THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING

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Logo by Stefan Strasser

Improving Life Chip By Chip

(From This Is Your Captain Speaking)

Technology is a wonderful thing. How we made it this far without some of our electronic marvels is a mystery to me. The computer, for example, seems now an indispensable tool.

They are incredible timesaving devices, and when coupled with that other technological wonder, the telephone, seem to save so much time it’s as though you end up with more than you started with.

 Why, just the other morning, when I found myself in need of some information regarding my flying schedule for the next month, I simply tapped a few keys, listened to that uniquely annoying grinding sound of a modem searching for a phone connection by slowly dragging its finger nails across a chalkboard, and voila! I’m logged into that unfathomably deep well of knowledge, the www, or more accurately, the internet. Here, at my very fingertips, lies all the world’s knowledge, information to a degree unimaginable, information unlimited…some of which I might even be mildly interested in.

 A few more keystrokes and I’m at the home page for getting to my schedule data. Now, this is sensitive stuff, so not just everyone can be allowed to view it. For security purposes, I have three different code numbers to gain access past the home page. One of those codes changes every sixty seconds and is known to me only through a small electronic fob issued by the company which displays that number on an LED screen.

 The login page is time sensitive, so if any of the three code numbers is fumbled in a major way, it times out and you have to start all over again. I’m pretty quick with numbers and my fingers, but with enough distractions, this process can be a bit frustrating. The first of these distractions was in the form of my daughter asking, at the critical moment, could she check her email.

 On the second attempt, I was almost in, when the Internet connection was lost. This happens from time to time if there are a lot of folks using the system.

 OK, the failure of the third attempt was my fault. I tried to get in with only a few seconds left on the sixty-second cycle and didn’t make it. But on the fourth attempt, I got past the login, and this only seventeen minutes after I began the process.

 Feeling pretty smug about the speed with which I had cut right to the information I needed (or almost right to it), I tapped in my code numbers (just the first two this time) again in order to move to the desired screen. At this point, a little notification from the folks I pay to keep nasty viruses off my machine popped up advising me I needed to update my system. Knowing that if I advanced just one more keystroke without this latest update, some particularly voracious beast would chow down on my hard drive like a kid on a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie, I hovered the cursor over the “OK” and tapped.

 After the download of the new virus protection update, I felt far more secure as I began again the process of logging into the scheduling site. It seems the update automatically restarted my computer, so it lost the Internet connection. Wish it had told me it was going to do that; I’d have taken a giant risk and put the update off until later.

 But it was all OK. I was still only 38 minutes into the process when I adroitly maneuvered through the floating number login again. There was only one bobble when my daughter strolled through and asked about which of her instant messenger buddies might be on-line.

 Just put the two code numbers in one more time and…a friendly message from the nice folks at Microsoft (a little tongue-in-cheek here as there are no nice folks at Microsoft). It seems there is an update available for one of the programs used to handle Internet doings. Do I want to download it now, yes or no?

 Hey, I’m not going to get burned on this one again. No, I’ll do it later. The machine whirs and chirps, only seconds away from spitting out the coveted info I so desperately need. It’s loading something called an applet. It’s almost there. It’s…Aurgh! Another nastygram. Something about needing the latest update from MS in order to display the selected screen.

 I start the download process. A little note pops up that says on slower machines it should take only take 22 minutes. Well, my machine was the fastest of the fast; the most gig and hertz money can buy. But that was almost two months ago. It’s totally out of date now.

 Only forty-three minutes later, I’m restarting my machine again. Man, isn’t the speed of today’s technology something!?

 This time the login goes smoothly. I get to the scheduling section without any major hiccups. I did have to wander around a bit to find what I needed, as they had changed the format of the system since the last time I logged on. But here I was, looking at exactly what I needed, a detail of my schedule showing everything I needed to know about it. All that information after only an hour and eight minutes of key tapping. Amazing!

 I got to see it for three and a half seconds before the Internet connection was lost.

 As I watched the computer screen display one message after another about modems and dial tones and the lack thereof, my son wandered into the room and stood looking over my shoulder sipping a glass of ice water. Sweat rolled from his face and soaked his T-shirt. He had been out mowing the grass. “Dad, you busy?”

 I almost lost it and screamed something I’d be sorry for, but knowing that a few little frustrations are to be expected when dealing with technology, I forced down my rising anger and responded in a gentle, patient voice, “Why, son, I’m never too busy for you. What’s up?”

 “I bumped that little green telephone junction box thingy in the corner of the yard with the lawn tractor and the cover fell off. I don’t think it hurt anything.”

 My cell phone gets great service everywhere except in about a quarter mile radius right around our house, so I got in the car, drove to the top of the hill, and called the local phone company. Within only twenty-five minutes, I succeeded in reporting the outage of our local phone service by punching a series of responses to computer generated messages. The last message informed me it would be three to five working days before someone could come out to check into the problem.

 It was Friday. Five working days could mean a week before anybody checked into it. I couldn’t wait that long. I was already in the car, so I headed toward the airport, where I’d be able to use the company computer system to get what I needed. On the way, intending to let my wife know what I was doing, I punched up her cell phone which promptly rang from its place there on the dash right in front of me, sending me into one of those frenzied few seconds of trying to figure out if my phone was ringing or where the other one was, all while trying to stay reasonably close to my side of the street.

