Warning: Mad Beeper is Loose

My normally-pasty face flushed the kind of rich red that tomatoes want in a hot summer fashion. A buzzer sounded with nasty, tattle-tale glee.

The store worker rushed over to confront the issue. Soon a puzzled frown creased his brow, as logic set in. Wasn't I entering, not leaving? People didn't shoplift before they came into a store, did they?

And as he stood, lips trying to mold the right question, I explained. Explained the way I had at Kohls.

And at Target.

And at Barnes and Noble.

(It was a busy day.)

I explained that I am The Mad Beeper. And (regrettably) I cannot be stopped.

See, this is my accessory to disruption. Or rather, something in it is, since my mysterious Beeptasticness has followed me through two entirely separate handbags.

Oh, I have turned this particular handbag inside out like a frog in seventh grade biology. I have examined its guts. I now know its polyester and vinyl soul.

I have brought in an elite team of trained security tag sniffing animals. (Okay, my cat Alice, but she's very thorough.)

And as far as I can tell, there is no special sensor lurking as a part of this bag.

Which means, I have stowaway object, plotting my perpetual, so public embarrassment. I just haven't pinned down the perp yet.

I look accusingly at my lipstick, and it pouts at the injustice.

I eye the remote control to the gate of my office, but it remains unmoved.

I try to push my cell phone's buttons, in hopes of a confession, but it drops my signals.

Somewhere, within the satin blend lining of Kathy VanZeeland pastel snickers the source of my continued humiliation. And I will find it.

Oh, I will root it out.

Until then, I can only ask that my innocent appearance continue to serve me well... that any frisking be fleeting... and if not, that the security guards be mightily cute.

Deep Thought: Firefox Browser's Rainbow Cursor Hypnotism Show

Lately, my Firefox browser has started navel-gazing. Or the computer equivalent of it-- "cursor-contemplation," "arrow-oogling" or "mouse-minding"-- in lieu of a navel-esque region.

Yes, in the last few weeks it's grown introspective... Free-spirited... Philosophical...

Or, to put it a different way, it's become a giant frigging "Road Closed- Detour!" sign on my Internet Highway. And there are no Men at Work, either.

See what happens is, about every ten minutes of an hour, Firefox goes out for a smoke break. Or skirts the astral plane. Or has a bag of microchips and a nice data dump.

All I know is, it turns my cursor into this little rainbowy Dark Side of the Moon laser light spinny-do-- a colorful hypnowheel of death-- and it says, "Talk to it, babe. Be back in ten." and leaves me hanging.

It doesn't even play me "Comfortably Numb."

Most annoying is not that it processes something behind the scenes like Oz and his curtain. It's that it spins for five minutes, stops, waits for me to click on something thinking it's done fooling around, and then...

It does it again for another five minutes.

It's like it needs that taunting interaction between five-minute personal time. Just to make sure I'm still there mesmerized by this spectral beachball from hell.

Ten minutes is just long enough-- I might add-- for me to completely forget everything I was trying to accomplish online.

So now I keep Notes to Self about what I was writing, before the Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes came along.

I just hope during these little staycations , that it is out there doing something productive. Trying to calculate the meaning of life maybe, and not just off beer Googling or taking a browse down memory lane.

I plan to upgrade it, to see if that will improve the situation. But I have this nagging fear that will only toss all my bookmarks to the wind like pick-up sticks, develop selective amnesia on my passwords and up its holidays to include travel time.

"Hello-- is there anybody in there?"

Oh, and Firefox-- to save you the trouble, the answer to that question about the meaning of life?-- It's 42. Please don't call a time-out to verify.


Question of the day: What's your biggest pet peeve about computer technology?

And has your browser been strolling off for personal time? Maybe it's been hanging out with my browser.

Technical Meh

I know now that I'm not the only one. In fact, I have proof.

My friend Kathy of The Junk Drawer wrote recently she plans to say "Sayonara" to her uber-surround-sound-indoor-personal-home-multiplex the moment her husband, Dave, snuffs it. Such is her increasing animosity to the beast.

(The multiplex, I mean. Not Dave. She likes Dave.)

My own relationship with my home entertainment system is thus:

Getting the bare minimum hooked up and working properly in the first place has been a Light-Beaming-From-the-Heavens-Chorus-of-Fat-Kids-With-Wings-and-Harps-Flapping-Around Miracle. One not to be screwed with.

