It's a Good Thing They Didn't Hire Me

Neither the telecommunications behemoth incapable of delivering a reliable cable TV signal to my home, the computer software giant unable to supply my computer with a functional operating system nor the business services firm staggered by the prospect of processing a rebate in less than six months would dream of hiring me.

I mean, as a long-term unemployed old guy, I'd just screw everything up.

The latest example of an enterprise able to remain at peak operating efficiency through its careful and judicious hiring is Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois.

A little backstory: after extracting myself from the morass of HFS and their redeterminations and being elevated to an income strata which precluded Medicaid, I signed up with a Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO late last year.

All was fine until the health care insurer announced the plan wouldn't be offered in 2016. Okay, that's not quite right. Technically it would, but in a highly-altered form which would cost 354% more.

Grateful that my health care wasn't veering into simplicity and ease-of-use, and fairly sure that my income wouldn't see a similar increase, I began a search for a replacement after enjoying the PPO for exactly one month.

Affordable options were scarce. I scoured the offerings repeatedly just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. Visions of Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets nonwithstanding, I swallowed hard and enrolled in a Blue Cross Blue Shield HMO.

(That it cost three times more than the original PPO, offered fewer providers and covered less was just a bonus.)

After clicking the 'submit' button, I exhaled. I thought the fun was over. 

But what did I know?

Predictably, the bill arrived first. Besiged by e-mails warning of the plagues and locusts that would ensue if I didn't enroll and then remit promptly, I hustled my payment off to the mail box and waited for my membership ID card.

I received notices advising me that my PPO would not be offered in 2016. I received notices stating that I needed to select another plan immediately or face government-imposed fines. I received notices detailing the coverage of the revamped PPO.

I received notices about everything except my new HMO and the whereabouts of my membership ID card.

Sigh.

Wanting to continue medical treatment begun under the PPO, I desired urgently to set-up a PCP and locate a specialist who could pick-up where my previous specialist had left off.

Silly me.

Not that I was the only person cast into this healthcare hell by Blue Crosses decision to pull the plug on their PPO. A quarter-million of my fellow Illinoisans were forced to change their plans simultaneously, stretching many Blue Cross Blue Shield resources to their breaking point.

Phone lines were jammed night and day. Provider information was nearly impossible to get. When it was available, it was listed on outdated web sites and it invariably took until the day before an appointment to discover the listings were obsolete.

E-mails to Blue Cross Blue Shield yielded responses which hid behind procedure and protocol. None acknowledged their colossal screw-up.

I was, however, able to print a temporary copy of my plan's ID card. Because of the repeated delays in discovering exactly who was and who wasn't included in my plan, I consider myself fortunate that I never had to use it.

The lowlight arrived in late-January, when I again attempted to learn who my providers were. My joy at having a call answered was, regrettably, short-lived. A carefully-modulated voice on the other end of the line informed me that I wasn't in their database. 

I snapped. I unleashed a torrent of four-letter words. Compound words. Bad words. I took the Lord's name in vain. I was screaming.

"That must explain the bills I'm getting, huh?"

I inhaled. The fresh oxygen provoked a second explosion, the details of which are better left unspoken.

While my health care remained on hold, Blue Cross Blue Shield bills arrived like clockwork. While I was amused to realize they resembled one of my favorite drummers and like him, never missed a beat, I also found this highly irksome.

I pondered it at length. What did it mean? What did it signify? I eventually arrived at two possible conclusions.

Either this was incontrovertible proof that despite the warm, fuzzy marketing that depicts a caring and nurturing collective of medical professionals, Blue Cross Blue Shield is a hard-core, show-me-the-money business as mercenary as any found on Wall Street.

That getting the money is job number-one.

Or, that the folks staffing Blue Cross Blue Shield's billing department were geniuses. They were the only employees able to cope with this giant shift, and by virtue of their unwavering performance, ought to be running the whole show.

That said, it remains a good thing they never hired a long-term unemployed old fart like me. I would've just screwed everything up. 

Not that you could tell.

Beware the Free

As a boy, I enjoyed puzzles. The process of taking something apart and putting it back together was great fun, and nourished my still-developing brain.

Puzzles also encouraged deductive reasoning. Developing a way to sort through hundreds of pieces and plan the puzzle's reconstruction. Finding the road to make order out of chaos.

But as an adult? I hate them.

OK. Let me clarify. I hate puzzles when they're not labeled as such. Windows 10 makes a great example.

First off, I don't have a touch screen computer. I don't even have a touch screen phone, which, judging from the horrified reactions it generates in my fellow human beings, is probably something I should publicly apologize for.

