Electronic Privacy? No Such Thing!

Recent investigations by media outlets have brought forth convincing evidence that advancing electronic technology has resulted in a disturbing consequence: virtually no electronic privacy.

Federal and local agencies are gathering all kinds of information on millions of innocent people without their knowledge, or even the knowledge of the courts to which they apply for warrants, investigations have revealed. The popular "Person of Interest" TV show doesn't seem so far-fetched after all.

The FBI has had its own team of hackers for some time, but lately has reportedly advertised its hacking services on LinkedIn, signifying that people really should no longer expect privacy. The bureau has had keystroke-level surveillance capabilities for many years and recently used malware designed to be automatically downloaded when one suspected terrorist logged on to his Yahoo account. (Due to several technical and nontechnical glitches, the malware never did what it was designed to do in this particular case. Yahoo said it was not aware of the malware and did nothing to enable it.)

Through the efforts of its Remote Operations Unit, the FBI can hack into computers and smartphones, turning on microphones and webcams for surveillance purposes without the user being aware of it. Chris Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, investigated the issue for six months (mainly through Google and LinkedIn) and found several references to the FBI's hacking abilities. His research led to a Wall Street Journal expose in August.

"Tower Dump"

Federal and local agencies also have been using advanced technology to gather information on people's location through their cell phones even when they are idle. Using a tactic called "tower dump," the agencies get phone companies to dump thousands of records of cell phone serial numbers from towers near certain crime scenes. Cell phones transmit their serial numbers to the towers as they use them, allowing agencies to track routes and locations of people via their phones. Phone companies charge thousands of dollars to tower dump, so it is costly to employ that, regardless of privacy concerns.

A lengthy investigation by USA Today and Gannett newspapers and TV stations has revealed that about one-quarter of 125 local law enforcement agencies surveyed have an International Mobile Subscriber Identity tracking device with the brand name of StingRay (or its equivalent) that mimics a cell phone tower and tricks cell phones into transmitting their serial numbers. The devices are mobile and generally travel in vehicles parked near a crime scene. They provide only locations of the cell phones and cannot intercept data or phone conversations. The issue is that no warrant is involved.

Legal Snag

Unlike land lines, cell phone conversations are not protected by law; legally speaking, there is no expectation of privacy when using cell phones. Therefore, agencies are not obligated to report that they are listening in or locating people through their cell phones. And, they don't. "We have no ability to really know what the government is doing, and that's very problematic," Denise Maes, of the ACLU in Colorado, told KUSA-TV's Jeremy Jojola in a recent story on the subject.

Federal government agencies remain mum on their hacking and tracking devices, and local agencies -- the few that will talk openly about them -- defend the practice by saying only "the bad guys" are at risk.

Yeah. Don't count on it.

Strategic Social Media for Design Firms

Last week I had the privilege and pleasure of moderating a panel -- "Why to Blog, Text & Tweet: Strategic Social Media for Design Firms" -- at an evening event at Haworth Showroom for the American Institute of Architects - New York (AIA-NY).

Finally! A subject I know well, one I know from the ground up, one I am intimately involved with and not just as an observer or journalist. Normally moderators are asked to herd the cats (panelists and audience), making sure that everything goes well, that the panelists keep their presentations and answers to questions brief and interesting, keeping the audience awake, and ending on time. I've moderated probably 100 panels in my 25 years as a journalist and I've gotten the drill pretty well down pat by now.

This time I was also asked to give a 20-minute talk to give the audience context, from my experience as a design and construction journalist and as a longtime Web and digital maven. It was fun and also somewhat painful to skip down memory lane as I recalled fax machines that took six minutes per page, modems that sped data through the lines at all of 2,400 baud, the dot-com boom and bust, and our (McGraw-Hill Construction's) first blog when we had to explain what a blog was and when I was the only contributor for a good year. Ah, the good old days. Then I moved on to talk about nowadays: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and who knows what's to come. The point was that everything in the past and present are merely tools to enable us to do the basics that make us successful: communicate, form relationships and collaborate.

Our panelists were excellent! Mike Plotnick, media relations manager for HOK, talked about HOK Life, their site that features blog posts from 30 HOK contributors worldwide. I'd met Mike in person the week before at the Construction Writers Association conference in Chicago, where he led a table in our roundtable discussions, and I knew he'd be good on the AIA-NY panel. I actually met Mike via Twitter when I was writing an article on social media from the Society for Marketing Professional Services conference in Las Vegas in July. I tweeted him and asked if he'd contact me and half an hour later we were on the phone. Impressive!

