns and angles. He was not a natural, but in his early 70s, he started using a computer writing sermons, using the net and emailing like a champ.

He and I laugh about the number of times he called late with, “Damn. I’ve worked on this sermon for 8 hours and it’s gone, just gone.” Almost always, I could recover it for him and off he went again. On his side, his son figured he’d move him from Windows to Mac. Surely Farley couldn’t goof up a Mac. Surely he could and did, but we perked along and still do over 20 years later. He’s moved to Mexico but is a regular email correspondent.

Neither Farley nor Wanda evolved much beyond the user/luser class. I had to help both regardless of how many times I explained how to avoid this or that on PC or Mac.

Unitarians v. Computers

Moreover, a couple of decade ago, Farley and I did a counterpoint sermon from the high pulpit of the Arlington Street Church. The sheer altitude of that locale, plus looking out to upwards of 1,000 congregants, focuses the mind and inspires.

He spoke on the human aspects of life so often lost in the modern technological times. He was truly the stereotypical humanist. I gave my view of how computers and the net (before the World Wide Web) enabled communications and advocacy, a trend that would only accelerate and magnify.

Farley’s attitude I consider unfortunate and one he and I still debate in person and by email. Many ministers, UU and otherwise, exhibit a computers v. people mindset. I don’t see the conflict. To me, computers are like cars or planes or telephones…only more so in each case.

Instead, I fret when I see the lameness of young lusers. There’s nothing I can do effectively beyond my three kids for the many who never had to master multiplication tables or learn subtraction and division. I think the boomers, under the Sputnik era pressures, did get a more rigorous education.

It’s still not too late for those in their teens, 20s and 30s to be inspired. It’s not too late for them to become aware and savvy.

The eldest of my three sons is an anomaly in his cohort. Actually he and one other of his high school chums have extensive IT experience and understand how networks, computers, routers and more work. They don’t whimper. They fix.

Truth be told though, he wasn’t always the guru. As a boy, he was absolutely fabulous in taking things, mechanical and electric alike, apart. Reassembling or fixing was an entirely different matter. Whether it was a toy or clock or radio, we’d often find non-functional groupings of parts.

Unfortunately or fortunately, he had a dad who was the fly in the ear or mosquito on the neck. “What do we need to do? What can we learn from this? Where does this part belong?”

Whether I had experience with and knowledge of the device in pieces before us, I could help or lead in the healing process. It appears many young adults and their younger siblings never got any of that. They simply don’t know how things work. They are willing to blame problems on the failure of this or than inanimate object. They have no curiosity about the problem or the solution.

I fear for a nation of Eloi. I’m not sure there are Morlocks who’ll keep our machines and processes in tune. I wonder how inert and paralyzed we might become if there are too many figurative Mac bombs.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, PCs, Eloi, Windows, Mac, self-reliance, humanists

Fear, then respect Earl.

One mildly rainy night later,

September Fool’s Day.

Cuddly little Earl deserves his own poetry…wee poetry.

I didn’t have a camera, but I can offer an earlier still of the defunct business with its amusing BUILT TO SUIT sign. The deliciously tacky sign is gone. The worker who caught my interest was on a platform about where the E used to be.

I suppose the privileged who never had callouses on their hands from full-time or summer jobs didn’t even notice the ape on high. I write ape because that was the memory.

Two summers in Pittsburgh, I worked on carpentry crews from 7 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. building rows of townhouses. I was the sledge hammer guy.

Our houses had fronts three stories high. We’d put in the basement joists and put the sidewalls in place from cinder block basement level up. Then we’d frame the front in one piece and do the old barn-raising routine with the whole crew, grunting the three story piece upright.

Then it was crew chief Ron on top and me at the floor to tack and tap it in place. That’s how I earned my nickname on the crew, Milly.

Ron rode the 30-plus foot frame armed only with his 12-ounce rip hammer and an apron of 16-penny nails. Below, I had the 16-pound sledge, my 16-ounce rip and an apron of cut nails. On each side, a couple of the older guys were trusted with long levels.

