How fear of the color purple drove me to buy a computer

by Ken

A proper explanation would begin with how my TV happened to be tuned to the station when I turned it on in the first place. But I can only guess. It's not a station I can imagine ever having intentionally tuned to, but possibly when the TV was lost on I had punched a station number into the computer remote of which a digit or two wasn't "read," or was misread, and then maybe I proceed to watch something from the DVR, so that the cable box remained tuned to the unintendedly tuned-in station. Hey, it's a theory. Because the incontrovertible fact is that by some means or other that's the station that came on when I turned the TV on. If not for that accident, it's doubtful that I would even have thought about buying a computer, let alone actually done it.

Awhile ago I promised, or maybe threatened, to talk about how I came to do such a thing, and I figured the first thing we had to establish is how I came to be watching a home shopping network -- actually, the Home Shopping Network (aka HSN) -- to begin with. After all, I am the sort of person who can be merciless in my ridicule of those lost souls who sit in front of the TV compulsively buying all the crap lovely merchandise displayed on these stations. What pliable, robotic suckers such folks must be, I've always thought. Until that fateful day when I fell victim to the Purple-Computer Prospect, and found my own finger pressing the Purchase Button of No Return.

I was doing something else as, in the background of my life, the HSN on-air team waxed ecstatic about this amazing deal, on an HP notebook computer, part of a package that they solemnly assured us was going to have features not offered at this price again this year, and since I the thought had crossed my mind that maybe I might want to think about acquiring a new computer, one both newer and more portable than my now-ancient desktop iMac, assuming it could be done cheaply enough, I must have gradually started to pay attention to the TV patter, and as I listened, the package on offer came to strike me as a whole lot of computer at a price that sort of fit within a budget, to the extent that an unemployed person might be said to have a budget for fitting within.

Of course the HSN sellers are quite good at doing what they do, and the more they talked up the splendors of the numerous particulars that were included in the package, the more the relevant gears in my brain moved into action. The obvious stumbling block was that it was a PC, and I haven't owned a non-Mac computer in maybe 30 years -- or used 0one since the days of, oh, Windows 3.1, whose historicity was affirmed by the fact that this machine came equipped with Windows 10. But by then I was all too aware that fitting an up-to-date, upgradable Mac into the aforementioned budget was going to be an impossibility. Not even close, even if I was looking at a refurbished unit, and never mind that I had already had a seriously bad experience with a refurbished PowerBook.

Not to mention that, as I've mentioned here a number of times, over the last decade or so I've come to feel increasingly alienated from the Mac universe I used to be happily part of. This had already led me to the decision, faced with the need to do something about an aging android smartphone I'd never learned to use, that one option I was not going to consider was an iPhone. The Strange New Cult of Apple has made it pretty clear that I'm welcome to pack up and take my product allegiance elsewhere, so maybe it's time to take them up on that offer. I may also have considered that acquiring some fluency in the Windows world might not be a senseless thing to do for a person looking for employment. But mostly I think it was the possibility of getting a computer with that much functionality at that modest price.

By now, as you may have gathered, my attention was switching from whatever I had been doing with the TV on in the background to the ongoing sales pitch. Naturally we in the viewing audience were being fed constantly updated numbers on how many of these dream packages had been sold, and how many were left, and I was paying close enough attention that I became aware that the range of colors in which the computer was being offered had narrowed appreciably. At this point the remaining choices were purple, white, and light blue. This got those gears whirring in my head going faster, and my gut started to get engaged. White would be okay, I supposed, and the light-blue option sounded like a possibility, but wouldn't that really depend on the actual shade of light blue in question?

But purple? What kind of color is purple for a computer? Oh, the horror! Understand that nobody was pointing a gun at my head saying, "You must buy one of these computers." However, the Purple-Computer Prospect had lodged in my brain. What would it be like to be faced with having to buy the purple computer? Now my gut was churning pretty actively.

Along about then two things happened: (1) They showed the light-blue model on air, and I really didn't like it. It was a good color for kindergarten fingerpaint, I thought, but for a computer to be used by a chronological grownup? I thought not. (2) The dire word came that the goddamn light-blue computers were sold out. OMG!!! It was possible to be sold out of a computer I didn't want to buy in the first place!

