The KISS principle was often invoked where I used to work. Don’t make the routine or the policy or the plan too complicated, keep it simple. It seems to me that the same should apply to receiving bills electronically.
Here’s my story. I receive 3 bills electronically every month, from my ISP, the folks I buy my long distance telephone service from and good old Bell Canada (our land line and our satellite TV service). Two of them send me my invoice as a PDF file attached to the email every month. Its not a huge file usually between 35 and 60 kilobytes. Its quick to download and easy to open and print (if I want). It tells me how much I owe them, the web address of the company in case I need to do a little business with them and that’s about it. It takes less than 30 seconds to open the bill and print a copy for our files. Fits the KISS principal very nicely.
Then there is good old Bell Canada, no I take that back, there is no good in good old Bell Canada. it is simply the only choice where we live. This has to be one of the most inept, uncaring, slow to change monopolies the modern world has ever known. Even now when they are not a monopoly anymore they are still backward and inept and they drive my BP right through the roof. I get an email from them every month that says that my ebill is ready and I owe $xxx.xx and to see my ebill login in on www.bell.ca. Thus starts a 5+minute process of tooing and froing and opening and closing and do I want to buy this and will I be subscribing to that. All this to get to my bill and then if I want to print it I have to go somewhere else. What in hell are these folks thinking, that if they piss me off enough I will buy more services from them? What a complete load of horseshit! Trying to get this friggin monolith to change would be like trying to turn a cruise ship by blowing through a straw against the stern of the ship. See I’m am almost incoherent. I keep thinking I should cancel my ebilling and go back to a paper bill but the thought of wasting all that paper every month stops me. It just pisses me off that they can’t send me a simple 1 or 2 page statement as a pdf file every month.hey ma bell do you think that you could try simple just once? Oh and while you are at it ditch that electronic helper will you PLEASE.
Sometimes you want something new – not need but want. In fact you may want it so much that you convince yourself that you need it. And then when you get it you think, “What in hell did I do that for?”. Remember the song Did You Ever Have To make Up Your Mind by the Lovin Spoonful? The 1st refrain goes:
“Did you ever have to make up your mind
Pick up on one and leave the other behind
It’s not often easy and not often kind
Did you ever have to make up your mind”
About 5 years ago I got a Dell laptop computer. It was, at the time, a fairly high end machine. It has served us very well. It has been on many trips. Literally from one end of this country to the other and many points in between. It has had a new screen installed, the hard drive partitioned, a new battery a few years ago and Linux installed. It has shown movies and played lots of music. It has helped me develop and put on a number of training courses. It is however quite heavy and dragging it through airports is always a challenge.
Last year when we were in BC I had a chance to see an Asus Eee PC 7″ netbook. It was tiny and weighs lass than 1 kg. It was a little sweetheart and to make it more attractive it came with a Linux OS. Hugh actually bought us one and we had it for two days before we decided that it was too small and we returned it.Since then I have wanted a new laptop. A smaller, newer, faster model that weighs a lot less. In fact I convinced myself that I needed one. So, I started dropping hints, not subtle ones either.”Val look at this”. Val when we get to SSM today I want to stop at Staples.” “Val did you see the deal in that email from Tigerdirect.” You get the picture. Then it was “Hugh do you think if I get a computer with X it will do A, B and C?” And on and on and on. About 3 weeks ago I went so far as to take Val into a store and point to the perfect mix of size, speed and cool. We came close but decided to go home and do our income tax. In the process we had the discussion about we don’t need it, we really have other priorities and besides the old one works just fine. Well that’s settled, right? Like heck it is. it just meant that we didn’t talk about it any more but I was still checking the Dell website every other day or so and keeping track of the deals. Then last Saturday morning my sister called with the news that my brother and her and I were going to share in some unexpected largess that came our way. When I got off the phone Val looked at me and said, “well there is your new laptop.” Sunday we made a trip into SSM and bought it. Tuesday we picked it up. What a little sweety, a 13.3″ screen, lots of power and speed and it weighs just a bit over 2 kg. A big difference from the old machine. It took off flying right straight out of the box. Val loves it and so do I. It comes into the living room with us and thanks to our wireless router and a built in wireless card in the new machine logging on is a snap. But and here comes the but I can not bring myself to pack up the old one. It is slower and heavier but it is still very functional (even if I would be laughed at if I tried to sell it for more than $2.00). I even found myself turning it on and using it yesterday afternoon. Oh the guilt.This sense of guilt that you don’t deserve a new whatever or that you really should use that money for something else is such a pain. It can get in the way of enjoyment. Anyway, I have it, I think that it is great, I’m going to keep it. I just have to decide what to do with the other one. So there.