Ron picked me out early for this job before I even knew of it. I had the chest, shoulders and muscles for the sledge he said. When he announced I’d be doing that during the summer, he dubbed me Magilla Gorilla or Milly as was his naming style.

I simply had to pound the two-unit wide, three-level high wall into plumb, and quickly bend to pound the cut nails through the studs and well into the concrete floor underneath. It was always a fun half hour of sport. Ron had no fear of the high and wobbly. His brothers on the crew road BSA bikes to work, but he rode walls and joists well above the boulders on one side and plunges into the raw houses below on the other.

I confess it was a cheap thrill to play John Henry, swinging sledge and moving the massive wall left or right, back or forward. It would hit its blue chalk marks and satisfy the level holders after some big and then more subtle strikes. Up high Ron would pound in his spikes and I would do the same with my cut nails. Then like bees spitting out comb, the crew would tap up and down to secure the front to the interior walls.

Several older carpenters also had specialized tasks later in the project. Typically, they used four or six-ounce claw hammers to attach the floor and other molding. They were as skilled and impressive as the plastering crews on stilts. Both sets did their work without flaw or visible sign. Magic!

On the other hand, for those summers, I enjoyed the gorilla work. Using my body grossly and to good effect was satisfying in a way the fastidious efforts can’t be.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, artifacts, shortbread, mother, grandfather, ancestors

In the new-to-us house as well as the previous one, small sets of artifacts were a comforting hidden altar. I buried my grandfather in the backyard gardens. That is, a set of a photo and trinkets related to him became a nexus. Knowing that symbols were there gave me a focus for thoughts that needed consideration.

He played the father role for me all summers, vacations and on the telephone in my school years. I still want to share the bad and good and puzzling with him…and do.

When the objects are rancid, it’s another matter. My mother’s splendid shortbreads — rich, not too sweet floret cookies — were a primal communication and display of affection. She shipped us her homemade treats before Christmas every year and the tin of shortbread always came with a hand-written label MICHAEL on the top.

Six years on from the last batch, I still have a few of the last batch. What to do with remnants of my mother’s effort?

I can’t pretend that they are actually part of her. Yet, she made them for me and I had decades in college and adulthood getting them every year. It seemed as important to her to show that affection as for me to enjoy it.

The buttery cookies have long gone bad, to the point that I don’t open the tin. They aren’t moldy, but they not inviting even as ritual food.

Yet, I don’t want to place them in the trash. There’s at least that much emotion remaining in the former food.

I’m setting a couple out today to see what the various wild visitors do with them. We have many kinds of birds, including crows that are grossly fond of roadkill, as well as the night shift of rabbits, raccoons and such.If they devour the shortbread, I’ll sacrifice a few at a time until they are gone.

Had you known Wanda (above in early middle age), you would also know she would appreciate the sharing decision. She was a child in the Great Depression. While her father’s full-time job, massive gardening and tailoring protected the family from the stereotypical deprivation, she grew up in the Eastern panhandle of West Virginia, where waste is a sin.

Perhaps our two and four-legged visitors will help me here.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, artifacts, shortbread, mother, grandfather, ancestors

While dead for eight years, Kloss was a charming chap as well as driven innovator. I’d had a few interactions with him before the profile I wrote for Electronic Business 26 years ago.

WABAC notes: EB was a Boston-based Cahners maggy, moved with the company from Cahners Place in the South End to Newton Corner to sale to the UK Reed folk (by the bye the world’s largest toilet paper maker at the time) to dissolution with other trade books last year. While I usually took my own pix, the one with the article was by local photog Ted Fitzgerald (cropping above).

Other profiles and obits speak to Kloss’ visionary work in sound and TV. Few note that he willing sacrificed huge wealth for pretty big wealth. He got his joy from creating the new and best, not from making mass markets in the OK.

Otherwise, I think of NYC cabs and kittens when Henry comes to mind.