This guaranteed I would be mystified by Windows 8.1.

Swiping with a corded mouse ranks just below my ability to lip read on the hopeless scale. Instead of yielding effortless navigation, it produces violent mouse-shaking and unmuted profanity.

Adding to its impenetrability is the fact that when I bought a new computer, I thoughtlessly denied the industry an opportunity to sell me a new monitor, since the old one worked just fine.

So the aspect ratio Microsoft anticipates in its consumers is lacking, leaving me with sawed-off images that are equally frustrating, especially when x-ing out becomes a blind game of pin the cursor on the icon.

The heart of eight's failure is that its smart phone-inspired navigation is designed for people who mostly aren't using computers. It is designed for people who use smart phones and tablets. It doesn't transfer to a PC.

I feel as if I have been found guilty in the court of consumerism for failing to keep up with the latest and greatest technology.

Sentencing is set at Windows 10.

It's a measure of Microsoft's desperation to bury Windows 8.1 that Windows 10 was rush released and offered as a free download.

It is a measure of my desperation that I bit.

Windows 10 couldn't be worse than 8.1, could it?

The good news is that Windows 10 doesn't require users to swipe. The bad news is that significant portions of it frequently don't work.

In my estimation, e-mail is a basic and fundamental component of a personal computer. A company like Microsoft should have it down cold—but they don't. It is the IT equivalent of a car-marker struggling to produce a reliable cupholder.

Outlook comes and goes, syncs and un-syncs. Messages disappear and re-appear (even the deleted ones). Eventually the envelope icon at the base of the screen vanished altogether, leaving me scrambling to access my e-mail.

If e-mail is a struggle, you can imagine what happens to something like Cortana, a multi-lingual interactive personal assistant also available on X-box, Android and iOS.

Nothing brightens my day like the dozen or so times I have received this message: CRITICAL ERROR Start Menu and CORTANA aren't working. We'll try to fix it the next time you log on. SIGN OUT NOW.

While I appreciate Microsoft trying, the message doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence. You'll try to have it fixed? Because I need it now. Which is kind of why I attempted to log on in the first place.

Cortana can spend the rest of the year in Ibiza for all I care, but I confess to being rather fond of my start menu. Computing is really tough without it.

(I did finally locate a fix, which was to repeatedly strike the F8 key. To date, neither the message nor the problem has reappeared.)

Feel like a movie? Flip a coin and pray that Windows 10 isn't having artistic differences with Power DVD. I'll never forget the night I spent half an hour fighting to hear the poignant dialog and Quincy Jones' score to The Pawnbroker.

I'm trying to remember how many times I struggled to watch (and hear) a DVD with Windows XP, but I can't. Which is mostly because it never happened.

Then there's the disabled news function, the disabled maps function, the disabled photo function and, for a time, the inexplicable disabling of Windows Media Player. Not to mention the creeping sense that anything could go at any time.

It doesn't lead one to believe that one's computer is especially reliable.

I could always remove Windows 10. But yanking out the second floor of the John Hancock Building would be easier. The removal of Windows 10 guts your computer, leaving you to reinstall several vital components yourself.

This succinctly answers the question how much time can I devote to fixing/repairing/maintaining my complimentary upgrade?

A long time ago, I was told that we get what we pay for. And lest we forget, Windows 10 is free.

My (Kind of) Hi-Tech Adventure

In the context of 2013, buying and installing a new printer is the technological equivalent of blowing your nose. Grab a tissue. Honk. Toss.

Simple.

So when my decade-old Lexmark printer ceased functioning, I assumed that replacing it would be routine.

But my inner cynic was not so easily swayed.

“Are you fucking serious? This is a computer. The concept of simple does not exist. Your computer was outdated by the time Bush began his second term. You’re up the creek without a paddle, pal.”

Shaken, I soldiered on. After all, my tech needs were very basic. All I needed was something that could faithfully duplicate whatever I had committed to Microsoft Word. I wouldn’t be demanding professional quality photo prints by remote from Angkor Wat with my iPhone.

My first choice was the HP Envy 4500. It seemed like the perfect fit between the limited abilities of my 2002 Dell Dimension 8200 and whatever I might be getting in the future. Plus, the chart on the outside of the box confirmed it was compatible with Windows XP.

But as Abbott and Costello once observed, the big print giveth, the small print taketh away.

Long story short, my computer refused to recognize the Envy 4500. This despite CD-ROMs, manufacturer web sites, downloads, workarounds and user forums. I even went under the hood and disabled things I never knew existed. All to no avail.