Which is when the fear of the Purple-Computer Prospect took control of my brain. Relatively speaking, the white model was now looking like the only choice. After that, it was just a matter of time before I was punching the "purchase" button. For the white computer, of course -- thank goodness!

It's neither here nor there (well, maybe sort of there) that a short while after I'd made my purchase, as I continued to watch, now in shock at the developments that had developed, an announcement was made that the purple computers had sold out. If you wanted to get in on this amazing deal, you were stuck with (sigh) white.

My white computer was delivered in surprisingly short order (hey, it occurred to me, these shopping-network people must have plenty of experience at shipping product out of their warehouses), and while there would be further adventures (and misadventures) along the way, I have to say I'm on the whole pretty pleased. Windows 10 is still highly mysterious to me, but I'm starting to be able to get things done, including writing this post, while visiting friends upstate, happily connected to their WiFi. (As I may have said previously, I'm confident that no one on the planet understands less about WiFi than yours truly.) And no doubt I'll gradually learn to do more things, and do the things I can do more easily and efficiently. Also, I'm looking forward to learning how to adjust the display contrast (or something) so that I can actually read what I'm writing here. But the fact is, I'm actually making productive used of the darned contraption.

And thank goodness, it's not purple.

#

Urgent! Important! Please read!

DILBERT     by Scott Adams
[Click on any strip to enlarge.]

Wednesday: Biggest Obstacle


Thursday: Dashboard For The Boss


Today: Dashboard Never Changes


by Ken

It's a good thing there's nothing happening in the world, 'cause I'm suddenly in a condition of computer snafuitude, which I'll explain in a moment for the record. Meanwhile, this gives me an opportunity to raise a question I've been meaning to throw out for some time, with regard to stuff like that I've put in the post title as it turns up in e-mail subject lines. And the question is this: Does anyone actually read e-mails that come with such declarations of self-importance? Can it be possible that I'm the only one who, just on principle, more or less automatically deletes them?

"Urgent," eh? "Please read," you say? No, I don't think so!

And confidential to whichever Democratic Party functionaries who are sending out those end-of-the-world-is-nigh fund-raising e-mails with all-caps subject lines about how the sky is falling: Just quit it, huh? I'm certainly not going to read those.


NOW, AS TO MY CURRENT COMPUTER MALAISE --

Last night when I got home from seeing my friend Gil in the Classical Theatre of Harlem's adaptation of Macbeth (absolutely free, great reviews in both Time Out New York and the NYT, though I take the latter's theater writing a lot less seriously) with three performances left -- in the excellent Richard Rodgers Amphitheater of Northern Manhattan's Marcus Garvey Park, tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday at 8pm), I went to the computer and discovered that my keyboard appears to be majorly fucked up, and I don't have time to go keyboard shopping today.

This isn't entirely unusual, since I am known to spill stuff on the keyboard which I know I should never have anywhere near it. Which is why some time ago I instituted a policy of always having a spare keyboard on hand, replacing what had been the spare as soon as it's pressed into service as the new keyboard. The thing is (and this is a funny story; you'll laugh and laugh) I took my last spare into the office so that I would have a working keyboard there, feeling queasy about reporting the situation to the office manager, seeing as how it was my own fault that I didn't have a working keyboard. Ironically, when I had occasion to mention to Christine, the office manager, that I had done this, she didn't see why I hadn't just told her!

And then, that Friday in January, we came into the office and found out that we didn't have an office anymore, and I was afraid that if I took my keyboard home, I would be accused of stealing "their" keyboard. Ha ha ha! Pretty funny, right? (Note to self: I really should try to get in touch with Christine, maybe see if I can find her on Facebook. She's good people, and I haven't had contact since That Day in January. Of course I should also be finding, you know, a job, but that doesn't seem to be happening either.)

The odd thing about my current keyboard predicament (assuming that that's all it is -- the keyboard) is that normally I know all about it when I demolish a keyboard, because I've just watched myself do it. This time, is a puzzlement.

So on the regular computer I can still do anything that can be done by mouse, plus things that can be done using still-working keys. From which I got the idea that I could maybe do some of the heavier post-related lifting on it, then dump that stuff in a blog file, and then edit that file on a MacBook that I bought refurbished some time back, hoping it would help me back when I was still blogging every day (and twice on some days). And after a fashion it has worked! (If you want to see something really funny, you should see me with the two computers running side by side, the MacBook perched precariously alongside the desktop, and me furiously working the mouse from the desktop computer and cursing the MacBook for not responding -- or occasionally vice versa, when the trackpad of the MacBook fails to produce results on the desktop.)