In the late 1960s, I was in college and living in Cambridge on a grant. I filled in cash flow with a couple of jobs, including making speakers by hand at his new Advent Corporation. They were damned good speakers.

He actually accidentally designed the new standard of stereo speakers. He was developing projection TV technology and just wanted cash flow for that from the speakers. He ended up vastly improving on his older KLH technologies and establishing new standards for sound. Also, he had a skunk works project going for a farther out ideal, 3D TV. The word in house was that he had one, with the drawback that you needed a radiation suit to sit in the room with it for any length of time. That never got to market.

Meanwhile at Avent had a huge room filled with QA women verifying woofer, tweeter and switch components. He gave them exacting standards. Then a small row of us assembled the speakers. I connected the wires for the controlling switches on the back, then piped glue and power stapled them to the panels. They were great speakers and I think each of us bought at least one set at employee prices.

My little value added here is first that he drove to work in his old, still functioning Checker. That’s the same clunky, sturdy gem that was the standard NYC taxi of the time. His current one was his first, a 1948 model.

That said a lot about what he expected and created. He wanted the best of its type. He expected it to last a long-time if not forever. He’d do what he thought his customers should, pay for good stuff.

Also, one day his wife showed up and cajoled us workers. Her way of dealing with an unexpected and unwanted litter of kittens was to squeeze employees. She appeared with a box of them and offered them. I heard at least one QA woman say she owed her job to the Klosses and felt obligated to take one, even though she neither wanted one nor particularly liked cats.

Together, the Klosses were epitomes of New England frugal.

I can’t say I begrudge him that at all. He turned his mindset into products we were happy to make. I recall years later living in New York City being at a dinner party where the hosts went on about how much they loved their stereo speakers. Peeking behind one of the big Advents, I was pleased to see that it was one of those I had made.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, Kloss, Cambridge, Advent, Electronics Business

I advocate justifiable crankiness. My latest episode worthy of comment had to do with my favorite breakfast bowl.

As a swimmer, nature guy, cartoon fan and more, I have a thing for frogs and Monroe Salt Works has a splendid frog pattern among their pottery offerings. I’ve been using it for years almost every morning, typically with fruit and yogurt topped with cereal.

Over the decades, we’ve given Monroe pottery to others, as well as their amusing jewelry, toys and tchotchkes. We spent a lot of money at the store on Mass Ave in Arlington. That recently closed unit always had parking nearby and seemed to offer a better selection of everything than the one at Copley by the Westin.

It also had clerks who wanted happy customers. For example, when they were out of the frog items I wanted, whoever was on duty would immediately offer to order them for me, hold them and let me know.

The Bad Thud

At home, my office is on the lowest floor, below the kitchen. A recent evening, my suspicion and fear were correct when I heard the deep crash. My last frog bowl, the one I wash after using and place on the drain, at the farthest from the counter edge, was in seven pieces.

Monroe pottery is seriously heavy and sturdy. If dropped from above three feet, it might bounce. If it broke as in this case, it would not shatter, rather nobly separate into substantial chunks.

Lackaday…my sole remaining frog bowl and breakfast prop was fine for controlling garden pot drainage holes, but little else.

Verifying Copley’s hours, I hopped on my bike the next morning to buy a couple of the bowls, including a spare in case someone disrespected my treasure again with dish-drain misplacement.

The Grin Twins

Inside the Copley store, one browsing potential customer was leaving. One young man was leaning across the glass display counter almost nose to nose with a clerk.

She was one of two women behind the counter. Both were maybe 19 or 20. They put a lot of effort into their clothes and makeup. They were both speaking with the whispering young man. They might be filming an ad for some youth fashion company from the tableau.

What they weren’t up to was paying attention to the one customer, your crank.

The woman farthest from the lad was seated on the shelf counter three or four feet back from the glass one. She’d giggle at something the young man said, and alternately look at or text into her phone. She’d swing her legs and was having a great time.