The other panelists I met for the first time a few minutes before the panel began, although I had spoken with each of them the week before for half an hour or so to get an idea of what they wanted to talk about. They were Adam Lutz, facilities manager for Google Inc.; Dorian Benkoil, founder of Teeming Media; and Jessica Sheridan, editor-in-chief of eOculus. Jessica is writing something about the event and maybe Jenna McKnight from Architectural Record. If/when they do, I'll post the links. You can also find the live (at the time) tweets on Twitter if you have an account by searching for #AIANYsocialmedia, thanks mostly to Laurie Meisel, who tweeted consistently and quietly throughout the session.

The evening went well. Feedback was positive from what the AIA-NY folks told us. People came up to us afterward, seemingly pumped and ready to go blog, tweet and make videos. The venue was classy. Best of all, the room was filled with New Yorkers, several of whom I have known for many years!

New-World Friendship

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" has been attributed to everybody from Chinese general Sun-tsu in 400 BC to Abraham Lincoln to The Godfather's Michael Corleone.

Friends don't always act like friends. A human resources manager told me that the worst clashes in the workplace occur between best friends. They tend to be the most volatile and the rifts often remain permanent.

I've had my so-called best friends deliberately go after the men in my life, and I know my mom's best friends did the same. Fortunately for both of us, that was a long time ago, and those women are long out of our lives.

Two very close friends have fired me, both men, both for things that, in my opinion, were not worth losing a friendship over. One woman friend long ago, one who deliberately sought out a guy I had, uh, dated and she, uh, dated him, fired me after she got fired from her job and I ended up with it a couple of months later. She was so vain that she wanted someone incompetent to get the job so she could look better. As it turned out, I didn't do much better in the job than she had, though for different reasons. (No film at 11)

Come to think of it, another so-called friend went after a guy I'd been very involved with and was still emotionally attached to, the most significant relationship in my life to date at that time. He's the one who told me about it, not her.

It's easier to be friends with people now, in the new world, I think, than ever before, mainly because less is required of each individual friend. The Internet has changed things; our mobility and wanderlust have changed things; lack of job security has changed things. We no longer grow up with, work with and are in the same geographical area with the same few people for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. We don't look to a small circle of friends to meet all of our needs. Our friends (mine, anyway) are spread out all over the country -- the world, actually. They fall into diverse categories. There's one for every mood, need, task and activity.

Now with the online world, especially twitter (which I love!), I feel that I have friends I've never met. I'm not sure I could count on them to bail me out of jail, but I can count on them to provide information, comfort, names and numbers of other resources, and most of them would do what they could to support my efforts, whatever they are. How cool is that?

I used to have a best friend, growing up. Now I have more than one best friend, a lot of good friends, many good pals, and a ton of acquaintances who turn into friends at different times. There are some I like but don't trust, some I trust but don't like so much, some I can tell anything to, some I have narrow conversations with, some who are for fun, some who keep me on track, some who help me go off track. I love my friends; I love having lots and lots of friends. I like the diversity of my friends. I like that I can cultivate so many different sides of myself with my different friends.

My spiritual advisor for the past 25 years tells me that no one is another's friend, that we are all each other's teachers. I like that idea. I can see it, that we are there for each other as teachers, sometimes in ways we like, sometimes not. I like the positive spin on it. But I am not giving up my friends!

Journalists: "Gee Whiz" Approach to Twitter Is Getting Old!

I saw yet another "Gee whiz - look at this Twitter thing" story this morning, this one on "CBS Sunday Morning." There's one every two minutes lately: On "The View," in the Wall Street Journal, on various evening national news programs and morning shows, etc. They all basically just start from zero, explaining in the most elementary terms what Twitter is and gee-whizzing their way through the story. They act like few of us have ever heard of Twitter, let alone are tweeting our hearts out.

Well, guys, as a journalist myself, I know there's such a thing in journalism as a "Day Two" story. That's when the news nugget has already been announced, either by your pub/station/etc. or in general, meaning that there's an assumption that a lot of your audience has already been given the raw news. Breaking the raw news - that's the "Day One" story. The Day Two story, then, advances the story, providing analysis and/or a deeper look.

Twitter has been around for a little over three years. Millions of people now tweet. It's not easy to find out exact numbers and they are rising exponentially anyway, but the point is that Twitter is not brand new. Just because you've never heard of it, Ms. or Mr. Journalist, doesn't mean the rest of the world is as ignorant.

Everybody whose story I've seen in mainstream media acts like they've just discovered Twitter and want to tell us about it. Gee, thanks, but a lot of us are already here and are getting proficient at tweeting, building networks and actually knowing what to do with them for whatever purpose(s) we are out to fulfill. We are ready for the Day Two story, guys!

I first heard about it at a web-oriented American Independent Writers seminar organized by Kristen King about seven or eight months ago and signed up on the spot, from my seat in the audience. (Thank you, Verizon broadband device!) I was shocked when after a couple of days some people I didn't know were following me. Why would they want to do that, I wondered? Now I have 1,452 followers, and I follow 1,256. I personally know about a dozen, yet I consider many of them my cohorts, co-conspirators, allies and some even friends.