Adding or enhancing this system is absolutely out of the question.

Yes, I admit it. I am perfectly content having reached a state of Technical Meh.

I have worked it out so I know where the cables go for the current items I own. No more, no less. This alone had been finalized through lengthy consultation with a friend, a dad, a Radio Shack employee and pinpointed through a series of pencil drawings and weeping phone calls.

When I have moved domiciles, or exchanged dead home entertainment technologies for happy live ones, the cables are all marked with careful, specifically-coded systems so detailed and mysterious, Tom Hanks and Dan Brown are doing a book-to-feature movie about them.

This system gets threatened about once every three years, as my dad comes to visit for Christmas.

He sees that I have three remotes. One for the TV. One for the cable. And one for the video player. And he feels that in his deep and abiding Dad Knowledge, he can streamline this for me into a single Omniscient Remote.

But while that idea is a lovely fairy tale we might enjoy pondering in dappled garden glens, I do not, in fact, want One Remote to Rule Them All.

I like my Triumvirate of small black buttoned boxes. What the Pop learns after a few hours of research on the matter is that my technolgy currently teeters on the precipice of Ultimate Doom.

One subtle change could render the entire system into electronic paper weights.

These days, when the spirit moves him to reach for remotes with renewed vigor at the challenge, I slap his hand and tuck a mug of egg nog in it.

But that's family for ya, isn't it? Always trying to push your buttons.

The Land of Oz Mobile Phone Plan and Other Gadgets

The green, gruesome, disembodied head hovers over the palace room, shouting, "Who dares seek the Great and Powerful O--"

The booming voice breaks off. A synthesized version of Elton's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" tinkles from a small curtained booth to the side.

Suddenly the Green head flushes red around the cheeks. "Oh, hang on a second-- I've got to take this call..."

The head gets a thoughtful look. "Glinda? Yeah, babe, how's the bubble bouncing? What?... Well, yes, there is a kid here in blinged-out shoes. So you sent her, huh? What's the 4-11?"

This is what crossed my mind the other day. The Wizard of Oz might have been just some humbug from Omaha with a defunct hot air balloon. But he was clever enough to create an interactive 3-D holographic projector system with surround-sound-- way ahead of its time.

So wouldn't he have been able to cash-in on other clever time-saving gadgets?

In fact-- he did!

The O.Z.-Mobile system had coverage from Munchkinland all the way to Winkie Country, breaking up slightly in the Enchanted Forest, which is why the apple trees are so sour. They have to rely on the grapevine instead. Which is the pits.

O.Z.-Mobile also has a hands-free option which is ideal, not only for keeping in touch with Winged Monkey friends and their busy schedules, but it really cuts back on costly crystal ball minutes.

The Oz-Max theaters leverage Oz's unique patented Lev-i-Head Technology for evenings of family fun. All moving pictures are in technicolor. But soon, Oz plans to unveil a whole new way of watching pictures-- black and white. He feels it will really be a sensation-- like nothing the Ozites have ever seen before!

In the Emerald City Oz-Max, you can also take in a special midnight laser light show. Here, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is queued up to synchronize with a popular social documentary film, a story which follows a little illegal immigrant girl, and her challenges in Oz, given she has no proper Visa and commited manslaughter upon arrival.

And lastly, the Oz-Pod portable music improv system is a compact device that goes where-ever the brick road takes you. It offers special audio projector functions to provide appropriate background accompaniment the moment you feel the urge to break into an impromptu musical number. Sing lyrics on the fly like never before, all with perfect orchestration!

Whether you're killing time waiting for an Emerald City appointment...

Whether you're celebrating a new rust-free and heart-healthy aerobics routine...

Or whether you've finally gotten that stick out of your butt and now you don't care what anybody thinks...

The Oz-Pod offers the perfect complement to your musical self-expression!

And tomorrow?... Wonderland goes High Def!

(Or, um, okay, maybe not.)
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RoboJeeves and the BugBytes

"This is your local pharmacy," said the robotic male voice on the other end of the line, cheer radiating from its diodes.

"Our records show that you have a prescription that needs to be refilled. Would you like me to refill it for you... now? Press one for yes. Two for no..."

I blinked at the phone in my hand. Really? Mr. Roboto could do that for me?