Neither clerk showed the slightest interest in helping, so I toured the store, located the frog-pattern pottery and saw that there were no soup bowls on display. Perhaps they had some stock in the back. At worst, they could get me the bowls from another store or the Maine mothership. I headed over to the social gathering at the counter.

After waiting for two or three minutes, assuming the inane flirting traffic would stop, I stepped up right next to the glass case. Sure enough, that was adequate catalyst for the standing clerk to say goodbye to her chum and turn to me.

She asked if she could help. I said I wanted two of the frog soup bowls but did not see them with the pattern. Perhaps she was still stunned with coursing hormones, but that did not seem plain enough for her.

She corrected me by saying she knew I meant some Japanese bowl in a side display window not facing the inside of the store. She headed toward that wall, as I called out that no, I meant specifically the Monroe Salt Works frog pattern and exactly the soup bowls.

She nonetheless insisted on reaching into a hidden window display to produce things unrelated to my question. I repeated my request and led her to the frog-pattern pottery.

She said they didn’t have those and that I should get the lobster or crab pattern of that bowl instead. That was when I finally realized:

• She was not well trained
• She may not have come from an attentive and mannered family
• She did not understand what pleases or disappoints customers

Part of it may have been her age. Medical and mental scholars claim that human brains aren’t fully wired and perking until the early to mid-20s. She may be short quite a few synapses and the experiences to reason fully.

Then she totally queered it. Even asked if she’d acquire two for me, rather than offer to get the bowls in the store, she dismissively said I should go to the Salt Works site and order them. As reinforcement, she condescendingly told me it was real easy, seeming to imply that even an old man like me could do it.

What was missing from her thought process and knowledge included:

• Nothing riles customers like out-of-stocks, particularly if they come in for specific items. They’ll accept high prices or rude employees long before not getting what they came to buy
• Nothing is as easy for a customer in the store as picking up what he wants, paying for it and leaving with it in hand
• Being told to buy something similar isn’t just as good
• Picking individual items from a store that advertises that each of its handmade pottery items is unique is a key to satisfaction
• Buying online is not as easy as walking out with goods; instead it means clicking repeatedly or searching for the items, going through the lengthy shopping-cart process, often with additional registration and verifications of entries, paying the shipping premium, and waiting one to four weeks

I understand why a young woman would rather flirt with a present or potential beau rather than help a middle-aged customer. Then again, it’s Salt Works who pays her to satisfy its customers and in so doing sell its good.

So, there I found two flaky young clerks who don’t seem to understand how customers shop and retail sales should work. That has to fall back on the store manager and the training the company offers. Certainly telling a clearly disappointed customer either to settle for something similar when he specified items or to go away and do it online is sure to crank up a crank.

Stirring the Bowls

Not to spite myself and ruin my accustomed home-dining experiences, I did order two that afternoon.

In addition to angering me, that meant that two bowls at $21 each cost $10 in shipping and would probably leave Maine in two or three weeks. That would be a 23.8% premium for the shipping as well as up to a month to get the bowls. Of course, I could not choose the two bowls I most liked from several available.

After OK’ing the online order, I went to the Contact Us area of the company website. I sent a long email to the impersonal address onlineorder@monroesaltworks.com.I detailed my experiences at Copley, as well as noting how helpful and savvy the clerks at the Arlington store had been. In fact, I said if they absolutely had to close that store, they should have brought the staff downtown. I wrote that I might make those two bowls my last ever Salt Works purchase after many years of buying from them online, in Arlington, in Maine and in Boston.

They must not get many loonies such as I. Tom (no specified last name), replied by email:

Thank you for your order.  I am going to push your order ahead and see that we ship this out to you today.  I am sorry to hear of your poor experience in our Boston store.  You should have your bowls tomorrow.

Sure enough, I got overnight shipping and faced my emotions. I honestly felt much, much better holding my froggy friends in hand. How easily I can be bought.