 I was in her car, which is where her cell phone usually stays, because my car was in the shop. The day before, while sitting in the driveway all by itself, it caught on fire. The fire started in a little computer that runs the ABS (Automatic Braking System).

 It was OK, though. I’d be back home before she missed me. It’s only a thirty-minute drive to the airport. Of course, what with parking and getting through security and what not, the whole show would take a couple of hours.

 At the airport, I was dismayed to learn that the company’s system was now down for maintenance; not the whole system, just the part I needed to check my schedule.

 It was a pretty drastic thing to do in this day and age of instant computer generated information, but I was getting desperate, so I placed a telephone call to the folks who actually do the scheduling (aided by computers, of course). They are physically located hundreds of miles away in the frozen waste lands of the north, but through the magic of electronics, the lady I got on the line after only twelve layers of selecting options sounded as though she was standing right in front of me. The connection was so good, in fact, that I was immediately able to sense in the tone of her voice that she was in the midst of some major crisis.

 I was right. Seems the building where all the computer generated scheduling stuff comes from, took a lightning strike and the stuff wasn’t forthcoming. “You mean it’s not available?” I asked incredulously.

 “Well, we have it on hard copy,” she replied nervously.

 “You mean like on paper?” I found that hard to believe.

 “Yeah, but I don’t have time to look it up for you right now. We’ve got a problem here.”

 Boy, I bet you do, I thought.

 Shuffling back down the concourse toward the parking lot, my mind raced. The scheduler had a problem and so did I. I needed that information, and I needed it that day.

 My eye caught the computer-generated sign behind the podium of the gate I was passing. The boarding flight was headed to the twin pillars of the endless tundra, what we so affectionately call the ice palace, Mecca, the source of all knowledge. And, more importantly, the location of the info I needed. I looked at my watch. It was still only mid-day. Why not?

 A call to my son’s cell phone got only his message depository as his phone was at home in the black hole of non-service. It was OK though. He would surely go somewhere later, and once out of the hole, the phone would beep to let him know he had a message letting the family know I would be gone for a little while. Besides, I’d be back before I was really missed.

 At the podium, I was struck again by just how efficient we have become in this computer age. I presented the agent with my boarding document and he began tapping those keys. Every few seconds he would frown, mutter something, and tap a few more keys. While waiting, I thought back to the way we used to do this before we were saved by computers. Back then, I would step to the podium, the agent would ask window or isle, I would respond, and he would put a little seat number sticker on my boarding pass. It only took about ten seconds, but it was horribly labor intensive, as he had to physically remove that little sticker from a seating map and place it on my boarding pass.

 But today, after only about eight minutes of standing there while the agent muttered, pecked, and frowned, I had my seat assignment. Of course, as it turned out, when I got on board, another guy had the same seat assignment. After comparing boarding passes, I slinked back to the last row of the airplane where I found a vacant seat, as I am an employee and couldn’t afford to make a fuss. It was just one of those little computer glitches anyhow.

On the ground in the Ice Palace, I had just enough time to dash over to the scheduling office, snatch what I needed, and get back for the last flight back to Memphis.

 All went well. None of the schedulers had time to help me, but they were in such a panic they didn’t have time to stop me from scrounging around to find what I needed either. With the cherished info in my hot little hand, I started back to the airport terminal building, only to find out the employee buses had stopped running. Seems someone had messed up the input to the computer generated bus driver schedule. There was no driver assigned at that time.

 I ran the mile and a half back, arriving with sweat dripping off my nose only to find out my flight had been canceled. One of the Air Traffic Control Centers had experienced a computer outage. All traffic headed south was delayed indefinitely.

 I’ve been doing this sort of thing for a long time, so I didn’t even miss a step as I studied the flight display monitors and looked for an alternative. There was a flight leaving in mere minutes to Detroit, which gave just barely enough time to catch the last flight from there to Memphis.

 The entire air traffic control system was horribly snarled up due to the loss of the one sector, but when we touched down in DTW, after some enroute delay, I still had a chance at catching my flight if the departure gate was reasonably close to our arrival gate.

 No such luck. We came in on one end of the terminal, and my flight left from the other end. Again, from long years of experience, I wasted not a second as I dashed toward the high-tech internal tram system that would, no doubt, whisk me to the desired gate with seconds to spare.

 The tram was out of service. A computer glitch kept sending it past the stations with the doors still closed, I was told.

 Repeated attempts to reach my son’s cell phone resulted only in my leaving ever more lengthy (and sometimes heated) messages. I tried to call some of our neighbors and friends to have them go over and tell my wife I’d be spending the night in Detroit. In fact, I eventually broadened the range of those called to the point where I was trying to get folks who were passing acquaintances only. All I got was busy signals. I later learned the kids, in every case, were instant messaging (on the Internet), tying up the phone lines.

 The next day, after I got back home and things settled down a bit (having canceled the missing persons bulletin with the sheriff’s department and all), I once again pondered just how fortunate we are to have time saving devices like the computer and telephone. Why, those hours on the airplane, snuggled in my comfortable seat there in the last row, afforded me time for thought and meditation I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

 I would count also the time spent alone in the hotel in Detroit as time gained, but there wasn’t any quiet solitude involved there. It was a terribly shabby place with folks shouting and doors slamming all throughout the night. Seems there was some sort of computer convention in town and it was the only room I could get.

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