May 26–29, 2007.  More Adventures in Technology.  This week we purchased our first laptop computer.  Although we usually look upon our trips to Maine as a respite from most things technological (we do take cameras, of course, and a DVD player for evening entertainment in the cottage), this year we thought of enough reasons to take a laptop.

As is always the case, I approached the purchase with some anxiety (more about that here), but I survived the trauma.  Then came the task of setting it up, which causes another anxiety attack.  Since I've set up a number of home computers and lived to tell about it, I don't know why I'm so fearful – but I am.  Perhaps it is because I remember one detail that went wrong the last time and forget those that went right.  I'm a devout pessimist and a firm believer in Murphy's Law ("If anything can go wrong, it will").  With computers, I turn as much of the configuration over to the experts at the store, though I could save a considerable amount of money by doing it all myself.

Still, that leaves me plenty of stuff to gnash my teeth over and get into a twit about.  (NOTE:  If I were a "don't end a sentence with a preposition" freak, I would have written, ". . . over which to gnash my teeth and about which to get into a twit" – good grief!)  I was especially fearful this time because the new laptop came with Windows Vista and not the familiar XP.  In addition, I had to load Office 2007, which Microsoft built from the ground up so that the interface is significantly different previous versions.

What people call "the learning curve" with respect to technology can appear to be more like a steep cliff.  Some folks of my generation (i.e., the well-over-50 crowd) take one look at the heights they have to scale – and promptly run for cover.  Fortunately, I've had in my life some patient guides (younger coworkers, technically adept friends) to teach me the fundamentals and to make the ascent less scary.  Therefore, when I must deal with an advance in technology or a new tech toy, though I'm still anxious, I'm not paralyzed by fear.

I have also made the journey often enough that I know it is, most of the time, worth the effort.  It's like hiking a challenging mountain trail; one has glimpses of marvelous panoramas as one ascends, and the view at the end of the trail is magnificent – well worth the hard work of getting there.  I choose my trails carefully, though; I don't travel the ones that are suitable only for the experts.

A stubborn streak also serves me well.  While I don't especially enjoy problem-solving, I am stubborn enough not to feel comfortable leaving a problem unsolved.  I can't just shrug and say, "Ah, to hell with it."  I recall, for example, taking geometry in high school.  Anyone who has studied geometry knows that it involves solving a "problem" by constructing a step-by-step solution.  There is always a solution; the trick is in finding it.  Now, I don't especially like math, and I didn't absolutely have to solve every geometry problem that was given for homework – yet I remember staying up until the wee hours (much to my parents' dismay) working on geometry problems.  I knew there was a solution, and, damn it, I was going to find it if it took me until breakfast and drove my parents to distraction.  Some people might glorify this trait by calling it persistence; I must be more honest and call it stubbornness, even pig-headedness.

On the other hand, I have a character defect that does not serve me particularly well in my technological adventures – impatience.  I can endure the step-by-step plodding that learning technology involves; however, after I've plodded step by step and things don't work as I think they are supposed to, I become a raving maniac.  "It's supposed to work," I yell, "Why the *%$%# doesn't it work?"  That is, of course, when it's time to call in the geek squad.

This leads me some peeves that I have with most of the developers of things technological, especially computer software.  They are apparently more intent upon adding bells and whistles that nobody but a geek wants or needs than they are in keeping everything as simple as possible for the typical user.  Some software programs have become so complex that, if you're out of the loop for a couple of years, the landscape is totally alien.  If it comes with a manual – and usually these days it does not – it might as well be in a foreign language.  Ah, yes, there's a "Help" program built in, but just try to find the answer to a specific question in it.  Just figuring out the right key words to get in the general vicinity of the answer is a challenge.  What's intuitive to a computer programmer is not intuitive to the rest of us.

Just about all the ads I've seen for new technology and software promote all the wonderful tricks that a device or program can perform.  Very few say how easy they are to use – and, if they do, they lie.  A case in point is the software that claims to enable anyone with a PC to produce magnificent slide shows or movies from one's stockpile of old photos and videotapes.  Fortunately for our daughter, who operates a custom DVD business, it's not that simple.  She gets many jobs from people who have tried and given up because they lack the skill, patience, or equipment to do what they ads claim any fool can do.  Frankly, I think that, if you're the type of person who believes advertising, you're not smart enough to use a computer.

Greater simplicity is possible.  My prime example is a program called VuePrint that I started using years ago on a tip from a friend.  It's so small that it can be put on a 1.4 MB floppy disc (remember them?).  It allows one to view graphics, such as photographs (any .jpg file and other formats), either as individual items or in a slide show.  Photos can then be sized or cropped (and saved as new files), sent to the printer, and even tweaked for color, brightness, and contrast.  The editing is not as versatile as what can be done with a sophisticated photo-editing tool, but it is sufficient for most people who just want to adapt photos for e-mailing, posting on a Web page, or producing prints.  The program even operates and imports photos from a scanner if one is dealing with physical photos.  When I got this "freeware" and bought a license for it for about $5, I was probably using Windows 3.0.  I have used it with every operating system since then (including, most recently, Vista), have put it on numerous computers, and have shared it with friends.  It doesn't care what the OS is or how many computers it is installed in, and even a complete klutz could figure out how it works in five minutes.