Never have I had such access to writers; IT gurus; movie, tv & music stars (Jane Fonda, Ashton Kutcher & Demi Moore, Billy Bush, MC Hammer, Jimmy Fallon, to name just a few); fellow fans of NASCAR, "Dancing with the Stars," "Life on Mars," and people who are interested in discussing all kinds of topics. I have gotten technical advice, instructions (and a video) on cooking omelettes, recommendations and URLs on healthcare solutions, and wisdom on a multitude of subjects. There are people who are willing to promote my book when it comes out, people who pray for me when something goes wrong, people who would do me all kinds of favors and for whom I'd do the same thing. I could get writing jobs and even consulting gigs from my Twitter network, the Twitterverse, as it were.

That's what journalists need to talk about, not just what Twitter is and how gee-whiz interesting it is to microblog 140 characters at a time, but how Twitter really works for the tweeple who tweet!

And then they can write about how businesses are successfully using Twitter to expand their customer base, take care of their existing customers (@comcastcares is a great example of customer service extraordinaire via Twitter, as I know first hand), spread the word on specials or new products, or just be visible. Following @BaskinRobbins, @Starbucks, @DunkinDonuts, and @traderjoes has been fun and has been good for them as well. Individuals who are hawking their wares or services get visibility and customers. I've gone to a wonderful writing seminar put on by @Mike Geffner that I never would've heard of otherwise and joined some professional groups I hadn't previously heard of. There's a receptive audience for every product and service, if these firms know how to find those folks on Twitter or let them find them. That's another Day Two story. Hey, just trying to be helpful!

Social Networking (Online) Rocks!

With my book deadline looming, I could hardly afford to take a day off. But I am today. I braved the rain (thanks, Hanna, for sharing) and drove to George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, about an hour's drive from where I live, for a "Push the Electronic Envelope" seminar put on by the American Independent Writers group.

Fabulous!

I've got 13 years of Web experience. In Internet years, especially in the B2B (business-to-business) world, that makes me a Web granny. I brought blogs to McGraw-Hill Construction a year or more before most anyone there or in the construction industry even knew what blogs were. I've been on LinkedIn for years, MySpace, Facebook and even Gather for awhile. So I know some stuff but figured I could learn a whole lot more today.

I was right. Whew! Social networking is da bomb. I'm in the seminar now on a lunch break, and I've been online (thank you Verizon Wireless wi-fi broadband) during the whole thing. I'm now on Twitter too. I've got widgets on my blog(s) but now I know more about them. In fact, I've already, just in the morning sessions, learned enough to more than justify my $89 investment for the seminar and the drive in the nasty rain. (We'll see if I still feel that way after I make my way home at 4:00, when Hanna is expected to be at her fury here. Hopefully she'll be pretty well spent here by 4:00.)

One of the speakers talked about our network outside of our family and friends who know us well. He called it our "weak ties" and quoted somebody-or-other as touting "the strength of our weak ties." In other words, it's the people we know a little or knew well but don't so much anymore or used to work with or know professionally but not personally who can help us connect with the people and resources that can help us do what we want to do and get where we want to go.

I definitely agree. My "weak ties" are fabulous, and I've loved reconnecting with them through LinkedIn and Facebook especially. No matter what their e-mail address du jour is, those social networking sites keep us linked. How great is that?!?

Funnily enough (a British phrase, seems a little awkward to me, even though it works), it's almost like e-mail is passe with people I'm socially connected to. People who used to e-mail me now send me messages through Facebook notes instead. And I've definitely been surprised to see who's on and not on these sites. Some curmudgeons are quite active and some young, hip folks are nowhere to be found. Huh! But then, I haven't mastered the art of finding people who are already on these sites yet. I did learn how to find the NY Times sports and movies and business feeds on Twitter, thanks to this seminar. Very cool!

So look for me and I'll look for you, and we can use our "weak ties" to help each other out or just keep in touch. I'm all for that, especially since -- loner than I am, though people think I'm a social being -- we can eavesdrop on each other's lives without having to do that pesky thing of actually talking to each other. Then we reach out when we want to and if we've been keeping up with each other, or even if we just know we're able to, we tend to respond much more quickly and positively than we would if we saw their name and thought, "Haven't heard from him/her for a long time -- what does HE/SHE want?!?" So, link up, tune in, let me know you're there, and come see me on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter (I don't keep up my page on MySpace much)...or wherever might be the next great place.

Whining about Word, Media Monkey and "Progress" in General

Grrrrrr!!! I want to throw Word 2007 out the window! And whatever idiot created the so-called simipler user interface. What the hell were you thinking?!?!

