Category Archives: Technology

I didn't mention this last week because I didn't want to deal with the massive outpourings of grief and sympathy…but last Thursday evening, my office TiVo almost died. It had apparently not been well for some time but it kept up a brave front, soldiering on and continuing to record the silly things I watch for as long as it could. Eventually, the strain of saving all those infomercials for the Magic Bullet took its toll and the poor thing collapsed. I rushed it to these people who performed lifesaving surgery, installing a new power supply and harddisk…and now my old pal is back on the job, seemingly reborn.

I lost everything I'd stored on my TiVo — about 150 hours of shows, some of them unwatched, some things I wanted to watch again or dub off. All gone. So are my settings, my season passes, my preferences and all memory of what I've recorded in the past. I put back the settings, season passes and preferences but it's just not the same.

I have several friends reading this who have recently written or appeared on or otherwise been involved with recent TV broadcasts. They keep asking me, "Did you see it? What did you think?" And I've been replying, "Haven't had time to watch it yet…got it on my TiVo." Well, now I don't got it on my TiVo. I don't got anything on my TiVo except last night's Daily Show. I'm sorry, friends who recently had a show air but it's the truth. If you don't believe me, I'll fax you the repair bills.

And if your TiVo breaks, I recommend the above-linked folks who fixed mine. I drove it to their offices but most folks mail their TiVos in, and it sure looks like the company does a great job.

I'm still playing with my new toy, figuring out what it can and can't do, installing and uninstalling apps. I'm experimenting with Reqall, which allows you to dictate short memos and "to do" items which it will then transcribe and make available to you in several forms. I got but have not used ParkingPal, which is a timer for when you put coins in a parking meter and need a warning of when they'll run out. I also got FStream, which enables you to listen to web-based radio programs, including our non-paying sponsor, Shokus Internet Radio, and I'm playing with RedLaser, which Marv Wolfman told me about. With RedLaser, you use the iPhone camera to grab an image of the Universal Price Code on some product and the program then searches online sources and tells you where to get the thing cheaper.

Mostly though, I've downloaded some news apps and a few games, and I've spent some time figuring out how to make the iPhone e-mail work for me. I have a complicated set-up here with multiple addresses that go to a couple of different servers and then get filtered and forwarded around until I receive them in a way that suits me. Unlike my Blackberry, the iPhone would not let me put a different "from" and "reply to" address on an outgoing e-mail and my system requires that. I'd tell you how I finally solved it but it wouldn't apply to you since you don't have the Rube Goldberg style system I invented for myself. Just know that if you have something of the sort, and if you don't want people to write back to the direct address of the device via which you wrote to them, you may have to employ a little ingenuity.

Still haven't tried loading the thing with music yet. Also still haven't gotten the guy over yet to install the new car kit so I can put in a dashboard mount and charge while I drive. One thing that is a bit annoying is the short battery life. My old Blackberry could go for days on a full charge. Then again, it did a lot less so I did a lot less with it. My iPhone seems to be good for around 6-8 hours.

That's where I am with it at the moment. Still happy with my purchase. Still aware how much there is to learn. And I'm starting to wish I had smaller fingers more suited to the iPhone keyboard. Maybe they have an app that can reduce the size of your hands.

Johnny Carson used to say that if you were ever lost in the desert, the easiest way to get help would be to mix a martini. Immediately, you'd be surrounded by a dozen people telling you, "That's not the way to make a martini!"

In the same vein: If you ever want to get e-mail, just announce on the 'net that you've purchased some piece of electronic equipment. Your inbox will instantly fill with messages from people telling you, "That's not the one you should have bought." And I just want to say here that some (some, not all) Mac users are really insufferable in this way. Every time I post here that I'm having the tiniest dilemma with my PC, I get some e-mail that says, "Get a sledge hammer and smash that piece of crap machine into smithereens, then go out and buy a Mac. All your problems will be over." Apparently, no one has ever had the slightest problem with a Mac.

Anyway, I mention all this because I just got an iPhone. The briefest mention of it here the other day is already bringing me comments like, "Good to see you're wising up that Apple is the only way to go. Any day now, you'll see the light of day and get a Mac." (I know how you people feel. I used to own a Betamax.)

I got rid of the Blackberry that served me well for years because (a) it was malfunctioning, (b) I wanted applications it doesn't have or doesn't do well, and (c) I had a great offer for a 3G iPhone with 32 megs. Did I make the right choice? So far, I think so.

I like the e-mail handling better on the Blackberry but the phone part better on the iPhone. Or at least, I think I will once I get my car kit properly configured, which is going to take a partial reinstallation. But I'm getting used to typing on the new machine and I'm enjoying the speed and variety of applications…like checking the news or weather or making restaurant reservations. The Blackberry wasn't really made for that kind of thing…though I did like the one that allowed me to program my TiVos at home. The iPhone, for some reason, has nothing comparable yet. I also like the little MobileMe interface.

I haven't gotten into music and podcasts, nor have I used the camera much. All in due time. But I'll be reporting as I play with the thing and this is my first report. More will follow.

A few weeks ago, my mother's doctor asked me to start monitoring her blood pressure. He suggested I get one of those home testers and use it to check her every few days. So I bought the best available model of what I'd heard was the leading maker of such devices — the Omron IA2 Digital Blood Pressure Monitor. I took it over to Mom's, strapped her into it…and got a reading about 20 points higher than the one her doctor had gotten when he tested her, low-tech style, the previous day.