A couple of weeks ago my cousin, who makes his living on his computer discovered that said computer was infected with a number of nasty trojans and viruses. He salvaged his files and announced to me that he was switching to Ubuntu. He has listened to me echo my son extol the virtues of open source software for some time and the seed I planted finally germinated. I have two machines running Ubuntu, an old desktop machine that works fine and a laptop that has been a dual boot machine for several years. Both had Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) installed. When “cuz” downloaded Ubuntu he got the latest version, 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) and burned it to a cd which he loaned me and I installed it on desktop box. Only problem is that doing it this way removes all the settings and old files. OK on the desktop not OK on the laptop. Sunday I consulted my Linux guru and he said that that there is a way to upgrade rather than replace and promptly found and sent me the link to the instructions. Yesterday morning I started the update process. No sweat so far, sounds simple right? It is except that, the upgrade is 600+megs and my internet connection is via a satellite service and at the very best the download speed is around 60KBs. That is optimal and is seldom sustained for extended periods. And the service provider does have a “fair access” policy. That is also called throttling. So yesterday morning at about 8am I commenced the download. Last evening at about 10.30pm the download was complete. Yahoo! The installation process started automatically so I went to bed. When I got up this morning the process was halted waiting for me to tell the computer that it is OK to replace some now unneeded file. OK, OK, go ahead lets finish this. Finally at 7am the installation was finished, the computer restarted itself and the process was complete. It took 24 hours but it is done. Thanks Hugh.
Where to start? Every year for the last 8 or so I have had an appointment with an ophthalmologist, named appropriately, Dr. Sharp. He checks my eyes for any signs of damage caused by the type 2 diabetes I live with. That damage is referred to as Diabetic Retinopathy . Checking for diabetic retinopathy consists of dilating the pupil and then shining a very bight into the eye so that the doctor can study the back of your eyeball looking for damage to the retina. Having a doctor look at the inside of your eyeball is much the same as having a doctor study the inside of your ear . You know what is going on but you have no idea what the doctor is is seeing. Three years ago I started going to an optometrist to have my eyes checked to see if I needed new glasses. In his examining room is an LCD monitor Last year he showed me digital images of the inside of eyeballs as he talked to me about retinopathy and other diseases and conditions of the eye. I was fascinated. This year when I went he said that he was going to take a digital image of the inside of each of my eyes so that he could have a very good look at what is going on and also as a record against which future checks can be compared. When I asked he readily agreed to email me copies of the photos so without further ado meet the inside of my right eyeball. – 
A brief geography lesson. The light coloured circle on the right side is the optic nerve and the dark lines emanating from it are veins and arteries. The really important thing about this photo is that this is the inside of MY eye. i actually got see what the optometrist got to see and when he explained what he did not see, any evidence of retinopathy I was thrilled. A large percentage of type 2 diabetics who are 15 years post diagnosis commonly show symptoms of the disease. I am no poster child for diabetes management but I do try and it seems that the trying is paying off. Two weeks after I saw the optometrist I had my annual appointment with Dr. Sharp. To my surprise and great pleasure , at the end of the appointment he announced that there was no need for me to come for an annual examination until such time as there is a change in the health of my eyes. He said to continue going to the optometrist every year that that if he noted any change he would refer me back to Dr. Sharp. Wow!