Sunday we began our Palm Sunday procession in what we call the Commons Area which is where we have the coffee hour after church. This meant that I needed to have a pitch pipe to give the pitches for the opening sung sentences and the singing during the procession. No problem, I thought. I’m sure there’s an app for that on my phone. And sure enough there was.

Just prior to the pregame rehearsal with the choir, I checked the app again to make sure I could work it easily.  Then during rehearsal I opened my phone to give the pitch with it so that the choir could see what that was like. There on the face of my phone was a fucking advert for Nokia (the maker of the phone) instead of the app I wanted to open. Despite having pull down menus that indicated I could close the advert it would not close. It wanted to play a little video for me.  I could not get to the pitch pipe app.

I gave the pitch from the organ and sat down to try and figure out how to get the advert off my phone while the choir sang through our processional piece.

Finally it just went away.

It managed to work properly when I needed it in the next room, but I think it’s an example of how we approach tech these days. We all know that our phones, computers, and other “labor saving devices”  will waste our time by not starting properly, pausing, presenting new and unanticipated problems just at the point we are counting on them to perform a task.

How in the world did we get from the good old “on/off” switch to problem solving some dam techie’s glitch?

My theory is two fold.

First, having sort of grown up with the tech by looking over my smarter younger brother’s shoulder as he moved from the early home computers to better and faster machines, I think it was pretty logical to spend a lot of time tinkering with glitches.

When one is writing basic code or a data base, it is a process of getting it to work, kind of a puzzle.

This sort of unreliability seems more forgivable and understandable than what I find myself dealing with now on a daily basis (as well as waiting with people either in person or on the phone for some dam slow computer to load so they could help me).

The second part of my theory is the people who design all the tools we are using are designing them for each other and for people who can constantly upgrade to the latest little doodad.

I suspect they see beauty and get satisfaction in the tools themselves, unlike me who just wants the fucking thing to accomplish the task I have set for myself.

So in this world of logging on to my own dam computer at home countless times a day and having web sites decide that I want to instantly watch their videos or hear their sound tracks, I often quietly curse people who design things that don’t work consistently for me.

I know that part of the answer is to use tools on their own terms. I am willing to do that. But when design changes capriciously and I suspect the changes of being part of the problem, I have to convince myself to learn little new techniques.

One I have just proudly achieved (please do not laugh at the old man) is how to get my touch pad on my lap top to scroll easily (lightly touch  with two fingers and drag after making sure the curser is floating on the part of the page you want to move).

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‘The Dismal Science,’ by Peter Mountford – NYTimes.com

Book review of a book that looks interesting to me.

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‘The Bright Continent,’ by Dayo Olopade – NYTimes.com

Another book review, this time chock full of interesting corrections to misconceptions about Africa.

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The Irony of Cliven Bundy’s Unconstitutional Stand – Matt Ford – The Atlantic

Some calm insights into a crazy situation.

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