Moreover, apparently Tom let the company president, Karen Kayatta Burke, know he had dealt with an irate customer. She sent her own email:

I apologize for your recent shopping experience at our Copley store. For the past 40 years Monroe Salt Works has built a reputation for producing some of the finest salt glazed stoneware in the world. We strive to represent our Artisans wares in our stores with that reputation in mind. It is customers such as yourself that mean so much to us and based on your description your treatment was, is and will always be unacceptable to me. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I have discussed your experience with the store manager, Jennifer, her staff and associates in our other stores.

We hope you will consider Monroe Salt Works in the future for your pottery and other gift needs. We appreciate your order, considering your recent experience.

Regarding employees at the Arlington location, all were offered jobs at the Copley store with an incentive. They all chose to accept unemployment benefits rather than travel to the Copley store.

So there you have it, the conundrum of the crank. Responded to my a nice person, in this case two nice people, was I unnecessarily unpleasant in response to indifference and incompetence, or is this the squeaky-wheel cliché in action?

I confess that I am simple here. I am delighted that the outcome was that the next morning I want my yogurt mess or perhaps groats, I have my preferred pottery. Om.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, Boston, Monroe Salt Works, customer service, out of stock, clerk

NIMBYism is most obvious and somewhat understandable with the institutionalized — substance abusers, child abusers, convicted criminals, developmentally disabled. Yet many towns put a finer point on it for others.

I’ve been watching the inane hoo-ha for the past 15 years around here about (drum ratta tatta…wait for it) bicycle/walking paths. These perceived threats separate the sophisticated, civilized and sensible from emotional dunderheads.

Cross-post note: As political and non-political, this post appears at Marry in Massachusetts as well.

It was only after 9/11 and the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency’s springing full-blown to dominate our thoughts and feelings that a parallel was obvious. Small towns about the country begged for security funding. To big-city dwellers, that is those at real risk of terrorist actions, such entreaties were absurd. Yet on a granular level, you see the motivation.

If you live in Wee Placidville, Idaho, you likely justify your quiet, hermit-like area with its positives. It seems safe and unchanging and folk around you look and act pretty much like you. You don’t have to accommodate diversity in almost any form. City folk may think of you as a hick, while you are sure you live in a paradise.

Why wouldn’t the terrorists eager to rip the heart out of America attack your ideal example of U.S. virtues? Of course, you need and deserve HSA funding to protect Wee Placidville!

Two-Wheeled Thugs

The asphalt strip runs where trains used to go. The anti-bikeway folk keened portents of certain doom. Noise would be terrible and well into the night. Litter would dot and blot the meadows and woods. Punks from Boston, Somerville and who knows where else would cycle over to rob and harm the gentle folk of Lexington. Property values would plummet while the bucolic life by the path would be no more. Oh, and the bisected towns would go broke paying for additional police, fire and sanitation related to this blight.

Pretty much the opposite occurred. The path is a gem to all the communities. Citizens walk, bike, picnic and otherwise enjoy it. Houses on its length are more desirable and valuable. Literally no one rides five to eleven miles to commit any crime. (Plus, I try to visualize an inner-city teen cycling out to Lexington, breaking into an alarmed house, grabbing a plasma TV or the like and trying to chug it back to a housing project far away.)

Other Times, Places and Loonies

Weston’s pathetic NYMBYism held the way as they refused a trail extension there. It got wide coverage, mostly ridicule, as in the 1997 LA Times piece with the lead, “Imagine: A bicycle trail through the state’s wealthiest suburb. Do you have any idea what kind of people would be pedaling into town? Ruffians, criminals–mountain bikers!”

The Weston task force glued a veneer of reason on their emotions. They rejected the trail because they were “unable to adequately mitigate several serious impacts, thus making the trail unacceptable.” The unproven and certainly unprovable impacts would be an annual $162,000 town-services cost, having to pay tax abatements to abutters whose home values would plunge, and “decreases in ‘quality of life.’”

Forward to this year in Milton. The town borders Boston starting at the Neponset river. Although our African American governor has a home there, it is not racially and culturally very diverse. It has the nation’s highest per capital Irish-American population (38%) and overall is 85% white, 10% black, and about 2% each Asian and Latino. Its median income is roughly twice that of Boston.