A jump of 20 points in eighteen hours? It's possible but it didn't seem likely. I tested her every day or so for the following week and every reading was around 20 points above what it had been in her doctor's office. I began to suspect my mother wasn't malfunctioning. The machine was.

Then I had an appointment with my doctor — nothing important, just routine — and while waiting in the examining room, I noticed an Omron IA2 Digital Blood Pressure Monitor. When my doc came in, I asked him about it. "Never use 'em," he said. "They have them in all the rooms here and I don't think anyone uses them. They're always twenty points too high."

Well, that's good to know. I asked him why they were here. He said, "I don't know." But when I told him about my experiences with the one I bought, he said, "Let's test it." He took my blood pressure the old-fashioned way. Then we waited two minutes and took it with the Omron. The Omron was twenty points higher. Exactly.

When we exited the examining room, he asked one of the older doctors in his office about the blood pressure devices. The older doctor said, "Oh, those? They're always twenty points high."

"So why do we have them?"

"I've never been sure. I think Donna [whoever that is] ordered a batch of them because the clinic got a deal. Every so often, we have a nurse trainee or someone who doesn't know how to check blood pressure and they use them. But if they do, I always recheck. That's how I know they're always twenty points too high."

I asked the questions you'd ask and here's what roughly what the doctor said: "It's actually a very well-made product. In a sense, it's too good. When you take a blood pressure with one of these —" and here, he fiddled with his stethoscope like Oliver Hardy playing with his necktie "— you're listening for the brachial pulse and for an indicator called the Karotkoff sound. The machine has better hearing than any doctor or nurse so it senses those sounds much quicker and…well, that's why it's always too high." (I am, by the way, approximating his explanation from memory. If I got it wrong, forgive me…but it was something like that.)

Anyway, he went on to say that the machines are, at least, consistent. "If you use it and it shows a higher total than it did the last time, that's a good indicator than your blood pressure is going up. You just have to remember to subtract 20 if you're comparing the numbers to a blood pressure reading done by a doctor. There are machines that take that into account but they're not for home use." When I got home, I did a little Googling and found a lot of folks saying that their Omron is always 20 points too high.

Okay, so here's me being logical again. Are these machines really and truly always 20 points high? If so, I would imagine the Omron folks could fix that in about the time it takes me to adjust a bathroom scale that's always 20 pounds over. I've gotta be missing something here.

[UPDATE, a little less than two hours later: Four people have written me to say they have an Omron that is either accurate or which they hope is accurate because if their blood pressure is really 20 points lower, they're in trouble. I don't doubt theirs may be correct. But how come so many people (Google "Omron" and "20 points" and you'll see at least a dozen examples) get readings that are consistently 20 points too high?]

On my recent trip to Ohio and Indiana, I had my first experience with a Global Positioning System. One came unsolicited in my Hertz rental car and it proved to be a handy thing to have. I'd printed out Mapquest guides for everywhere I had to drive but it was nice having the screen tell me that I was actually on the road I thought I was on, and having Henrietta (as I named the voice that comes out of the Hertz Neverlost® system) telling me when I was nearing a turn. For that reason — and the fact that it's a gadget and I must have all gadgets — I decided to get me a G.P.S. when I returned home.

I did a bit of study and got some advice from my friend, Marv Wolfman, who has one in his auto. It all pointed me to the Magellan Roadmate 2000, in part because it's nearly identical to the Hertz Neverlost® device I'd used on my trip. It's even the same Henrietta.

I've had my new Henrietta for a week, during which I haven't had to go anywhere I couldn't locate with my eyes closed…but I've been using the Roadmate anyway, just to get used to it and to learn what I could learn about the thing. I've learned, first of all, that there's no non-awkward way to install it in my car. I tried a number of different ways, including a special mount that I ordered over the Internet and which is supposed to clamp the thing onto any air vent on your dashboard. It did but since all my air vents rotate, the G.P.S. jiggled and moved out of position at the slightest touch of its touchscreen…and there seemed to be no way to make that mount work. I finally went back to using the suction cup connector on the inside of my windshield and it's functional but not ideal. Wherever I position it, it's in the way of something and so is the cord that goes from it to the cigarette lighter for power.

Beyond that, I'm reasonably happy. Henrietta has a tendency to send me down major streets when smaller ones would be more efficient, and she's not always correct about which route is either the shortest or quickest. But she also isn't far wrong and if I were driving on unfamiliar turf, I'd be quite satisfied with her directions. From here to my mother's house in non-rush hour traffic is twelve minutes the way I usually go. Following the path dictated by Henrietta today, it was fifteen.

She's good but she has an unfortunate tendency to nag. Today, she wanted me to take a turn that would have sent me down Wilshire Boulevard. (Henrietta loves Wilshire Boulevard. When Marv and I went to lunch in his car, we were driving down 6th Street to a restaurant that was located on 6th Street. She kept telling him to turn right and go down to Wilshire.) Anyway, today when I didn't cut over to Wilshire and went another way, she started ordering me to make a safe and legal U-Turn and to get my ass back to Wilshire. She didn't exactly phrase it that way but you could tell she wanted to.

I'll report more on Henrietta as soon as I go somewhere I've never been before.