Ma Bell and Me

In the beginning there was none. No television. No electronics.

The lake itself was the entertainment. Swimming in it, canoeing on it, fishing it or just sitting by it listening to loon calls float across its surface.

Just us, the lake and the pleasures of the woods around it.

Then it came. That first piece of electronic wizardry – the television set.

It was a small black box donated by a family member. It had a 12-inch screen and a single pull-out antenna that delivered ghostly shapes moving in electronic mist and snow.

I got it a pair of rabbit ears to boost its draw power enough to provide adequate black and white images and reasonably static-free audio.

That television was not allowed to be part of the cottage furnishings. It lived in a closet, unplugged from any electrical outlets that could bring it to life.

It was only an occasional visitor, pulled out of its closet on special occasions. Major sports events like the Stanley Cup playoffs, the World Series of baseball or the Superbowl. And, of course, major news events like the death of Princess Diana.

It died one day and was replaced by another castoff, a big box tube set the size of a bank vault. It took four people to carry it. It was too heavy to move in and out of the closet so we placed it in the living area where it became a cottage fixture.

It didn’t get many channels so was not used much more than its predecessor. That changed after a visit to a spring Cottage Life Show.

Ma Bell was at the show and offering a sweet deal. She would set you up with satellite TV service at your home and your cottage for the monthly price of one service.

No longer would you have to lug the satellite box from home to the cottage and back to avoid paying for two services. It was irresistible and I succumbed.

The old, chunky TV was not compatible for satellite so another family member donated a wide-screen set being discarded because at 40 inches it was considered too small and outdated. The trend in the city was for sets with screens the size of a tractor-trailer.

That would be the limit of digital electronic intrusions at the lake. Or, so I thought.

Then came the Internet. It made sense. If work could be done over the Internet at the lake, more time could be spent at the lake.

With the Internet came the laptops, the tablets, and those ubiquitous smart phones.

Those machines swallow huge amounts of insanely expensive data. Someone suggested getting WiFi. It would provide more data time and better TV options.

So in came the WiFi box and yet another monthly ransom payment to Ma Bell. Her monthly take became the size of a new car payment.

I decided enough was enough. I unplugged the WiFi box and put it in the closet where the little black television had lived.

Then I called Ma. I explained that I was paying her too much and needed to reduce the monthly bill. We talked for quite a while, me complaining about the cost burden and my disdain of commercials.

Television, I wailed, now was two minutes of program followed by five minutes of commercials. Ma was sympathetic and offered a variety of solutions.

The very next day a young man in a Bell truck arrived. He installed a PVR (personal video recorder) that allows the viewer to record a program and spin through the commercials. The PVR required a high definition satellite receiver, which he installed on my roof.

So my monthly Bell bill, once the size of  Toyota hatchback payment, now is the size of a Lexus payment.

I seem to have everything now that Ma Bell has to offer. She doesn’t think so because her marketing people call me almost daily. They call on my landline while I am eating supper. They call on my mobile phone while I am cutting firewood in the bush. 

I want to call Ma and tell her to stop calling. But I am afraid to call because whenever I call her it costs me more money.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

Car Buyers Beware

Mopping up the messes of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma is happening hundreds of miles away but Canadian consumers need to take care that they don’t get soaked.

Flood-damaged goods from Texas and Florida can start showing up anytime and anywhere. Quick buck artists already are working to pass off damaged goods to  unsuspecting buyers.

The area of greatest concern is the used vehicle market. There are estimates of 500,000 vehicles damaged in Texas, and probably that many again in Florida.

There are legal processes designed to protect buyers from cleaned up, water-damaged vehicles with serious hidden problems. There are unscrupulous people who find ways around the laws and sell flooded vehicles camouflaged as normal used cars or trucks.

A 2014 study by Carfax Inc., an online company supplying vehicle history reports, said  that 800,000 vehicles on U.S. roads may have been subject to title washing schemes. A large number of those were autos damaged in floods.

Resale autos must have ownership titles that list a history of damage. Scammers, however, have found ways of altering, or washing, titles.

Flood vehicles often are transported well beyond a flood zone because distant buyers are less likely to think about water-damaged vehicles.

Carfax estimates that historically about one-half of vehicles damaged in flooding are resold. Some have been repaired and the flood damage noted on their titles but many others get sold through scammers.