There is a short, flat, benign bike/ped trail along the Neponset on the Boston side. The state Department of Conservation and Recreation wants to expand this popular trail just slightly as the parks and paths alone the river develop. Miltonians want none of that, thank you very much.

A full accounting of the opposition appeared in the Bay State Banner recently. For the proposal that the trail include a bridge so Boston and Milton residents could bike or walk over to each other’s tennis courts and such, the lingo was familiar. Despite the clean, quiet, pleasant and safe history of the existing sections, Miltonians at a hearing spoke of lowered property value, litter, and crime. While additional lighting as well as bike and foot traffic in fact create a safer environment that hikes property value, the obvious backed up by statistics can’t sway the parochial.

Not surprisingly, the Milton selectmen just voted to oppose any bridge or trail on their side of the river. Prompted apparently by a reactionary enclave in the Capen Street area, the selectmen urged the state to put a big bump in the preferred route. While their letter to the DCR said nothing of race or inner-city criminals, its scheme would coincidentally keep the trail in the black-densest areas of Boston’s Hyde Park and Mattapan neighborhoods. Hmm.

Town and neighborhood pride has good aspects. Yet as we see in the highly segmented Boston, too much of such identity has other features. You may well distrust and dislike anyone who is not like you and not from where you are. Such is racism, classism, religious intolerance and the like. Not from here too often translates into not good.

There’s a fair chance Milton’s NIMBYs will get their way. In coming decades people may forget and wonder why there’s this odd circuitous crinkle in the popular path.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, Boston, cycling, bikepath, NIMBY, Milton, Weston, crime

From 21 years of experience in the former, I had gotten ready though. Just after 1 p.m., our power poofed. It happened to be our youngest’s birthday. While he’s a teen and has never been prone to tantrums, we do have our family rituals, including all gathering, handing over presents, candles and cake and such.

Because of the JP history:

• I use an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for my computers. I had time to close my open applications and save my work.
• I knew where the big candles and their holders were. If it continued into dark, we’d still be able to see each other, the food and the presents. The minimal gear was on the table while it was still light.
• I had options for cooking. While I had planned a feast that required considerable electricity, I had options here too. The house came with an electric range, not my favorite, but OK. Our outside grill is propane and I could make nearly everything except chili rellenos. I had vegetarian dishes with protein for our oldest to cover in case I could not fry the chilies.

It turned out that a large tree had taken down power lines, a pole and a transformer. An abutting neighbor kept calling NStar to hear later and later estimates of lights-on.

Before 5 and just when I was ready to crack the fridge to remove the materials for my adjusted feast, we got juice again.

While I would like to think it is my maturity, I suspect my equanimity came from two decades of losing power seemingly with every storm. Hot and wet. Icy. Heavy snow. Big wind. Pick your storm and our part of JP lost electricity. Sometimes it was an hour, others up to two days and spoiled food.

Manufactured Empathy

So here we are in a second-tier U.S. city with a wee taste of third-world problems. Wont as we can be to extrapolating to an unearned empathy, our worst isn’t even bad.

As a UU, I understand how we liberal and progressive types love to identify with those who suffer. It is an endearing trait, an effort to maintain our humanity and humility in the face of our overwhelming plenty and comfort.

It’s also a sham.

Scan the papers and net for Pakistan, without any necessities for many millions…for Iraq and Afghanistan with power an hour or two or six at indeterminate times in extreme weather…and even not so long ago in post-Katrina New Orleans.

I briefly flashed on two members of a UU church we were attending when I shattered my leg last year. It required a pretty serious operation, including a knee-to-ankle rod in a tibia, intense, prolonged pain, morphine, and walker, crutches and cane for months. Those two told me they knew exactly what I experienced because they or someone they knew had cracked a small bone in a foot. I scanned each face for the mildest hint of irony or sadistic humor, but found neither.

