Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 22, 1994                   TAG: 9407200004
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COPING WITH THE TRIALS OF TECHNOLOGY

A lot of this irony comes from the new technology - which I wish I could have avoided entirely. Take me back to the time when reporters wrote notes on their starched cuffs. I don't know how they afforded to ruin their shirts that way, but it's awfully romantic.

Technological irony happened to me just last week when I had a problem with cable television - the problem being that there were no pictures on any of the channels.

I'm not being critical when I say that I made several phone calls to the cable company, and, while waiting to talk to someone about it, I had to listen to all of these canned promotions for this really great stuff on cable.

If, of course, there had been any picture. I mean, Sharon Stone could have been doing something very naughty on HBO and the screen would have looked like your average March blizzard.

More irony. We talked recently about coming a little farther into what is left of this century and decided we should get push-button phones and give up our old rotary dial jobs.

Those people who tell you to push pound or 1 now are so authoritative. I always feel guilty about not being able to do what they say.

But then I started to worry about this problem I have with hitting the right buttons.

I have problems hitting the right buttons on the calculator, for example, and this is the reason for a $100 mistake in the checkbook that has been there for 10 years.

I was worried that I might intend to call the hardware store about a new rain gauge and end up with the American embassy in Rome.

Sure, they had push-button phones when I was employed full-time as a fearless reporter/columnist, but it wouldn't have been on my phone bill if I had called the embassy while trying to dial the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors office.

I am not prepared at this time to say if I ever did call the embassy in Rome by mistake.

I'm sure there are all kind of examples of the many ironies computer usage produces, but I don't know enough about what's going on to understand them.

Anyway, when we got the cable back, we checked out Sharon Stone first chance we got.

You know something, Kermit? That girl really is naughty.