I knew going in that the machine just missed the cutoff for being system-upgradable beyond OS 10.6, a perfectly lovely OS that Apple has chosen to abandon, rendering it. But I thought I could at least upgrade the memory to make it work better and faster.

Only by the time I was ready to actually attempt the feat,  after successfully performing a memory upgrade on the desktopo computer which enabled me to upgrade that also-aging machine all the way to El Capitan, and even ordered the new memory, when I went to open the battery compartment to perform the installation, I discovered that I couldn't open the battery compartment. I figured this was just my incompetence, and eventually I took the computer and the memory upgrade to the crackerjack Mac folks at Tekserve, assuming they would deftly open the thing and then for a reasonable fee install the new memory.

Instead what happened was that they gathered their savviest tech hands to gaze in wonder at something none of them had ever seen: a battery compartment that had somehow gotten internally locked, leaving no option that any of the assembled wizards could think of except to break into the thing, after which they couldn't of course guarantee its continued functioning. Maybe I should have let them give it a shot, but at least as is the thing was working, within its limits.

My bad, obviously, for not having thought to try to open the battery compartment while I might still have gotten redress from the company that sold it to me. And by this time, I discovered, the company existed except in name, a name that had been sold to another company, which informed me with a nice tinge of regret that sorry, there was nothing they could do for me. On the plus side, the company from which I had bought the memory that I successfully installed on the desktop computer and then the memory I was unable to install on the MacBook allowed me to return the latter.

Which today include enabling me to get this post done. And the nice thing is that I can whine to my heart's content, confident that my subject line has triply warded off any potential readers.

#

Google folds itself into a new "entity" called "Alphabet" -- in search of new ways to suck?

A sneak peek at the planned logo for "Alphabet," the
"collection of companies" Google has folded itself into

"Google now touches nearly every aspect of Internet connected life thanks to its search engine, e-mail service, YouTube and Android smartphone operating system. But it's also turned its eye away from those core products to try and answer the larger questions about what technology can do for society at large."

-- Hayley Tsukayama, Washington Post consumer-technology
writer, in "Google becomes part of a new company, Alphabet"

by Ken

Time for a quick question, Hayley? Up there where you say that Google has "also turned its eye away from those core products to try and answer the larger questions about what technology can do for society at large," you didn't by chance mean that Google wants to answer the larger questions about what technology can do to society, did you? Okay, just asking. I guess this is the way the Googleberries think of it -- or rather the Alphabetniks, I guess we should call them, now that Google is merely part of "Alphabet," which is Google but oh-so-much more. Heaven help us.

Okay, I'm hardly a disinterested observer. I've made no secret of the fact that I think Google sucks. Why, I've even offered helpful corporate slogans to goose the brand, like "GOOGLE: The G stands for Crappy." No compensation required.

The obvious question, now that Google has created this larger entity to, er, include itself (and, as we shall see, the Alphabet People are by and large the Same Old Google People -- only, you know, grander, maybe more metaphysical), can the new entity be said to pre-suck?

If you haven't heard the news, you may not know what I'm talking about. Here's the short version, courtesy of the Washington Post's above-referenced Hayley Tsukayama:

Google chief executive Larry Page on Monday announced that the tech giant is undergoing a major restructuring and will become a wholly owned subsidiary of a new conglomerate known as Alphabet.

The move, Page said, will allow Google to focus more on its core products, including its search engine, while Alphabet manages a variety of different businesses, from driver-less cars to drones.

And here's the long version, from the horse's mouth, as it were, Google Alphabet CEO Larry Page:

G is for Google

Posted: Monday, August 10, 2015

As Sergey and I wrote in the original founders letter 11 years ago, “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” As part of that, we also said that you could expect us to make “smaller bets in areas that might seem very speculative or even strange when compared to our current businesses.” From the start, we’ve always strived to do more, and to do important and meaningful things with the resources we have.

