My husband rigged a remote control on-off switch to the extension cord I use to plug the block heater in on my Jeep. I got an extension cord with a light so I could see if the extension cord was live or not.
Theoretically, the system should work. But it doesn't. In the daylight it's hard to see the light in the extension cord. Sometimes the remote works as promised. Sometimes you have to hold it at just the right angle from just right right corner of the window, then, well, maybe. I usually have to go out to the car to see if the light is on, and click the remote from there to get it to work properly.
My first computer was a PC running DOS 5.0. It was state of the art at the time. I had no idea about anything about computers. But I knew they would be a part of my future, so I was willing to learn. The book that came with the computer was over 300 pages long and nowhere in it was there any explanation about how to get started or what anything meant. Nowhere. It took me 3 days to figure out how to read the book. And I'm smart. If I hadn't seen a future for this computer thing and if I hadn't been enthralled by the idea of what could be possible as a result, I wouldn't have even tried.
But sometimes I just need things that work.
I don't use a digital calendar for my day to day stuff, because when I am at the dentist's, making my next appointment, I don't want to spend 3 geeky minutes inputting the information into a device that I will have to coordinate with the calendar at home, when it'll take me 10 seconds to write it with a pencil in my daybook. For any woman with a memory of trying to get a whining child home, and a schedule ahead that includes 7 more hours of work before she can go to bed, that 2 minutes and 50 seconds could be the difference between mild irritation and a nervous breakdown.
There are ways to sync digital calendars right now. Ways that work quickly and seamlessly. But they require costly equipment that runs on electricity, monthly internet fees over and above what I can get at home, and annual fees to make the sync easy. If it was easier and I could make more use of the equipment, the fees would be worth it. But not yet. A pencil lasts for ages and my little daybook doesn't need batteries.
We are getting so used to complexity and expense that we sometimes forget that technology is supposed to make our lives easier, not harder, supposed to be less expensive, not more.
So it's a pleasure to see that some new technology just works. I take the card out of my digital camera and shove it into the slot on the side of my iMac and automatically a program asks me if I want to put all those pictures on the computer. Yes. Thank you for working. Then when it's done, a quarter of a second later, I pull out the card and shove it back in the camera. Then I click, and voilà, my pictures!
I'm still geeky enough to love scripting macros to automate things and geeky enough to drool over new technology. Heck, when handheld electronic calculators first came out, I saved my money and ponied up almost $100 bucks to get one of the first models out by Texas Instruments.
I love the idea of a remote control that will turn on the block heater in my car if it means I don't have to run out there in sub-zero weather to do it by hand. But I'm not going to wait until Tom figures out why it doesn't work right. Today, if I need the block heater on, I need it on. I'll go out and plug it in manually, and be thankful for the technology that made cars, block heaters and electricity possible. They are things that work.