“They (scammers) will buy them, they will make them look OK, and sooner or later some unsuspecting party is going to buy one and it will end up being a nightmare,” Jim Tolkan, an automotive dealers association president told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently.  

U.S. used vehicles usually come to Canada for sale through honest dealers. Some might have been flooded and the damage and repairs noted and price adjusted to reflect that. There is a danger that some come through scams.

Here’s some advice, gathered from consumer reports and auto mechanics, that might be helpful to anyone considering buying a used auto from the United States. (Or, from Canada for that matter because several regions of the country have had major flooding this year).

It is best to have a used car you are considering inspected by a qualified mechanic. They know the hidden signs of water damage.

Water damage to autos can be much more than stained upholstery and musty odour. Water gets into mechanical systems, lubricants and electronics. Today’s vehicles are heavily dependent on delicate electronics that drive computerized systems.

Salt water of course causes corrosion problems that might not show up until months, or even years, later.

Seat mounting screws should be checked to see if they have been removed. Carpets cannot be dried properly without the seats being removed.

Look into difficult-to-clean places – gaps under the hood and between panels in the trunk. There might be mud stains or water lines in spots where they are difficult to remove.

Engines have all sorts of nooks and crannies where mud or stains are missed in a quick cleaning. A light, magnifying glass or mirror on a stick can help in looking for evidence of exposure to water.

There are areas in autos where unpainted screws are used, like under the dashboard. Any unpainted screws will show signs of rust if the vehicle has been submerged.

Drain plugs beneath the car or at the bottom of doors should be checked to see if they have been removed. Plugs are removed to drain flood water from inside the panels.

The reflectors or lenses on headlights and taillights sometimes show slightly visible water lines, solid evidence that the vehicle had been partially submerged.

Thoroughly searching a vehicle’s history is an important first step when looking to buy a used car.

There are plenty of online sites offering information about ways to protect yourself from damaged used auto scammers. Sites like Carfax.com and Autocheck.com provide vehicle histories at a cost. Carfax also has a flood damage site (https://www.carfax.com/press/resources/flooded-cars) with helpful information.

I know people who have had great luck buying used vehicles exported from the U.S. Like buying anything these days, you just have to be on top of all the ways to protect yourself.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

When will we ever learn?

Most of us have gone through life thinking little about nuclear war. The chances of it have been minimal because everyone understands that launching just one nuke could bring global catastrophe, perhaps even end human civilization.

What increases the chances is reckless talk by people who should know better. That’s what is happening now. The odds of nuclear catastrophe increase weekly because some people can’t control their mouths.

We have the young North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un talking about delivering “a merciless sledgehammer blow to the U.S. imperialists.” Then from the U.S., aggressive statements threatening war that will deliver fire and fury.

Even the diplomats, from whom we expect calm and thoughtful negotiation, seem infected by the war bug.

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, says North Korea is “begging for war.” Instead of trying to cool the heated war talk, she inflames it.

“We have kicked the can down the road long enough,” she said of the North Korea nuclear threat. “There is no more road left.”

Well Nikki, there’s always more road, more room for talk about preventing the planet from being blown up.

North Korea is like a spoiled child who feels the entire world is against it. There are reasons it feels that way and maybe if someone tried talking to those folks about why they feel that way, some understanding and real negotiations could begin.

We seem incapable of learning, and accepting, the lessons of so many past conflicts. Surely the most important is that war is futile and unwinnable by any side.

Afghanistan is an example. It has been a battleground for centuries yet no country, no empire, has ever been a winner there.

The 1960s novel Caravans by James Michener had a protagonist telling a diplomat that one day both the U.S. and Russia would invade Afghanistan and both would regret it.

It was an uncanny prediction by a brilliant novelist. Russia invaded and is still regretting its Afghan adventure. The U.S. did too and regrets it, and yet it is still there. It is sending even more troops in despite the fact it will never win the country from the Taliban, or other forms of Muslim extremists.

The U.S. has 7,000 troops in the country as part of a NATO coalition against terrorists. It also has another 1,500 special forces troops fighting the Taliban.

The U.S. learned little from its Vietnam nightmare in which 60,000 of its soldiers died and tens of thousands of others were maimed. Meanwhile, sons of the allied South Vietnamese military leaders were sent abroad to be out of harms way instead of fighting for the cause.

