Petpeeves

You
generally never hear anything come out of my mouth such
as…”Those were the good old days..” The reason that doesn’t
happen very often is simply because I happen to like change
and welcome it as we pass through our lifetimes. For the
most part I think the advances we have made in science,
medicine and technology in the past fifty years or so are
just nothing short of miraculous. All of us are living
longer and better as a result of the research and innovation
which have become available today.



As I said earlier, this is generally the case. However there
are a few things that I feel should have been left alone.
These are not in any sort of order, so don’t place any
special emphasis on what I start and end with.



Coffee. In my humble opinion there are just too many
types of coffee available to us today. We have latte’s,
mochas, blended, espresso, light roast, dark roast,
caffeinated and decaffeinated. On top of all of this, we
have to choose grande, super, giant, tall, supreme, small
and a hundred others. Then you have to make a decision as to
what to add, whipped cream, half and half, skim milk, whole
milk or creamer. Way too many things for me to handle for
something as common as a cup of coffee. I preferred it when
all you had to do was just say…”I’d like a cup of coffee.”
Then the waitress would bring you one in a ceramic cup that
you could use to warm your hands while sipping on it for the
next ten or fifteen minutes. You didn’t waste valuable
conversation time trying to make up your mind as to what you
wanted to order.



Stereos. We were talking the other day about record
changers and one of my kids wanted to know what these were.
I looked at him as if he’s just dropped in from Mars or
somewhere, but then realized he’s probably never seen a
machine that could change the record from one to another. We
don’t even have a record player at our house anymore even
though there is a huge stack of albums out there in the
garage somewhere. We don’t have any tapes either. I never
liked them anyway, so no big deal. You couldn’t figure out
where anything was on the tape and had to listen to a bunch
of junk just to get to the song you wanted. Eight tracks
were the worst. At least with a record you could pick up the
needle and set it down on whatever song you wanted. My
stereo today is a marvelous piece of machinery. I’m certain
it can do a thousand things more than just play music. There
are more buttons on this thing than knobs on a 747. You’d
have to have the eyesight of an owl just to read the print
on them. I’m amazed they can get letters printed this tiny.
I want simple knobs such as on-off, volume, bass, treble and
balance. Everything else is totally unnecessary and wasted
on me. What do I need ‘fade’ for or ‘random’? Random, what?



Thermostat. The instruction booklet for the
thermostat in my house is over sixty pages. This is way more
thermostat than I want or need. I knew I was in trouble when
I read the opening description which said….”Combining the
brains of a computer and the simplicity of a garage door
opener….” I want a plain old thermostat that has a lever
that moves to the right for warmer and to the left for
cooler. The top has a little scale on it printed with large
number that I can read that shows a larger number running
off to the right and smaller numbers to the left. Simple.
You want the place to be warmer? Move the lever to a larger
number. You want to get cooler, then move it down. You don’t
want anything? Then you simply move another lever into the
off position. How easy can this be? This is what I want. My
current model has a table of contents that runs for two
pages. It can tell me the temperature outside, which I don’t
need since I have a thermometer on my bathroom window. This
allows me to see what’s happening outside and thus I know
what kind of clothes to wear. I don’t need some device in
the hallway downstairs to help me out, thank you very much.
I don’t need a ‘programmable daily schedule’ since my
schedule changes every day. It might be cold when I leave in
the morning and hot when I get back home. I need a
thermostat that just sits there and waits for me to tell it
what to do, not try to guess what I’ll want. It may be
wrong. I’ve lived all of my life without controlling the
humidity inside my house. Why do I want to start now?



Those are three of my pet peeves, I’m sure there’s more but
then I’ve run out of room again. I will admit I do like the
new DVD models better than the old VCR’s. On the one I’ve
got, the clock sets itself automatically, so I’m not stuck
on midnight like I was for so many years.