Normally, getting a refill involved long lines while 30 octogenarians in powerchairs asked whether their heart medicine would counteract with their hair bluing...

Or waiting while Handsome Pharmacy Dude talked someone down from the ceiling whose kid had just ingested a whole can of Spray Tan.

I pressed 1.

My friend Austin, who'd been visiting, was frowning curiously at me by now. Protocol was not such that I usually answered the phone and then didn't speak to the person on the line.

"It's my pharmacy's RoboJeeves," I explained. "He just called to see if there was anything I needed... Y'know, shrimp cocktail... a martini.... a bottle of hydrochlorothiazide..."

And we took a moment to marvel on the wonders of technology. How RoboJeeves was only the beginning. How this was the first in a whole new wave of customer service apps designed to make our lives easier and more... er.... Jetsonny. I hung up the phone with a sense of satisfaction, the bright gleam of possibility in my eyes.

The future, my friends, was now.

So when I went to pick up my prescription the next day, it was with a spring in my step and joy in my heart. I even oogled Handsome Pharmacy Dude more blatantly than usual, even though it's totally futile as he's ten years younger than I am and likely dates girls not on so-very-sexy blood pressure medications.

Soon, it was my turn, and they went searching for my prescriptions.

This search would become something only slightly less elaborate than the quest for King Tut's tomb.

"When did you call it in?" said Handsome finally, wiping sweat from his brow and putting down the archaological tools he'd been using to dig through the vast pharmaceutical sands. He'd found Jimmy Hoffa, the Ark of the Covenant and Paula Abdul's career, but not my little amber bottle.

"Monday," I said. "And I didn't. He called me."

He raised a dark eyebrow. "Who called you?"

"Your RoboJeeves. He called and asked me if I wanted my prescription filled. And I told him to go ahead, knock yourself out."

"Oh," responded Handsome flatly, irritation creasing his fine features. "Him."

Him. He said it like RoboJeeves was that relative who got drunk and caused a scene at the family reunion every year, but no one knew how to uninvite him. "You, um, know him, do you?"

"He calls but then never puts the prescription in the system. So people come in here expecting a prescription we don't have. Last week, he tried to refill a prescription that wasn't even valid anymore."

"Your robot pharmacist is prank calling your customers?"

"He's got to go," Handsome muttered, more to himself than me. He asked me to wait while he filled the prescription RoboJeeves hadn't bothered to tell them about.

He also said he would set it up so my prescriptions would just automatically refill, and I would get a call saying they were ready to pick up.

Of course, it's time to refill them now. And I received no phone call.

So I bet RoboJeeves has lost his phone privileges. Sure, early in the day he might have been calling folks about their prescriptions and then not filling them. But I bet he grew bored with that.

In no time, he'd be calling bars and asking if "Seymour Butts" was there. And phoning grocers to see if they had Prince Albert in the can.

He's probably been busted down to bringing in the shopping carts, or stocking in the back room.

But I guess that's progress for you. In any Brave New World, you have to expect a few bugs. I mean, look at the first C-3PO prototype. That guy would get a little oil in him, and start flashing his motherboard at everybody.

Lucas just doesn't like to talk about it.

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How to Set Up Your Home Entertainment System, Ocean's 11 Style

Since when did setting up a television suddenly become more complex than executing the plot of an elaborate caper film?

Yet that's what I discovered this weekend when what I thought would be a simple Swap Maneuver-- my housemate's tube TV for the new HD one I'd bought-- turned into a tangled, sadly Clooneyless remake of the Ocean's variety. Only minus the high-stakes payoff, rakish wit, crack team of rag-tag experts, and with 200% more cursing.

Otherwise, just the same.

For instance, in a caper film, there is always the use of high technology. Ziplines, cables and the like.

Well, in setting up the television, you wanna talk cables? I had cables coming out of my butt!

(I mean, not literally. As that would, even to my untechnologically-inclined eyes, be a pretty sure indicator that things were, in fact, hooked up incorrectly.)

But still.

S-Video, FR cables, RGB cables, HDMR cables, PDQ, LOL, and YMCA cables... All sorts of cool high-tech cables with initials going to all sorts of different devices with more initials, just to get the most out of the alphabet.

And like a caper movie, these different cables were all planned out in a big overarching schematic, to guide the step-by-step process.

