Voiceless

This post was started in November (2009) and then just sat there, aging but not gaining in quality like wine might. It’s essence remains even truer now in that I haven’t written anything in over a year and have stifled my creative voice. And pretty much any other voice I might have. It seems that reading other voices had the effect of shutting me up. Google Reader asks: Having trouble keeping up with the sites you visit? At the time, I was only reading a few blogs but once I joined into the RSS feed reading stream, I kept adding more voices, more views, and more sites until simply keeping up with that flood took so much time that the feed reader became the drain down which my own writing spiraled away. I wrote this:

We Don’t Manipulate the System. The System Manipulates Us

As promised, some musings on technology, communication and what others have thought about this in the past. As part of a discussion on commercialism in communications technology (read: are advertising-supported communications systems inevitable?), my class read an article by David H. Freedman describing the possible future of advertising using cell phones, Internet tracking technologies, interactive wall displays, etc. Personally, I find it all creepy and invasive. Who says I need to have ads on my cell phone? Already, I’m getting random weird text messages about real estate on my phone, messages I neither sought nor solicited in any way, apart from the fact that I have a cell phone in the first place. And now I have to pay for these spam messages? There’s something wrong here.

Caught Unawares

It seems that the Pop Culture Elitist gave me a shout out and let it be known that I deal with questions of modern communication and technology. Except he forgot to mention that I haven’t done that here much, with the exception of the occasional rant about cell phones. Now, I am currently neck-deep in these issues in a class that demands a lot of my time, and I was planning to work out some of my thoughts here. I guess now is the time to do that.

So stay tuned. And while you’re waiting, check out The Shock of the Old – a new look at technological history – and The Sponsor – a classic examination of the commercial system that drives U.S. broadcast networks (and cable). More on those two books later, too.

Cop-Out List Post (Thoughts before Bed)

Things I read about, think about and would like to comment on if I didn’t also need sleep so badly:

Only You Can Prevent Office Fires

Even in today’s hectic times, you should stop and smell the flowers occasionally. Or at least take a moment in your busy schedule to sniff the air for smoke. This lesson was driven home to me last Thursday, when I was slaving away diligently in my office cubicle, wrestling with page layout, and I became aware of an unpleasant burnt sort of smell.

Ignoring it didn’t work for me, as I seem to have a sensitive nose and the smell just lingered there, distracting me. So I checked my computer for excess heat (finding none) and sniffed around some more to try and locate the source of the offending smell. Eventually I asked the co-worker sharing this corner of the office with me (albeit hidden behind one of those cubicle desk walls, so we can’t see each other) whether he smelled anything strange or burning.

He too, thought he detected an odor of overheating plastic or burnt popcorn or something, but he was more willing to dismiss this and get back to his conference call than I was. Standing sort of centrally between all the desks in that end of the office, I pinpointed the smokiness as emanating from somewhere between my colleague’s desk and that of my team leader, who happened to be on vacation that week. Aha, I thought, it’s coming from the vent above. Prodding my co-worker to sniff once more, I got him to agree that the burnt aroma seemed strongest near the vent, strengthening his theory that this was somehow connected to food and the microwave down the hall.

Not satisfied with this, I checked other likely sources, finding none. And that’s when I took that decisive and courageous step: I spoke to the branch chief about the smell, fully aware that this could all turn out to be nothing at all and a huge waste of time for everyone (except that in that case there wouldn’t be this little story now, would there. Unless I enjoy writing pointless stories of my humiliation. So we don’t know, do we?).

The branch chief listened to my tale of a burnt smell, came to sniff for herself and (dramatic pause) agreed that there was something in the air. Hosanna, I’m not imagining it!

Anyway, the maintenance department was duly called because she assumed that the electricians downstairs, who were doing a lot of drilling because they were installing new – get this – fire alarms, might be responsible. Five minutes later, three burly firemen in complete fire gear were crowding  the area near my desk. The electricians, it seems, were on a break and so clearly not the reason for the smell. A smell that the firemen by the way claimed not to be smelling at all.

Well, no wonder, what with their heavy rubber coats, which gave off quite a string smell themselves. However, they dutifully looked for possible sources of a burning sort of smell, even if they couldn’t smell it, and I was about ready to crawl under my desk and hide for wasting all their time. There was some interrogation regarding the office printer and whether it might be jammed, causing the smell, but we denied this.

Waving about their very nifty infrared temperature gauge, which showed no heat sources, the firemen then declared that it must be the radiators, most likely recently switched on for the fall season and thus giving off a musty smell after long disuse.  And so, the firemen turned to go, ready to abandon us to our fantasies of smoky odors.