We can manufacture our empathy with minimal materials.

Here yesterday, had we lost power for a couple of days, as has happened in our own Bean Town, we would have coped too. My wife would have headed down to her corporate offices before dawn to do her pre-market-opening work. We would have bought some blocks of ice and kept what we could in coolers, as we did a few times in JP. We were already prepared for an inconvenienced birthday party. We would have managed, knowing it was temporary, whether that meant minutes, hours or days.

Let us keep our perspective on our troubles. Blackout yes, but millions, no billions, would swap with us.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, Boston, blackout, Unitarian, liberal, empathy

Up in these parts, Maine has a lot more wishful moose baggers than moose. It has an elaborate lottery/licensing system and a hunting guide. Unwritten in any of those or its FAQ is the danger quotient. You are much more likely to be killed or injured in a moose encounter if you drive into one on the highway than if you confront one nose to nose.

Down there though, the risks of death, dismemberment, even fatal infection are integral to the homey thrill of gator hunting.

Yet there are basic similarities, like:

• S.C. has zones (management units 1 through 4) with a permit specific to the zone
• S.C. sells up to 1,000 alligator permits per season (second September Saturday through second October Saturday)
• Everyone pays $10 to be in the lottery
• Lottery winners pay an additional $100 for the permit (an additional $200 as of this year for non-resident gator grabbers)
• As with moose, it is not that easy. Last year’s hunters got 452 alligators.
• As with moose, successful hunters tag and report a kill to the Department Natural Resources

S.C. has only permitted these hunts for the past couple of years. This is so popular that the Palmetto state holds two-hour informational sessions. One just happened. The other will be in Spartanburg next Saturday, 8/28 at 2 p.m. as part of the Harry Hampton Hunting & Fishing Expo. These cover the essentials from paperwork to safe gator handling.

A mildly gruesome recap of the first session appears in The State. It is replete with such info as a dead gator can still maim or kill the hunter. The hunt is likewise sobering. Harpooning is the preferred capture method. Then you and as many quirkily willing chums as you have get the beast close enough to the boat to slice key arteries or use a pistol for final dispatch.

Your immediate reward, should you successfully land it and get it ashore without injuries from the tail or claws, might be a BBQ. You can eat, but not sell, the meat.

Clearly, a moose-hide rug would be better in front of the fire than an alligator hide, although I bet they have similar worth if you sold them. Plus, down South, fur and indoor fires are not the hit they are up here.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, South Carolina, Maine, hunting, alligator, moose

Then and in the following several decades, I had to know how things worked. Even if I couldn’t do all the programming myself, I had to know enough about the hardware, firmware and software to make things work. That’s kind of like the days when cars all had carburetors and spark plugs. Plain folk could fix them.

Blessings and curses now. Even Windows has so emulated Mac that we’re reduced to plugging computers and their peripherals together. If something doesn’t work automatically, if the operating system doesn’t perform blind magic, we’re lost.

Tech helplessness

In that sense, we have become the gentle Eloi, as in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Likewise, short of some fictional drama, most of the time, that magic happens. We pay for lots of memory, a fast processor, and high-end graphics. The flabby, invisible operating system and firmware find the printer, internet connection and so forth. We pretend we are cybernetic experts.

The fun comes when we get all regal on our PCs. We for our $400 or $700 or $1,200 or more are lords of our electronic servants. How dare they delay us?!

Sure enough, computers continue to increase power and decrease price. Few of us notice that the software, particularly the operating systems, have become flabby beyond belief. In this era of media and personal panic over obesity, we don’t see the gluttonous, demanding critters before us.

Depending on how far your WABAC machine can take you, you may recall much smaller, but less capable software. Back when PC were starting in the days of CP/M and DOS and then early Windows OSes, programs took some kilobytes of memory. My first word-processing program loaded in 32K.