The difference here is, where the Ocean's 11 team tends to work from one main, finely-tuned, well-timed plan, the Television People don't want us to be boxed in like that.

No, friends-- they want us to have options.

So you can hook the S-Video and the red and white audio cables from the TV to the DVD. Or the VCR. Or from the cable box to the DVD. Or the Wii to the garbage disposal. Or the garbage disposal to your cousin Vinny's power mower which has this really sweet hum.

Or you can use the HDMR cable and connect everything to your cell phone and the IMAX theater in Boston.

Or you can use the YMCA cable to connect the TV to the all-male review down the street's video poker.

It's really entirely up to you!

Now, any good caper movie has to have a safe with a secret code. And setting up the television requires a secret code, too!... Well, maybe.

See, in order for the TV to talk to the cable box, the instructions explain, it needs a special code from the cable company. Or not. But it might. But it depends on your cable company. And your cable plan. And your television model. And the number of planets aligned when the clock strikes 12 noon, only not your time, in the place of manufacture of your television and...

You don't know it, do you? The code?...

No, we didn't think so. Just pick a three digit number at random. Or a four-digit number. Or a five-digit number. How many digits you need depends upon the people who haven't told you the code in the first place.

Just give them a quick call... Their phone number is unlisted.

Also, in order for your set to work, don't forget to set it to channel 03. Or 04. Or a different channel which you'll need to get from your cable or DirectTV provider. Or possibly your first grade teacher if she is not, in fact, dead by now.

Got all that? Great!

Now you have officially set up your home entertainment system! Proceed to pop in the original RatPack version of Ocean's 11, sing all of Dean Martin's 14 reprises of "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?" and have a martini.

You've earned it.

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Question for today: What was the most frustrating item you've ever had to set up?

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Cells and Sensibility

Hell is experiencing a light frost. Dogs and cats are finalizing their Anti-Animosity Treaty. And sharks have voted on it and decided to go vegan...

Yes, the world is topsy-turvy, and the impossible is now:

I have finally purchased... a cell phone.

I know; I am the last hold-out on the entire planet. These days, babies are handed a cell phone and given their Daytime Babble Minutes the moment they make their goopy grand entrance.

Toddlers are texting, plotting their next Chuck E. Cheese adventures and conferring on potty successes.

Dogs are barking into their Flea-Mobile wireless saying, "Red Rover, Red Rover, walkies on over?..."

And then there's me. Cell-phone-less. Fervently combating the laws of probability that I would never... oh... completely lose my traveling dad on Christmas Eve, somewhere between Fort Lauderdale, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Upper Tarnation, USA...

Or that I would take up residence in Panera waiting for someone so long, management sprinkled me with sesame seeds and slapped on special Day-Old pricing...

(There were no takers.)

Or that I would never get stuck in the middle of a 15th century Ren Faire field with a broken down electric carriage, and no Ye Olde Steed-4-Let in sight.

It was this last incident that served as Her Majesty's Wake-Up Herald on the matter.

I suppose I should explain that my resistance to the technology all this time had been more of a frugal and self-preservationist nature than techno-fear...

For years, I'd worked for a Bill Lumberg type, a driven fellow who thought nothing of tracking me down to my parents' home in New Jersey on Thanksgiving Day to ask me about a project...

Who was at a tradeshow in England and decided it would be okay to ring me up--- 2 a.m. U.S. time-- just to "test the phone."

Who called HR twice because my hour-long, pre-scheduled dentist appointment was apparently taking too long.

Being reachable 24/7 would have had me a cell, all right-- a softly padded cell with stylish, comfy jackets that were just a skosh long in the sleeves.

But now that I have changed jobs, and cell phones come with "I Only Want to Use This Every Other Month With an 'R' In It" Plans, I have seen the light.

Of course, this also means I may have to make a few other changes:

• Switch from dial-up, where my computer was powered by three really energetic hamsters-on-a-wheel (cheers to you Squeaky, Hammy and Kenneth), to something that allows me to watch a 30-second YouTube video in under 12 hours.

• Contribute to American unemployment, by letting my fleet of carrier pigeons go. I'm sorry for the downsizing, but these things must be done in the name of progress. Please: no flaming comments from the Pigeon-American community. They're getting a nice severance package, after all.