The U.S. could never win in Vietnam because it did not have the full support of the people.

Ditto the 1950s Korean War. Actual combat ended, no side won and a war of words continues.

Canada did the right thing when it withdrew from the fighting in Afghanistan. Our active combat role there ended in 2011 and the last of our soldiers and policing force left in 2014.

We were part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) force sent in because of the 9/11 attacks on America. The NATO-led forces remain there, minus Canada, to help the Afghan government learn to look after itself and build a self-sufficient, stable society.

Good luck with that. Afghanistan is a hopeless pit that swallows any country that tries to remake it. It should be left to the Afghan people to figure it all out.

NATO are in there supposedly to defeat the terrorists. The billions being spent on that would be better spent containing the terrorists and keeping them away from the rest of us.

NATO countries all can help Afghanistan by providing it with money and tools. They should not be sending their sons and daughters there to risk their lives in combat, policing or advisory roles.

More than 60 years after the world’s most powerful anti-war song was written, its haunting question remains unanswered:

“Where have all the soldiers gone?

“Gone to graveyards every one.

“When will they ever learn?

“When will they ever learn?”

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

To code or not to code

School days, school days, good old fashioned  . . .

Reading and  writing and ‘rithmetic . . . . and

coding.

Coding apparently is the hottest trend in education. Or, more accurately, coding is what Silicon Valley’s digital masterminds are trying to make the hottest trend.

“Coding should be a requirement in every public school,” Apple CEO Tim Cooke told a gathering of top-drawer techies at the U.S. White House recently.

Coding is a set of instructions telling a computer what you want it to do. Computers run on  binary code – combinations of 1s and 0s. To put all the 1s and 0s in the right order for a computer to understand, you have to learn programming languages such as Python, Ruby, Java, C++ and others.

High-tech advocates of coding have been raising tens of millions of dollars to persuade governments to make coding mandatory in school curriculum. Their argument is that millions of future jobs will require advanced computer knowledge and skills.

British Columbia, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia already have made learning coding a mandatory part of their curriculums. Ontario and Saskatchewan have included it as an option.

Some people question whether the high tech industry simply is trying to sway governments to serve its own interests.

We live in the digital age so it is important that tomorrow’s workers have a high level of computer literacy. However, there is much hype behind the high-tech industry’s campaign to have coding learning become mandatory in all schools.

Some advocates say learning coding has become as important as learning to read and write. Coding teaches people how to think, they argue.

Perhaps, but let’s not get carried away. Most of us have learned how to think without knowing how to code, and we got that learning through reading, writing and talking to each other.

We should be careful not to let the computer age lessen the importance of basic reading and writing skills. It already has in many ways.

Our communication skills have declined in the computer age. We have less time to read, speak too often with abbreviations (LOL,TMI, OMG, IMFO, FYI)  and tech talk phrases, and have less face-to-face communication.

Social media, which have created important communications channels, allows us to take in and spread more information. Regretfully, too much social networking information lacks depth, is missing context, or is not factual.

Declining communications skills are seen every day in our political and other community leaders. Many lack the skills needed to speak or write clearly and precisely what they want to tell their followers. The result often is confusion and conflict.

Obviously it is important for people today to have a basic knowledge of computers because so many of our daily activities are connected to computers. That does not mean that we all need to learn computer coding, or that computer coding is a must for all elementary school kids.

Most of us drive automobiles but learning how to drive was not part of our elementary schooling. What we were taught in school were math, physics, biology, English grammar and other subjects that would help us to understand and learn the individual skills needed for driving a vehicle.

Those and other school study subjects remain important in developing understanding and skills for work in the computer age. For most kids, a general knowledge and understanding of computerization is all they need and all that the schools should be teaching.

Learning coding should not be a high priority for all school kids and we should not be diverting education money away from traditional subjects to provide it.

Options can be provided in higher grades for kids who show a serious bent towards computer careers.

The high-tech world entices us with wizard talk about how it can make our world better. It has in many ways, but we need to be skeptical and ask pointed questions. The drive to have all children learn coding is a case in point.

So when corporate sloganeers spin ideas with buzzwords such as ‘Thinking Outside the Box,’ we need to pause, look them in the eye and say “Ditch the box. Just think.”

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y