Of course, this warning didn’t exactly fuel my determination:

Continuing your installation of this software may impair or destabilize the correct operation of your system either immediately or in the future. Microsoft strongly recommends that you stop this installation now and contact the hardware vendor for software that has passed Windows logo testing.

So this was about logos? Couldn’t I just hire a graphics designer and have them develop one that was mutually appealing to HP and Microsoft?

I sighed. This was another item for the Does Not Compute list. A list of things that, while virtually incomprehensible to me, were facts of life in the senseless regions outside my brain.

Calls to HP’s 24/7 help desk netted only 24/7 messages that all available agents were busy, but that my call was very important to them. Of course, it wasn’t important-enough to adequately staff their call center, but that’s another story for another day.

As a HP spokesperson no doubt would have told me, it was this very lack of support that had made my HP printer so affordable. Having learned that when I push my luck it frequently pushes back, I abandoned the installation.

On returning the Envy, the twenty-somethings at the local big box store took one look at the gray in my hair and assumed the worst. They clearly took me for a moron. Or a technophobe.

Couldn’t they see I was the bastard offspring of Wozniak, Gates and Jobs? What was wrong with them? Besides, if I was a moron, would I have refused their suggestion that a tech install it for just $29.95?

Once my credit card (and my thinking) had been adjusted, I determined it must’ve been the wireless capacity that was subverting the installation. Like my computer, I needed something simpler.

My next victim was the HP 2512. It had great reviews, and looked like the Luddite-approved printer my computer was insisting upon. But after another day-off disappeared, a thought broke through the stony incomprehension of my ignorance: I needed to try another brand.

Yeah, that was it.

Armed with the kind of optimism only the truly naive can harbor, I returned to the big box store where I had purchased the 2512. I was determined to find a really basic printer.

And by basic, I mean one that only recently had been configured to work with electricity. Was there any chance Gutenberg had entered the computer printer game?

Fate led me to the Canon MG2520. It sat forlorn, a $29.95 misfit on a shelf full of machines that could do everything except your laundry. I scanned its box carefully, making sure it was a printer without ambition.

Copy, scan, print. Nothing more. Nothing less. Perfect.

I rode a wave of happy ignorance home, confident I had finally found the right printer. The third time is always the charm.

Isn’t it?

On opening the box, this seemed to be the case. For starters, the Canon didn’t require that a man with man-sized hands reach into a tiny space better-suited for a ten-year-old's to remove packing tape from pieces that, even without said tape, had all the mobility of a death row felon.

Secondly, the requisite pan-cultural sheet with illustrations depicting the actions required for set-up actually used drawings that resembled my purchase.

Even with a pool nowhere in sight, this was going swimmingly!

On and on it went, my confidence (or relief) zooming like a rocket. Any higher and I would need an oxygen mask.

I needn’t have worried.

At the point where I was to install the drivers, my computer displayed the same poor manners it had shown the two HP printers. It refused to acknowledge them. No matter how I attempted the install, it resembled an international feud at the UN.

"I beg of you. Will the secretary general please recognize the drivers from Canon?"

"No."

In a spasm of desperation no one installing a printer should ever feel, I attempted to defy Microsoft and their skull-and-crossbones message. “You want unstable? I’ll show you unstable!” I muttered as I clicked the button marked ‘Continue Anyway’.

Despite the promise of gleeful insurrection, clicking the button only returned me to the original screen and a second chance to make the “right” decision. This was a twisted and infuriating re-run of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

I could practically hear Regis Philbin. “Is that your final answer? Are you sure?”

With the discovery that Canon’s help desk was only open Monday through Friday, a household project I had been putting off suddenly seemed very appealing. As would crucifixion.

On Monday morning, a weary male voice greeted me. It wordlessly intoned “What do you want?”

After outlining my experiences to the rep, I obediently inserted the CD-ROM into the disc drive and initiated the install. “Same old thing” I smugly informed him.

In direct opposition to the manufacturer’s instructions, he had me do things. Ignore things. Defy Microsoft. Confident I could pursue legal action if my hard drive crashed, I consented.

Only this time, the rebellion was a success. The drivers had not only been installed, but my computer was acknowledging them like an honors student at a Miss Manners academy.

But I had questions. Why, despite my computer meeting the detailed system requirements listed on each of the three printers, had it been such a headache getting them to work?

The rep responded. “Sometimes, an operating system like XP will confibulate the central processing unit, causing retrofluxes in the random access memory which prevents, ugh, secondary collateral processes from initiating a world takeover.”

Or something like that.

“I see” I lied and thanked him for his time.

Twelve car trips, nine days, three models from two manufacturers and one USB cable later, I finally had a functional printer.

My streamlined and supercharged information age existence could now continue.