It was just as well there was a second lot of veal in the freezer. I’ll get back the the veal in a minute. But first to the aggravation that led to the destruction of the first lot.
I knew it might happen; Hugh MacKay had predicted it. MacKay is the great Australian sociologist who has a theory about people in modern Australia snapping under stress. He says that the pressures of earning a living and the hassles of home and mortgages etc etc make people suddenly react to the most trivial things in a violent and exaggerated way.
People, like me, who would ordinarily never allow themselves to act violently, suddenly find themselves smashing parking inspectors in the face. They snap because of the great build up of pressure in modern life.
I think technology does it; not people. I expect people to behave badly; they were built like that. Technology, however, is supposed to work. When it doesn’t, I get aggravated.
So this is how I destroyed the first lot of veal.
It started with an off-the-cuff comment by the chief of reporting staff. Where am I going to put them all, he asked, wondering where the sudden influx of reporters were going to fit in a newsroom built in depths of the recession. All the spare space so prudently put aside in 1987 when The Canberra Times moved to its spacious new offices four doors up from a brothel in Fyshwick has long been sucked up by training rooms and function centres.
So, in an off-the-cuff reply to the chief’s off-the-cuff comment, I suggested that I might work from home. Home was closer to Civic, the Assembly and Parliament. And modern communications would make it so easy. I aleady had a splendid portable computer with a sizzling text-retrieval program, diary and contact book. It could access The Canberra Times computer from afar, to read important messages from high about the spelling of Arab warlords and the fumigation of the office. And it can read the stories from news agencies and my colleagues.
The move to work from home (where the coffee and the view is better) would be a breeze, I thought. Of course, a fax and a mobile phone would be necessary, but that was the least of the worries. One of those fax modems that allow to to input faxes straight into the computer would be the go. They’re about three hundred bucks.
I was not breaking any ice moving to home. David Mussared had already jumped into the 21st century cottage industry _ working from home electronically. But he is the science writer.
So the chief of staff agreed, and I packed my pot plants and Renoir’s Boating Party (I actually like it, so there), and worked from home. It was fine for the first couple of days: Rachmaninov on the CD (I actually like him, so there); calls were redirected to my home number, the mobile phone worked; real coffee; close to the city and other contacts for interviews etc etc.
I did some pleasant and I hope thoughtful writing about surrogacy, including some references to a Californian case obtained via modem down the phone line from the US, while all the time sitting at home. Marvellous stuff new technology. When it works.
Then it happened. I turned on the computer the other evening and it said something like: Bad Sectors in C Drive. Run CHKDSK.
It was hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. Evening Horribilus. My Windsor Castle had caught fire. I was lost for words. The whole _ what’s that adjectival gerundive beginning with f that we use in these circumstances _ lot was gone.
It took hours to restore the programs and some of the remaining data, but still the modem didn’t work. The modem is the gadget that sends text down the phone line to work. The whole work-at-home thing is predicated upon it.
I won’t bore you with the technological mouth-to-mouth I used to try to get the thing working and the journeys to computer shops and cables, and parity and stop bits, and ERROR SENDING DATA and all the other humiliating, frustrating, nauseating aggravation that comes with failed technology. Suffice it to say that I did not murmur sweetly: “”Oh bother, it appears that this modem is not working at only the seventh attempt. I must try again after a good lie down and a Bex.”
At this stage the stressful frustration made me recall Hugh MacKay’s work. But I was not going to punch a parking inspector. Oh no. I even went back home to get some more parking-meter money on my third trip to the computer shop.
So instead of cursing, I started to theorise. I thought that computing technology is about where motorbikes were in early 1950s _ things for enthusiasts who liked greasy hands. More time was spent mucking about with them than riding them.
Computers in the late 1980s and early 1990s are like that. They cannot be relied on. You cannot buy one, turn it on and expect it to run for three years trouble free.
I figure a technology has to be about 40 years old for that. Radios, television sets, tape recorders, cars and motor-bikes (since the Japanese invented the Honda 50) are like that. So home computers have about 20 years to go.
“”Don’t have any faith in new technology.” I muttered. “”New technology sucks and cannot be relied upon. Wait at least 40 years before trying it. Old technology is good technology.”
But despite my own warnings I got a test fax put through from The Canberra Times office. It has one of those very new hi-tech fax machines that keep on sending until the fax at the other end receives it. But mine wasn’t working, so the phone at home kept ringing every five minutes for an hour.
“”Hugh MacKay is not going to get me; I’m going to have a break for dinner,” I muttered shoving the frozen veal in the new-technology microwave to defrost, and hitting 20 minutes.
But I didn’t hit Defrost, did I?
Twenty minutes of 600-watt microwave on High is a bit like a cold-fusion experiment. The plastic and veal coagulated into a sculpture which would obtained gasps of awe at the recent Surrealism exhibition at the National Gallery.
So it’s just as well there was a second lot in the freezer, or my computer and its modem would have joined it.