We did a lot of things that seemed crazy at the time. Many of those crazy things now have over a billion users, like Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome, and Android. And we haven’t stopped there. We are still trying to do things other people think are crazy but we are super excited about.

We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes. But in the technology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant.

Our company is operating well today, but we think we can make it cleaner and more accountable. So we are creating a new company, called Alphabet (http://abc.xyz). I am really excited to be running Alphabet as CEO with help from my capable partner, Sergey, as President.

What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main Internet products contained in Alphabet instead. What do we mean by far afield? Good examples are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related. Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed. We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well. We'll also make sure we have a great CEO for each business, and we’ll determine their compensation. In addition, with this new structure we plan to implement segment reporting for our Q4 results, where Google financials will be provided separately than those for the rest of Alphabet businesses as a whole.

This new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google. A key part of this is Sundar Pichai. Sundar has been saying the things I would have said (and sometimes better!) for quite some time now, and I’ve been tremendously enjoying our work together. He has really stepped up since October of last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our Internet businesses. Sergey and I have been super excited about his progress and dedication to the company. And it is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google. I feel very fortunate to have someone as talented as he is to run the slightly slimmed down Google and this frees up time for me to continue to scale our aspirations. I have been spending quite a bit of time with Sundar, helping him and the company in any way I can, and I will of course continue to do that. Google itself is also making all sorts of new products, and I know Sundar will always be focused on innovation -- continuing to stretch boundaries. I know he deeply cares that we can continue to make big strides on our core mission to organize the world's information. Recent launches like Google Photos and Google Now using machine learning are amazing progress. Google also has some services that are run with their own identity, like YouTube. Susan is doing a great job as CEO, running a strong brand and driving incredible growth.

Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things. Alphabet will also include our X lab, which incubates new efforts like Wing, our drone delivery effort. We are also stoked about growing our investment arms, Ventures and Capital, as part of this new structure.

Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights. Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet. Our two classes of shares will continue to trade on Nasdaq as GOOGL and GOOG.

For Sergey and me this is a very exciting new chapter in the life of Google -- the birth of Alphabet. We liked the name Alphabet because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity's most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search! We also like that it means alpha-bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for! I should add that we are not intending for this to be a big consumer brand with related products--the whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands.

We are excited about…

• Getting more ambitious things done.
• Taking the long-term view.
• Empowering great entrepreneurs and companies to flourish.
• Investing at the scale of the opportunities and resources we see.
• Improving the transparency and oversight of what we’re doing.
• Making Google even better through greater focus.
• And hopefully...as a result of all this, improving the lives of as many people as we can.

What could be better? No wonder we are excited to get to work with everyone in the Alphabet family. Don’t worry, we’re still getting used to the name too!

Posted by Larry Page, CEO

Disclosure time: I didn't actually read every word of Larry's post. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't. (No, it's not enough to know that he and Sergey are really excited.)

So what does this all mean? Let's go back to Hayley's report.

The move comes as Google struggles to maintain focus as its portfolio grows and its interests spread across various industries. That sprawl has recently attracted criticism from investors, who wondered whether the company could remain innovative with so many distractions.

Page will be chief executive of Alphabet, while Google co-founder Sergey Brin will become president. Sundar Pichai, who is Google's senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps, will become Google's chief executive.

Pichai, who has been a Google employee since 2004, has risen steadily through the company’s ranks. The soft-spoken executive has taken on much of the day-to-day duties of running Google during the past couple of years. He joined as a member of the Chrome team and was credited by Page for making the browser fast, simple and secure. He added Android to his portfolio of responsibilities in 2013. Pichai's reputation as a team player has made him popular within the company, and he has lead the company's keynote presentations for more than a year.

As of last October, Pichai has also been in charge of product and engineering responsibilities for Google's Internet businesses, as Page and Brin have turned more attention to side products.

And as you know, assuming you read every word of Larry's post, Larry and Sergey "have been super excited about [Sundar's] progress and dedication to the company," and it's clear to them and to their board "that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google." Way to go, Sundar!

As for the other Google boys and girls, Hayley tells us:

Most of the top Google executives will become Alphabet executives, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat and chief legal officer David Drummond will take up corresponding positions within Alphabet. Porat will also remain the CFO of Google.

A BIT OF HISTORY (HEY, PAY ATTENTION!)