But then! In turning to leave, the head fireman swung the temperature gauge over my absent team leader’s desk, and let out a startled yelp of sorts. Well, a manly, fireman-like yelp. The temperature of a pile of papers showed as 420 F! Upon closer inspection, it was revealed that the pile of papers was positioned atop a 20-year old hot plate that was turned on full heat. A metal water kettle was sitting there too, empty of water and piping hot, with its bottom almost burnt through.

The firemen grew excited, demanding to know who’s desk this was and lecturing us all on the idiocy of having exposed heating elements laying around in an office overflowing with paper and very old, very flammable books. We managed to shield our team leader’s name from the fire marshall but all such forbidden items have since been removed form our offices of course.  The firemen are convinced that it was only a matter of time before the whole area would have burst into flame.

The branch chief later came by to thank me for not only sniffing out the whole burning metal thing but mostly for speaking up about it. Really of course I was only saving my own life, because, looking at the layout, I would have been trapped behind the fire with no good exit. In any case, I think I no longer need to worry whether they will pick up the option on my contract next month. Just think of the money in fines alone that I saved them.

Of course, my team leader was not amused to find upon his return that he would have to give up his old hot plate and forgo his morning tea. He refuses to believe that there ever was danger of a fire and he hasn’t forgiven me yet. Oh well.

Arrgh

A while ago I finally caved to the pressure and got a cell phone. Yes, it can be convenient and so on – leave me alone, I got one, didn’t I? I chose a provider pretty much at random (well, not entirely) because they’re equally out to screw you overall and it doesn’t make that much of a difference. At least not when you read enough customer reviews, where half of them are singing the praises of this company and berating all the other ones and the other half are bilious rants of near-transcendent hate and rage almost lyrical in their gibbering antipathy against that same company’s service. And it doesn’t matter which provider you’re researching.
Anyway, as part of the deal to hook you, this company was offering a rebate of $50 on the purchase of the phone with the 2-year-plan. Fine and dandy. But of course they couldn’t just hand me the money or, you know, not charge me for it in the first place. No, no, that’s not how it’s done. There’s a mail-in component to this rebate, a long-held tradition whereby the seller quotes you the price after rebate on the box in order to sucker you into thinking you’re getting a bargain. Then you pay full price but you get the fantastic opportunity of filling out a form in fine print, participating in a Schnitzeljagd/treasure hunt for the bar code and receipt and whatever other pieces of paper they require – careful with those scissors on the cardboard now – and sending all of this off to some place in Texas. And then you get your money.

If you remember to do it before a certain date that is. Because naturally your friendly seller, when offering you this fabulous bargain of a rebate, is hoping you’ll forget to send it off and so pay them full price under the illusion of having gotten a bargain. But hey, that’s how business works, and if you don’t like it you should stop buying stuff and move to Nebraska or somewhere nicely isolated like that. If you don’t play their game, you’re not a good consumer and that makes you a bad American.

Having resigned myself to the mail-in rebate thing a long time ago, I was all ready for my rebate. I filled out the form, cut out the bar code, found the copy of the receipt, made a copy of all of these materials for my own records (always recommended in the fine print, don’t you know), and spent 39 cents on postage in the happy anticipation that I would get my $50 rebate in 6 to 8 weeks.

Ha.

Let’s not even go into the waiting period. At least there I have the chance of a happy surprise when I find a check in my mailbox that I had forgotten I was getting. But did these nice people at Cingular Rebate send me a check? No, that would have been too easy. They sent a Visa rebate debit/credit card instead. One that I then had to activate and that was supposed to be easy to use. Except that I got rejected at the very next store I tried to use it.

Yes, if you try and make a purchase that is over $50, and want to split this between the rebate card and another credit card, you must ask the cashier to first deduct the amount over $50 and pay that with your alternate means and then you can use the rebate card for the remaining $50 balance. Yeah, right.

Ganesha was in the same situation, also having gotten such a rebate card. He tried to buy an Amazon gift card. No there’s a $1 charge pending on the rebate card and nothing is happening and he has no gift card. Easy to use, is it? Ha. The scam here is clearly that they are hoping to force you to buy something that costs less than $50 and then whatever rest amount remains, say a dollar or 50 cents, will become impossible to spend with the card and they get to keep it. Free money from you, how nice.

We are on a mission to find something that costs exactly $50 and not a cent more or less. It’s harder than you would think, what with our obsession of pricing everything with the 95 or 99 cents range at the end. That’s a whole other trick to get you to think the price is lower than it is.

Man, they should have just sent me a check or not offered a damn rebate at all. This kind of nickel and diming, underhanded attempt to squeeze a few extra pennies out of the consumer is just so much more bullshit. And frankly, there’s enough of that in life already. Thanks, Cingular and Visa!

