3/5/10

It's weird to consider the things that people take for granted. In my case, I take Vice President Gore's two biggest inventions - global warming hysteria and the internet - as mere facts of life. Since my best friend is a semi-retired minister who was born in 1934, he's dumbfounded by what can be handled online. To a dude like me who spends his days in a truck, loosely connected to the rest of the world by a wireless link to Mr. Gore's more useful creation, it's just the way things are.

Internet task #1 - Mom's painting. My brother bought the usual gifts for his groomsmen before he got married last summer. Whiskey flasks, fishing poles, etc. In addition, my mother and I got unframed paintings. Mine was one of Knute Rockne in the locker room at Notre Dame and my mother's was a knockoff of a famous painting that I couldn't quite place at the time. I ordered a custom frame for my Rockne print last fall and I was happy with the outcome. So today, roughly nine months after my brother's wedding, it was time for Mom to order her frame.

I told her to go to pictureframes.com and find a color combination that she liked. That site allows you to upload an image of your painting in order to help you assess how the various frames and mats will look. Yeah, that didn't go over so well. You see, Mom just ventured into the world of forwarding generally unfunny and often misleading anti-Democrat chain e-mails within the last year or two. She's not yet up to speed on image uploads and such. So I got recruited to help.

I stopped by her house this afternoon and asked her to show me the picture - a chick with an umbrella and a little kid. Okay then, we'll hit up ole Google and see what we can find. Probably best to start by taking a guess at the artist, in order to narrow down the results a little. It looked to be something by one of those goofy French impressionists or something. Not quite edgy enough for Cézanne, but still prettier from a distance than up close. Maybe Renoir, I thought, but really a little light on the detail to be one of his works. Might as well try Monet. (Two observations here - First, that chick from the movie Clueless really did sum up Monet's work fairly well. And second, I'm somewhat familiar with the work of exactly three French impressionists. I would be hard-pressed to discuss a fourth. I've studied Manet a little, so perhaps that could be #4, but I'm not sold on the notion that he was an impressionist.)

It turns out that my knowledge ran just deep enough this time around. Search results = groovy. So then it was simply a matter of downloading an image, uploading it to the framing site, and playing around with various color combinations. We found a nice and simple arrangement that would do well in either the house in Lincoln Park or the one up north. Ten minutes and a web connection. That's all you need.

Internet Task #2 - Reverand Dan's Car Insurance. The aforementioned 74-year-old friend got his insurance renewal notice recently. His six-month premium was going up by $200 and he thought he was getting screwed. There really didn't seem to be a reason for his premiums to rise significantly, so I told him that I would stop by and see what we could find. Armed with the coverage information in his renewal notice from Geithner Insurance Co. 21st Century, I started pulling quotes. The first place would charge roughly the same price as 21st Century. The second would charge around $50 less. The third was looking to be around $300 less, but some complications arose.

First things first - Reverand Dan's father, also named Dan, is 97 years old. He doesn't drive. For whatever reason though, he's still listed on the family's insurance policy. As I noted yesterday - you live to be 97 and you can say whatever you want. If you want to entertain the notion that you might feel like taking the car for a spin, then I'm sure as hell not the one to tell you otherwise. So he's part of the quote. And he's married... to a 100-year-old woman who hasn't driven a car in 30 years. According to this third company though, I couldn't leave the wife out of the quote unless I called and spoke to an agent. So I called and spoke to an agent.

Who am I? I'm the guy getting the quote. What do I have to do with it? Nothing. I just know how to use the internet. Why not the guy on the policy? He is not conversant with the internet. How will he handle his online policy information? He'll call me, of course. That's how I got involved in this conversation in the first place.

The agent got past the non-driving spouse issue and then started asking a bunch more questions. I handled things to the best of my ability and then handed over the phone to my friend for the transactional part of the deal. Somehow, in the wake of his paranoid repetition of the same question - "Will I have the exact same coverage as I had with 21st Century" - he managed to disclose that someone keyed his car a couple of years ago and he filed a claim. And thus the $300 in savings magically became $240 in savings. Good enough. A half hour, a web connection, and a cell phone. That's all you need.

Internet Task #3 - Reverand Dan's DVD Player. In the interest of full disclosure here, I should tell you that I had a DVD player before 90% of you knew what a DVD player was. I don't even remember how I came to discover the technology but I know that I bought an RCA machine for $700. Then, only in America... There was a website called reel.com. It's some kind of Hollywood Video deal now, but back then it was a site for DVD sales. The top 100 movies on reel.com were always on sale for $9.99. There was also an emerging website called ebay.com. Maybe you've heard of it. An enterprising young lad in Southeast Michigan could somehow manage to buy $10 movies from the one site and sell them for $25 on the other one. That's just stupid, but I shit you not. I made a lot of money.

Anyhow, where was I? The rev's DVD player? Okay then. My friend has started to see the writing on the wall. He knows that there will come a day when he can no longer buy a new VCR. He also has been buying DVD's since 2001 or so, well after I myself had shunned VHS technology. Yet he has a huge stockpile of VHS tapes. So he wants a DVD/VCR combo that will allow him to enjoy both technologies. He went to ABC Warehouse and checked with the salesmen. They did have some combo units. These combo units would allow him to convert his tapes to discs, but with a catch. No built-in tuner. It may sound silly, but my friend has basic cable with no converter box. In order for him to record an episode of American Idol (or whatever people like to record), he would need a VCR or DVD recorder with a tuner. Or he would need a converter box, but then you get into the topic of multiple connections and controllers and such. That ain't so good.

So I, once again, got recruited to make use of Mr. Gore's lovely creation - the interwebs. Sure thing. How hard could it be to find a DVD/VCR combo with a tuner? Eighty bucks at the most, I thought. I was wrong. Damn. Looks like 'obsolete' technology commands a premium. We managed to track down the kind of device that he wanted, but the price was a little over $200. If that's the best he could do, then that's the best he could do, my friend said. He didn't have his credit card handy at the moment though, so I bookmarked the page for future reference.

After dinner was over and everyone had gone home, I wound up back at my own residence. Something about the whole DVD/VCR conversation wasn't sitting right with me, so I started digging through my storage room. Sure as shit, there I found it. Once upon a time I bought a DVD/VCR combo and then, for whatever reason, stopped using it. So it's just sitting there, waiting for someone who is behind the times to come calling. My device has a built-in tuner. It's not a DVD recorder, so it won't be able to get him off the VHS standard, but he can record as many episodes of Judge Judy as he likes. An hour on the internet, five minutes off the internet, and a friend who tends to discard technology when it bores him. That's all you need.

Don't be fooled though. Even though you might find some useful information without the web, you won't find shit like this in your stack of videotapes...



Idiot.