Forward to our new version of the real world, we’ve gone to programs that took megabytes (each 1024 kilobytes) and some gigabytes (1024 megabytes). On the hard drive, those programs may take many hundreds of megabytes or even several gigabytes for their stuff. You can see examples of all those maybe useful components if you load an Adobe/Macromedia program, say Acrobat Pro or Photoshop. The hundreds of parts load and load and load.

Then we feel like kings indeed. Our servants are muscular, with many powers. They have 250 or maybe a terabyte of hard-disk memory and four or six or eight gigabytes of RAM. We command such an army on our desks or in our briefcases!

Flabby software

Yet, let’s not delude ourselves too much. Those gigs of RAM and HD are necessary for the absurdly large, complex and compensating OSes and software. They have to be compatible with older versions as well as other programs. They need to have drivers for hardware and dozens of utility functions to do all the magic behind the curtain. The Eloi don’t know how to fix anything that doesn’t work seamlessly and without error.

Like Macs from the beginning, the Windows versions from NT up are waddling fatties. They need tremendous nourishment in terms of disk and RAM. They need faster and faster processors just to function, like a tubby queen immobile without her sedan chair.

There are alternatives, such as Linux. Its various flavors are each a trim, fit OS that makes few demands on hardware. Alas, they are beyond the capability of the Eloi. We need to understand some programming and know about peripheral interfaces and a little networking to install and configure it. Pardon the pun, but fat chance for the computer kings to forgo their luxury and sense of power.

The funny part is when royalty find themselves waiting. The browser page is slow to load. The high-power PC doesn’t print the file. The spiffy MacPro can’t save the file when the royals just know there is plenty of disk space. The screen freezes and minutes or hours of work go to the unknown fate of derelict electrons. The PC seems to get a little slower every week and the royals are like their 16th century counterparts with suddenly decrepit lackeys.

That’s where this geek alter kaker (GAK; I think I can reuse that) becomes useful. I have rescued Mac users who have work in some odd limbo. I cleared Windows cache and temp files, and then defragmented hard drives, and finally removed useless programs that load automatically, filling memory.

Sometimes, I’ll answer the why questions. Yes, Macs are easier, but some versions require you to remember exactly where you stored something last or they lose it. Yes, PCs are more powerful, but Windows retain the absurd flaw of picking up a program you use, putting it into RAM, then redepositing it more or less randomly back on the hard disk, placing its components’ fragments farther and farther in myriad pieces.

Help us

I suppose it’s true that kings and queens should not have to fill their heads with such things. Yet, wasn’t it the likes of Frederick the Great of Russia who chose to understand everything in Russia from the plow to the throne?

We surely have gone too far in our dependence on computers to configure and fix themselves. That should be plain enough when we royals become subjects as we submit to tech support or the horrors of the God awful lameness of Microsoft help systems. Even royals can read what’s on the screen. What they want to know when they press F1 are the most likely fixes to the most likely problems on that screen. As I learned from my days as a tech writer, the help system user has a simple, single, reasonable thought — “Make me smart fast.”

What our modern world of cheap cybernetic power has generated is a legion of entitled pseudo-royals. We tend to feel indignant when our machines do not satisfy our whims instantly. We are entitled. We deserve instant everything in the internet age.

When I help chums clean up their systems, get rid of parasitic and unnecessary software, and explain why this and that and the other clogged the works, they are invariably contrite. They say they should have known or acted.

Then again, why should they? Both hardware and software vendors, as well as the monsters of Microsoft and Apple, pretend all is plug and play. Buy our crap and you don’t have to know anything. It all just works.

Well, Eloi, yes and no. You can get adequate performance out of the box and package. That’s true enough. Knowing why things work or don’t honestly isn’t going to hurt and is likely to come in real handy.

I’ve tried to teach my three kids what’s inside the case, literally and figuratively. The first one works in IT and in some ways has far surpassed me. The other two know more than their peers and can tweak their systems well enough.

Those are skills and lore that may be like people reading unabridged dictionaries and encyclopedia for fun. It’s freaky but makes one much more interesting and useful.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, PCs, Eloi, Windows, Mac, self-reliance, entitlement