Heat

Last week, DC was in the grip of a truly stultifying heat wave that caused all those of us who have air conditioners to crank them up full blast and seek shelter in our homes and offices. This, of course, put enormous strain on the power system and in some cases generators became dangerously overheated (just ask Ganesh about Tuesday at the 9:30 Club). In an effort to reduce the demands made on the grid by the countless A/Cs, government offices, at least the ones I work in, turned off their hallway lighting and asked employees to limit their use of electricity as much as possible – turn off computers and other appliances not in use, use those lamps with low-energy bulbs, etc.

So for several days now it’s been eerily dark in my building and I find my way to the bathroom by the feeble glow of the emergency lighting. But I welcome working in a slightly darker office like this if it means the government, as a giant employer, has begun to conserve energy, even if it is the bottom line of their electricity bill that compels them to do this. Perhaps it seems like a small thing when you leave that one light burning all night, or the computer stays on overnight for no reason, but multiplied over the many thousand offices the federal government maintains this is a huge waste. Which is why every unattended computer left to suck down energy in the idle hours, and every light left needlessly burning, and every A/C turned up unnecessarily that is dialed down, taken off the grid, or shut down makes a difference in the energy we’re devouring every day.

Now that we are feeling the sting of our energy consumption in the high prices for gas and electricity, maybe we can begin to understand how deluded our energy use and policy really are.

And if you think that you are not part of the problem, that others (say those developing countries with the large populations, poised to consume huge quantities of energy) use more and need to change first, then I invite you to try a little exercise:  Take the Ecological Footprint Quiz and see how many resources you have so far claimed for yourself. Can you comfortably deny others what you have enjoyed in such abundance, while refusing to curb your own consumption even a little?

Among Tar Heels

This (past) weekend, Ganesh and I went to Chapel Hill, NC to visit friends, introduce me to his old campus (he did his grad school work at UNC), sample the local specialties, and indulge in a bit of how-things-have-changed sight-seeing. Well, the nostalgia was more for him than me, this being my very first visit to the region. Since we chose this weekend unaware that it would also be one of the hottest weekends for the area, naturally the car’s AC decided to quit within minutes of leaving DC.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of driving through Virginia and parts of North Carolina in 100 degree weather, flanked by trucks and minivans, alternating desperately between a strategy of open windows for some kind of heat-lessening breeze and the stifling hot closed-window-to-keep-out-the-smell plan. It’s not as much fun as it sounds, believe me. By the end of the trip, I was so heat-addled and groggy that I was reduced to making horrible puns on names of towns (Stagville? Do only bachelors live there? And when they marry, do they have to move away?). Clearly I was not myself and after hours in a boiling car my thoughts were sticking to the inside of my skull like my clothes were adhering to my skin and the car seat.

Once we arrived (finally), we decided to recuperate from the stress of the drive by sitting outside in the North Carolina heat (still no AC) and having some nice cold beer. Or in my case, a nice cold Gin and Tonic. Who needs a shower and a change of clothes after a long hot drive when you can have a cocktail and great conversation? Sometime later (I soprt of lost track of time a bit that evening), we moved on to a Mexican restaurant and pitchers of margarita. Oh, and some good food too.

Aside from the broken AC*, it was a wonderful weekend. The people who were our gracious hosts were wonderful and generous, their house is fantastic (so much art, so many books, what living space) and to top it off, they have a cat that is friendly enough to come and be petted by visitors. Not to mention, I had the best pecan pie I have ever tasted, or shall ever taste, at Mama Dip’s. Don’t even try telling me there’s better pecan pie elsewhere, or even anything as good as Mama Dip’s pie. It’s no use, I’ve had a taste and I’ve been converted. Ganesh and his buddy have been building up this pie over many conversations and yet even with all their abundant praise and talk of crack as the secret ingredient, they did not oversell this pie.

The fried chicken was excellent as well by the way. It’s a good thing we spent the rest of that Saturday walking around the UNC campus after that lunch or the good food would have sent me into a stupor. And then I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the Spaetzle we had at our friends’ house that night. All in all, a wonderful weekend. Travel truly does help make you more expansive. Um, I mean it broadens the mind and offers new experiences.

* As for the AC, which was fixed before the trip back, those nice folks at the AAA Service Center certainly weren’t kidding when they promised that the cost of fixing the compressor would not exceed $850, the amount they first quoted. The bill came to just $849.33 in the end. What a savings.

Soccer Hangover

I spent the 4th of July in a most un-American way, namely watching Fussball in an Irish pub full of excited German and Italian fans. I do have to note that, in DC at least, the coverage of the World Cup has been excellent and widespread and it does make me think that perhaps the U.S. audience is slowly starting to take an interest. Or maybe it’s just all those foreigners dominating Washington.