Unfortunately, the prevailing thinking on technology seems to be that the more complicated it is, the better it is.  The public generally buys this idea, but its validity depends on how one wants to use the technology.  As I think I've mentioned before, if I want a cell phone to simply place and receive phone calls and don't give a damn whether it has a choice of 100 ring tones, can take photographs, or can keep track of what I had for breakfast, I'm considered some kind of freak who just emerged from a cave where he has survived by killing small animals with a club and broiling them over an open fire.

I really love technology, and I'm sure that our new laptop will become quite useful on our trip to Maine.  I may even – more from curiosity than necessity – learn how to use some of its many extra features.  However, what I and at least 90% of the population need are tools that are simple to understand and use.  Sometimes a pencil and paper work as well as or better than a $1,000+ laptop.  Yup, though I may be able to send e-mail with embedded digital photographs from Maine, I suspect that I may still be writing and sending postcards.

June 6, 2007.  The countdown to our Maine vacation is well under way.  We leave in three days.  It doesn't seem right to call it "a vacation" because, now that we're retired, every day is a sort of vacation.

Being retired gives us plenty of time to prepare and pack, unlike the old days when we scrambled at the last minute and invariably forgot something critical.  Of course, now we need the time because we're older and move more slowly, and our memories are shot.  Each year, too, it seems that we add to the "stuff" we feel that we need to take.  We have computer-generated check lists to ensure that we have everything.  One would think that we were going away for the rest of our lives, not just two weeks.

Complicating matters is that we take a considerable amount of electronic gear.  For starters, we have a combination DVD/VHS player because there's not much to do in the cottage at night.  (We used to drive around Acadia National Park after sunset, trying to spot racoons raiding the garbage cans in the picnic areas, but park officials have now installed critter-proof, high-tech containers.)  We don't like to watch the standard fare on TV, so DVDs or tapes give us an alternative – but, since the TV in the cottage is ancient, we have to take along a black box (RF modulator) and the necessary connecting cables.  We better remember to take the remote control as well – and to make sure it's the right one.  One year I grabbed the wrong remote.

Naturally, we take a "boom box" so that we can listen to our choice of CDs in the cottage.  I spend a half a day figuring out what to take, and then we listen to only a few of them.  We have our own customized "Maine anthologies" that I've been burning for the past few years, a process that consumes at least a couple of days before the trip.  This year I made three new ones, comprising about three and a half hours of music.

Digital cameras – both video and still – are essential.  While we don't have to worry about film anymore, the cameras require that we remember to take all the necessary accessories:  batteries, extra memory card, tape for the video, connecting wires to view our filming for the day on TV, power cords to charge the battery, and so on.  And, whatever we do, we don't want to forget the instruction manuals for these and our electronic equipment.

Besides all this, we need to be sure that we have all our medical and cosmetic items, maps and directions, kitchen utensils (to supplement what's in the cottage), snacks, hiking equipment, and all sorts of odds and ends.  By the time we've run down the whole list we can begin to think about packing clothes.  I'm not joking when I say that clothing is our last consideration.  Indeed, one time years ago we completely forgot a whole suitcase of our daughter's clothes, much to her delight since we had to buy two weeks' worth of new clothes in Bar Harbor.

Readers may wonder whether we haul a trailer.  No, we don't even have an SUV.  All of this stuff goes into a Honda Accord, in an operation that I have now reduced to a fine art.  Nobody packs the car but me, for I am – no brag, just fact – one of the few people who can pack a car trunk allowing no more than ten to twelve cubic inches of space unused.  One year, when the entire family went (seven of us, including the three grandsons) and we took two cars, my son-in-law decided to "help" by packing our car.  When it was apparent that we would have to leave some things behind (or strap them to the roof), I took everything out, found something else for him to do, and repacked the trunk.  I succeeded by applying the ten-to-twelve-cubic-inches rule

Now, I'm off to pack a box of odds and ends, for which I will follow a similar rule to that used in packing the car:  Any empty space larger than, say, a cigarette pack must be filled with something, whether or not we need it.  It's a job that only an anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive neurotic like me can do.

June 7, 2007.  If the Mudgelog contains no new entries for a couple of weeks, it will be because I will be unable to connect to the Internet while we are in Bar Harbor, Maine, from June 9 through 24.  We will be taking our new laptop and hoping to make a wireless connection from our cottage, but there's no guarantee.  We're new to the whole wireless scene, so we don't know what to expect.

As I think I've said before, our trips to Maine have always represented an escape from computers.  Unable to post on the website or even to view it, I sometimes suffer from a bit of withdrawal.  That's not the reason we're taking a laptop, though.  My wife has some important matters that she hopes to attend to online.

My real addiction is to writing, so even when I haven't had access to a computer on our Maine trips, I scribble.  It will be nice to have another way to indulge in that urge, and I don't need to be online to do that.