You probably know all this, but can you quote the current cash value of Google? I didn't think so. So just sit still and read this. You're responsible for all of this material on the midterm.

Google, one of the few companies to actually become a verb, hardly needs introduction. The firm was started by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997, after the two met as students at Stanford University. Before Google, the two worked together on a search engine called BackRub, which they operated on the servers at Stanford for more than a year. The pair registered the domain name "Google.com" on Sept. 17, 1998, with the mission to organize all of the world's information.

The company went public in 2004. It is worth $443.9 billion and handles an estimated 67 percent of the country's desktop searches and 83 percent of its mobile searches, according to ComScore. Internationally, NetMarketShare puts Google's global desktop search share at 70 percent.

While the company has always held search at its core, it has expanded into several different areas.

Which kind of brings us back to, you know, that "criticism from investors, who wondered whether the company could remain innovative with so many distractions." (By the way, if you were thinking of slamming $443.9 billion down on the table with a view to buying Google, you should know that, as Hayley reports, "Google shares were up nearly 6 percent in after-hours trading on the news, to about $671 per share." But you know how those kids on Wall Street are -- they often get, you know, a little carried away.)


THIS ISN'T MY CRITICISM OF GOOGLE

You know, all the innovation and all the distractions. And I realize that in the practical and conceptual cosmos that Google bestrides, I'm just a mite of a mote out on the fringe. But I have to use the effing software they bestowed on our bloghost, Blogger, after they acquired it. I guess it was nice that they thought to do an overhaul to make the software better. It's just that they turned the job over to a team of imbeciles who have apparently never used the software, and never plan to. Or possibly to some Googleberry's idiot nephew. And nobody seemed to care that what they -- or he -- produced often functions more like a virus than like software, arbitrarily reaching into the hapless blogger's code and "tweaking" it into unintelligibility. Not to mention reaching into the hapless blogger's computers and festooning them with the software-code equivalent of chewing gum to slow them down and even make them crawl to a screeching halt.

Why just now, as I glanced at the code for this post as it takes shape, I had to go in and extract a bunch of non-breaking spaces that the blog software had unilaterally inserted. Don't get me started on non-breaking spaces, which don't do what Google's Idiot Nephew seems to think they do. And I could offer you a million more like this, but Google doesn't care, so why should you?


WHEW! I WAS FEELING GUILTY, BUT EVER
SINCE GOOGLE MAPS GOT "IMPROVED" --

As for other stuff that Google has either created or acquired: I think Gmail sucks just as bad as, and more flamboyantly than, AOL Mail, for which those of us who still use it are so royally ridiculed; I have no use for Google accounts, let alone Google-Plus, which I can't even figure out what it is; I hate Android, which I also haven't figured out how to use in the nearly four years I've had Android phones (I took an educational session at the public library and came out understanding less than when I went in); and You Tube, despite its undeniable points of interest, seems to me a major blight of our time, in terms of the amount of mental and physical energy wasted on it.

All that said, there was one corner of the Googleverse for which I used to harbor warm feelings, even admiration: Google Maps. To begin with, I'm a map person from way back, and especially for my extensive wanderings about my local area, I came to consider Google Maps a godsend (which no, is not the same thing as a Google-send). My amazement grew as I discovered how effectively, even with my limited technical expertise, I could not just locate places or areas I was looking for but then size and crop wonderfully useful maps on a plain old b&w printer.

So then, naturally, they went and "improved" it. For a while, the software would warn, anytime I accessed it from either of the two computers I principally use, that said computers did not meet the system requirements of the improved software but that I would be allowed to use a specially devised version of the software, a version that was apparently devised for morons, which was basically a shade this side of useless. Now that warning seems to be gone, and I just get the moron version of the software, which is okay on-screen but seems incapable of printing out anything but a moron version of the region of the map you've customized, a moron map that looks like it was created by a three-year-old who was allowed to glance at the original for a few seconds and was then asked to draw the things he/she remembers from it.

I worked out a Rube Goldberg-style work-around for something I was able to do without great difficulty with the unimproved Google Maps software: do a screen grab of the portion of the map I want to print out, then print that file. But I'm confident that the Google Software Commando Team is working on a way to make this impossible.