Being part German, I had a stake in the game and, based on the German team’s great performance in the World Cup, I had high hopes too. Which means that I did not truly enjoy watching the game because my stomach was clenched and my nervous tension kept growing throughout the playing time. I’m not going to give a rundown or play-by-play because, for someone having grown up in Germany, I know laughably little about the actual game, but it was a close one and quite exciting. And, for the German fans, heartbreaking.

For the fans in that particular Irish pub however, the game was made emphatically even more nerve-wrecking and tense because, in the second round of overtime with maybe 5 minutes left – the satellite went out. Almost as one, the entire soccer-watching pub turned from the TV screens to the bar and the helpless people behind it, and demanded the return of the game.

You try explaining to a mob of hyper, beer-swilling sports fans that since the thunderstorm outside has affected satellite transmission, you are completely powerless to do anything but call someone with cable and ask how the game’s ending. There were calls for Telemundo (Bartender: “You don’t understand. It’s all satellite. We can’t get any channels because it all comes form satellite and that’s out due to the weather.”) and ABC (Waitress: “There is no TV because there is no satellite!”) and frantic attempts to call up some game-relevant information on wireless networks and cell phones. It would have made a perfect commercial for cable, or maybe for Verzion Wireless or some such service.

Can’t get the game when you need it? Switch to [insert company name] and always have what you want at the tips of your fingers.

Eventually, the picture came back on, in time to show the second and utterly demoralizing goal against Germany in the very last possible minute of the game. Ouch. And then of course the replay. Of both goals, so closely together. Ouch again.

I was really hoping for a win by Germany because the World Cup and the team’s successes have brought such a great atmosphere to Germany (see also previous post) and I did not want that to end. It made me hopeful to read about a happier, more optimistic Germany, where people were friendly and open to visitors, and the flag was not some intimidating tainted symbol best avoided but a banner for joyful celebration, inclusion and soccer parties. And I was afraid a loss might endanger this new Germany I was hearing about.

So, loosing sucked, and I’m actually surprised at how much it sucked, since I’m not normally a big soccer or even sports fan. And even now I’m not too keen to hear about Italy and would rather just avoid that topic altogether (no, I do not hate Italians, and now that I’ve been hearing hints about the scandals in their own soccer league, I’m a bit less bitter about their happiness at advancing in the World Cup – but I’m still bitter). We’ll see how I feel after July 9th.

In any case, it looks as though my fears regarding what a loss might do to the new German Lebensgefuehl were somewhat unfounded. Yes, when the Italians “pulled the plug on Germany’s World Cup party” there was terrible disappointment and dreams were dashed but overall Germans remained positive, supportive of the team and took this defeat almost in stride.

And, as this article from Der Spiegel argues, even though Germany did not win, hosting the World Cup brought the optimists, who do exist in this country after all, to the forefront and had a lasting impact on the mood in Germany. According to another article (it’s in German), the only people disappointed by the World Cup party and its happy form of patriotism are the bordello owners, who had few customers because men who are concentrating on soccer apparently do not also want sex, and the Neo-Nazis who do not like the kind of inclusive free-form patriotism on display in Germany these past weeks.

I’m crossing my fingers that the new Germany is here to stay.

Age Appropriate

In a recent New Yorker commentary, Louis Menand notes that increasingly, and in large part due to the stepped up merchandising of cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, "People worry about being old before they get old." This struck a chord because I've noticed it too – there seems to be an obsession in some parts of society about age and keeping up the appearance, if not the fact, of youth. And yet age is so subjective. 

Having recently turned, well, let's just say I'm not 29 anymore, there are days when this seems if not old exactly, a little more advanced in age than I might want to see myself. But perhaps I just hang out with people who are too young. Because my relative youth was brought home to me quite suddenly one recent day at work.

One day two weeks ago, as The New Yorker might put it, one of my co-workers stopped by my desk and asked if I would help him with an experiment. I was a bit apprehensive (who likes to be the subject of an experiment after all) but my status as the most junior person there left me little choice, so I gamely followed him to his desk.

His computer displayed a story in the New York Times about a high-pitched tone called the Mosquito (also what sparked the Menand commentary in the New Yorker) that was initially used to deter teenagers and other assorted young hooligans from loitering in front of 7-11s and so on. Naturally, the young have re-purposed this tone as a ring tone for their cellphones so that teachers won't be able to hear them receive message alerts. 

The Times article came with a sample of the tone, and now of course you can see what's coming. I was asked to sit and listen to the sample, while my co-worker, and a quickly gathering crowd of everyone else in the office, hovered around me anxiously.

There was silence while I listened and when I turned and announced that, yes, there was an annoying tone to be heard, there was a great exhalation of breath from the group. No one else could hear the sound. Suddenly I felt very young.