• Shift from an abacus to one of those freaky new-fangled calculators. I'm going to miss this one in particular, since the six-foot wooden abacus looked so stylish in my livingroom, and the Chinese wisemen I brought in to consult around tax-time each year were some super-fun guys. "Chow har kew?" "Fine thanks, and how've you been?"
  

But hey, the world marches on. And if the cell phone works out, maybe I'll even consider buying clothes not made courtesy of the Spinning Jenny.

Jenny's gonna be pissed. But... that severance package. It's a good'n.

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Today's question: are you a late or early adopter of new cool technologies? And have you ever used an abacus or carrier pigeon?

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Of Laptops and Liberty Bells

My hands trembled. My heart picked up its pace to a fast trot. Sweat broke out on my forehead. How could I have been so stupid? Why hadn't this occurred to me before? I was going to be...

Four days without email.

I've done it before, of course. A day here. A day there. And visits at the holidays with my dad, for instance, have allowed me a quick connection with all that is online once a day using his system. But an upcoming trip to Philly for a four-day weekend, to meet some blogging friends, would leave me wholly unconnected...

Adrift.

Lost.

And totally dissing you guys!

I got a little nauseous and my head went swimmy just thinking about it. So in an impulsive move toward technological spending entirely rare for me (remember, I'm one of the few people left in the country without a cell phone), I broke down and bought a laptop.

And wow, are laptops smaller than they were when I had one in college! At that time, they weighed about 40 pounds and whose lap they were designed to fit-- that big guy from The Green Mile? the fat lady from an old timey carnival side show? the entire World Wrestling Federation cast?-- it's hard to say. I just recall hefting this giant bag down long airport corridors as it carved a channel into my shoulder so deep, it would have been worthy of tacking on to the Grand Canyon and inviting tourists.

We'd have made our money mainly through the postcard and t-shirt sales.

Anyway, I'm looking forward this weekend to meeting blogging friends Claire and JD in Philadelphia. As Claire is visiting from the UK, it will be JD's and my job to be ambassadors for our country and ensure she sees all the important historical landmarks in Philadelphia, which tell the fascinating story of the American colonies' quest for independence from....

er....

okay...

Well, maybe we can give the landmarks a miss. Philly cheesesteaks and bowling for everyone!

Anyway, due to Blogger's nifty ability to pre-schedule posts, Of Cabbages and Kings will continue to post Friday and Monday all by its little ol' self. And me, I will be popping in and out-- courtesy of my not-40-pound laptop-- to catch up with everybody as much as battery power and internet access allows.

If you don't hear from me next week, I overshot Philly and am currently churning butter in Lancaster at the home of a nice Amish family who took me in. Shoo-fly pie, anyone?

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Me Gets No Cookie

MobileMe. That’s Apple's online email and web access service, formerly known as “Dot-Mac.” It’s at Me.com. And the Me-centricness of it all, in the middle of this increasingly self-absorbed, Me-oriented world...

Well, I'm finding I hate Me… just a little bit.

Not entirely without cause, either. First my Dot-Mac webmail was down for over two days while they put Me in place. Meaning I had no idea who was emailing me. Let alone Me.

And now that Me is up, Me looks good, but Me is spotty in terms of service...

Plus there’s the way Me makes me sound like Cookie Monster…

Which is fun for a while, but I doubt it’ll catch on.

Less charming, is one of my email addresses and my iWeb pages now all have alternate Me versions. As if more people in this world need a reminder that it’s all about Me... er, them.

So now if I tell folks I've got an @me on my email address, they're gonna look at me (and not @Me), like I've got a serious self-fixation. And they're going to think it's my fault, too-- not Me's.

I might as well just drive around in a car with a license plate like "2Cute4U" and sweats with the word "Hottie" written across the bum. Me has made me one of those people I don't so much like.

And MobileMe-- well, it sounds less like a web app and more like a new book from Gilderoy Lockhart, the resident narcissist in Harry Potter. Possibly writing about his grand adventures of wizarding on the road.

"You can read all about the famous Gilderoy Lockhart's magical road-trip in my newest book-- MobileMe... Eight weeks already as a Number One best seller on the WitchWeekly book list...

SURE, I'll autograph that for you! And here's a signed headshot I just happened to have with me."

Sigh...

Well. Enough about Me... Let's talk about YouTube.

Seen any good videos lately?

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