Of course it's my fault for continuing to use computers that Time Has Passed By, and never mind that they happen to do all the things I need them to do, or they would be able to if the dubiously "improved" generations of software hadn't designed them into obsolescence, and it doesn't matter that I don't need or want to do any of the wonderful new things that the newer hardware and software have been empowered to do.

In this Google is hardly alone. I understand that I'm meant to buy new computers, but in fact one of the two computers I use isn't under my control, and as for the one that is, well, I don't wanna buy a new computer. This one used to be able to do all the things I needed it to do, and it still could if it were allowed to.


SO IT'S NOT JUST GOOGLE THAT SUCKS

But if I were Google (or "Alphabet," or "Horse's Patoot," or whatever they want to call themselves), I don't know that I would consider this something to brag about.

#

Annals of Technological Progress: When did it become assumed that everyone has a laptop computer?

by Ken

Since this is going to rad like another diatribe against Technological Progress, I'd like to start by stressing that this truly isn't what's meant, and the best way I can do that is by quoting part of a New Yorker "Briefly Noted" review (in the Nov. 4 issue) of a book called Smarter Than You Think by Clive Thompson:

"Thompson is not a tech acolyte, and is skeptical of "the giddy boosterism of Silicon Valley," but he makes a sharp and sustained argument against "apocalyptic warnings" that social media and constant connectedness are degrading private consciousness or public discourse. He notes that popular innovations -- including text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, and Web comments sections -- have created, for the first time, "a global culture of avid writers."

Okay, Thompson, noted. Avid writers. Got it.

I need to make a further disclaimer. My thoughts on technological advances will not be influenced by the two trips I made, one Friday and one yesterday, to the Time Warner Cable service location, and the hour I waited yesterday amid the apparent hundreds of waiting customers -- not to be confused with the apparent hundreds of waiting customres who persuaded me not to try to wait them out Friday, when I had allotted only 30 minutes, or maybe 40-45 tops, for the mission, which was to swap two set-top boxes, and instead wound up schlepping the two boxes with me two my engagement that evening.

One of the boxes turned out not to need swapping, since it's a DVR box that only recently replaced the poor old underperforming analog DVR box that had been driving me crazy for years. Now I wanted to swap it for an HD DVR box, to go with the new TV that was just delivered Friday, and was startled but pleased to discover that this perfectly okay-ish new-ish box in fact delivers a digital signal. So that box simply needed to be schlepped back home, again> That also meant I didn't lose the unwatched programming that was still on the hard drive, even though I had prepared to wave it bye-bye. Still, there are some never-watched episodes of Maron and 1 Girl 5 Gays I'll be glad to still have a crack at. Of course it would have been nice if somebody had told my model would deliver an unconverted digital signal, but Time Warner Cable seems to have taken to providing not much information either by phone or by online chat. (Once I thought about the technological basis, of course, it makes sense, since the signal that comes into the box has been all-digital for some time. An "HD" box actually requires less technology.) Nevertheless, I wasn't displeased; also, I did get an HDMI cable, which TWC supplies for digital connections.

As to the other box, it was a replacement for my last remaining analog one. It just seemed to me that my cable boxes were awfully old. And the rep who helped me obligingly produced a model that is apparently also HD-ready, which is nice for when the analog set in question finally gives up the ghost. (It's already held together with duct tape, but it just won't die. Any more than the kitchen TV that was finally just replaced, a Sharp that I've been using for nearly 40 years after buying it used!) The only thing is, I finally plugged this box in tonight. It doesn't work. So it's back to TWC!

Like I said, though, my thoughts on technological progress will in no way be influenced by any of the above.

What happened was that I signed up for a workshop being offered by the map-making people at the Museum of the City of New York on digital map-making. I'm a life-long map obsessive, and have been intrigued by what I've seen of the new era of digital map-making, and no special expertise beyond familiarity with Google Maps was called for. As soon as I finished reading the e-announcement I did my online registration.

And let me say that the workshop was great. We had two really fine young instructors, Phillip covering the technical side and Liz covering the content side. I really like being around people who really know stuff. So, especially at my MCNY member's discount, I consider this money well spent.

The only thing is, after I registered, I got a very nice e-mail from the organizers thanking me for my registration and advising me to bring my laptop to the workshop. Which I'm sure would have been an excellent idea if I happened to own a laptop.

