Freaking Technology!

So, let me start off by saying, I *love* technology. Except when I don't. This morning was one of the latter times.

This morning, I was at the bank, attempting to deposit a check. My bank has these nifty new ATM's that do not require you to use a deposit envelope covered in chicken scratch long addition which was done in the car on the way as you attempted to sort out just how much money exactly you were actually depositing. To this day I am pretty sure banks just accept whatever number you put on there knowing that eventually it will all even out. 50 cents too much today, a dollar too little tomorrow, whatever, it'll sort itself out eventually... but anyway, I digress. So these new ATM's take all that guesswork out of making bank deposits. You just stick your check in the little slot, it takes it away from you like a kung-fu student grabbing a grasshopper, and then shows you this cool scan of the check, including how much it was for.

So this check I was trying to deposit this morning was from the land of ice and snow... also known as Canada. Seems Canada feels they are too good to follow US standards for how checks are to be formatted (who do they think they are, some autonomous nation? Pfft...), and have come up with their own crazy, obviously drunk, way of doing routing and account numbers. So the ATM got quite confused. I would insert the check, and it would spit it back out. 5 times I tried! I felt like I was in 3rd grade trying to buy a Pepsi at Roller Towne. "Bvvvt.... bvvvt.... dollar comes back" ... "bvvvt... bvvvt... dollar comes back". So then you start doing that crazy "get my dollar to work in a soda machine" voodoo. You take it, flatten it as much as you can using the corner of the machine. "Bvvt... bvvvt... dollar comes back". Then you spend like 5 minutes examining the picture showing the orientation the bill must be in order for the machine to read it. "Bvvvt... bvvvttt... dollar comes back". Then you check to see if any of the corners are maybe bent down. Finally you do some crazy raindance and pray to the diety of your choice in hopes of making it work. "Bvvvt...." "Sweet I think it worke... "Bvvvt... dollar comes back". "Blast!". That is basically what happened to me this morning. It's like, come on, I am trying to give you money!

It reminds me of the olde tyme days of yore when I was trying to get my oldsk00l NES to see that I really did have a game inserted. Everyone had their own special "technique" for getting it to work. Blow on the cartridge, blow in the console, etc. I knew one kid who swore that tapping it on the upper right side of his head 3 times was the key to making it work. Superstition to say the least, but hey, whatever it takes to get your Pepsi/Nintendo/ATM fix right?

So the point of all this nostalgia is pretty simple: For all the things technology brings us, it sure does cost a lot... and not just monetarily. I'm thinking about our other valuables that can't have a pricetag attached to them, such as time, frustration, and sugary drinks, just to name just a few.

In the end, I'm back where we were 30 years ago. I have to make it to the bank during the business hours, which is like between 11:00 and 11:07 am every other Thursday (whoever coined the term "bankers hours" was a wise wise person), so that a teller can examine my currency manually to ensure that I am not a Canadian terrorist. Maybe one day I won't have to work in another country to maximize the value of my dollar, but that day is not today. And so I am stuck fighting with technology just to get my Pepsi.