I think somebody else who didn't have a laptop with him eventually showed up this afternoon, but for a long time I thought I was the only freakishly laptop-deprived person on the planet. Liz the content maven assured me I wouldn't need it, and indeed the computer used for demo purposes (it altered between Liz's and Phillip's Macs) was projected on a nice big screen. I'm sure I would have gotten more out of the experience if I'd been flailing away at my own keyboard as Phillip and Liz demonstrated, but I sort of got the idea, and eventually I'll go back over it; we're promised access to the presentation.

I just wanted to raise the question that, come to think of it, I already raised in the title: When did it become assumed that everyone has a laptop computer? I mean, I spent plenty of time working at a computer -- most of my time at work, plus an awful lot of time at home. (Heck, I do after all produce nine DWT blogposts a week, including two that involve extensive editing of audio files.) I just didn't expect to find myself so far behind the technical curve.

And don't even get me started on my second smartphone. I still haven't reconnected it to my voice-mail box. That's pathetic, I know. But the laptop-computer question is different. Howie and I talked about this recently, and I really couldn't think of any reason why I need one. And that's without considering the damage I would be constantly about to do to the poor device. (This isn't theoretical. The last time I bought a laptop, many many years ago, I did in fairly short order demolish the screen.)

I can live with being "out of it." I've spent most of my life out of it. I just didn't realize this was yet another category of out-of-itness. In this regard, am I really that unusual?

#

Young People Fleeing The Republican Party In Droves

Dawn Gibbons hosts a fashion show for Nevada Young Republicans

Yesterday we ran a post about how quite a few males over 50 who still like the same songs they were listening to 30 or more years ago would vote for McCain. Of course the ones who die between now and November won't be voting for McCain. And I bet a lot of the Bill O'Reilly Depends crowd will go vote for McCain too... if they remember. Today's Washington Post, on the other hand, has a story on the woes of Republicans in their 20s. They are the "few and the frustrated."

All the Reagan-worship goes over their head and makes them think their candidates are out-of-it "old fogies." The president of the Young Republicans moaned to the Post that "The Republicans are sort of talking down to Gen-Nexters, not bringing them in... You don't hear Barack Obama going around saying, 'I'm John F. Kennedy.' He's saying, 'I'm Barack Obama.' There's a reason for that. He's inspiring an entire generation, and it's a generation that's trying to change the world in 160 characters or less through text messages."

My friend's aunt is in her 90s and lives in a retirement hope. Like plenty of senior citizens, she's an Internet whiz. She's also an iTunes fanatic and gets great pleasure in turning the other residents on to new music and leading discussion groups. She literally goes on line to find good deals on walkers for her friends. John McCain, on the other hand, seems to think that a computer is some kind of new fangled typewriter he plans to learn sometime after he learns economics. His Internet policies simply don't exist. It's not part of his life, although he's heard about it. He also heard that people are paying a lot for gas nowadays.

The Republican brand, as Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), said recently, "is in the trash can. I've often observed that if we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf." And it's even worse among people under 30.

Voters under 30 are more than twice as likely to identify themselves as Democrats, according to the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll.

...Republicans haven't always been so disconnected. A quarter-century ago, Reagan charmed young voters and won 59 percent of their vote in 1984. In 1992, on the heels of the Reagan Revolution, voters under 30 split their allegiance about evenly between the two major parties. But every presidential cycle since then, Democrats have gained ground. This year, according to the Post-ABC poll, 44 percent of those under 30 call themselves Democrats, and only 18 percent identify as Republicans.

Today's Post also has a fashion story about tattoos. Oh, they must be all those Democrats, you think? Well, they may not be a certain kind of young (Young) Republican but I remember meeting a young man once and getting intimate with him only to discover a huge Nazi eagle and swastika tattoo. We got to discussing it and it turned out that his family had taught him to hate Jews. Asking him if he had ever met any led to the discovery that he had mixed up African-Americans and Jews. This was well before Republican propagandists started claiming Obama is a Jew but my young friend just absolutely knew that every single person of color he ever saw was Jewish. He had inherited his family's bigotry but I'm happy to report that after a summer of friendship he lasered off the swastika. I haven't been in touch with him in a number of decades so I don't know if he's still voting Republican or not; my guess is that he still is.