I got a brand new Dell laptop a couple of weeks ago, fortunately with Windows XP. (Thank you, Dell!) Vista's there too, or at least the disks if I want it later. But at least I didn't have to learn a new operating system. Whew!

Then...I opened up the Word program. You've gotta be kidding! I didn't recognize anything in the user interface. The toolbar and, in fact, the whole top is entirely different. I can't find out how to do anything that I used to do quickly and easily. And it's not like Microsoft Office is the most intuitive suite of software on the planet. PowerPoint is about the most intuitive, at least the old version was. I haven't tackled the new one yet. And I've got this book deadline....

The author's guidelines are helpful -- for Word 2003! They don't translate to Word 2007. Grrrrrrrr! Fortunately, by searching on Yahoo (I prefer it to Google) on "hate Word 2007," I came across the Word 2007 Cheat Sheet, kindly put together by Computerworld. I knew I was in the right place by just reading the first paragraph: "Baffled by Word 2007's new interface? Join the club. Making the switch to Word 2007 can be exceedingly disorienting -- like coming home and finding out that not only has all your furniture been rearranged, but the house itself has been moved to the next county." Thank you, Computerworld! (There's also a cheat sheet for Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 accessible from that page.)

Then there's Media Monkey, which I use to keep my music organized. I love Media Monkey. But...I have run into a snag. Media Monkey on my new laptop doesn't recognize my iPod. It always did on my old computer; why not this one? Grrrrrrr!

Whenever there's a new update for one of my software programs, I used to automatically install it. Now, after getting burned a few times, I am more suspicious and hesitant to just say yes. Those sneaky software folks often "upgrade" and "simplify" their software by cutting off some of our abilities to do what we want. That especially holds true with anything that allows a person to move data from an old computer to a new one. It's like the software makers are afraid we're going to steal something from them, not use the same data from the same program on our own new computer. Grrrrrrr!

Okay, I'm done whining. I'm not really, but I have to get back to work. Well, not get back to work on "work," but get back to work on figuring out how to make my work work with the dastardly new "simpler" Word. Grrrrrrr!

And in the Beginning....

In my reminiscence of my friends among the ENR Newsmakers (the item below, written last night while watching an NFL playoff game), I can't believe my omission. Here's the story.

Some 12-1/2 years ago, I "discovered" the Internet. Of course, it had been around for many, many years, but it wasn't very user-friendly and the World Wide Web wasn't yet very mainstream. I'd never heard of it.

I was the person that my editors gave stuff to that they didn't know what to do with. Being tasked with writing a review of the book Sex and Buildings comes to mind. So when a press release came in saying that Winter Park Construction had a "home page," ENR's editor-in-chief at the time, Howard Stussman, gave it to me. I recruited fellow ENR editor Bill Angelo to help me with the story, and we wrote a pretty lame story about this incredibly newsworthy event, namely that a construction company had a home page. They didn't call them Web sites yet, and most of the sites really did consist of just a page or so. They were basically brochures online, if that, many created by renegade IT people who wanted to play on this new playground.

A few days after the story ran, I got a phone call from Jon Antevy, who, with his partner at the time Dave Gruber, had a small company -- shortly thereafter named e-Builder -- that helped construction companies use the Web in a way that would help their businesses do business and make money. He said he'd seen my article and he asked, "Do you know much about the Internet?" Nooooooooo. That was pretty obvious from the article, I could see later when I learned a few things. So he started telling me about it.

I had been multitasking when he called, basically waiting for him to get through what I thought would be his "I shoulda been in the article too" that we often get after we write stories. But I heard something amazing, about a world I had no idea existed. I stopped doing anything else and listened. I'll never forget this moment: I got it! I saw the window open and I saw the world beyond that he was describing. I was hooked!

Jon didn't ask for anything. He just said he'd like to come up and explain more about the Internet to us ENR editors. I immediately said yes, which seemed to stun him. I think he was prepared to sell me on the idea. When he let me know the date he and Dave could come up, then I had to sell my fellow editors on the merits of taking half an hour out of their day to learn something about this strange computer thing.

The day came and Jon and Dave set up their laptop in one of our smaller conference rooms. Our editors weren't much interested and they kind of drifted away one by one. But I was enthralled. I ended up taking their picture and writing up a little article on what they were up to and the concept of what the Internet was capable of. "It's a tool, not a toy," was Jon's mantra.

I was the first person to cover the Internet and the Web for construction. I was the first of ENR's editor to get on the Web. I got special permission to get a modem -- unbelievably slow dial-up -- but there was only one phone plug so I could use either my phone or my modem, so I had to switch back and forth. I spent dozens of nights, sometimes til midnight or later, surfing the Web and learning the technical aspects of computers and the Web. I'd run up against a wall, run into my boss' office across the hall, call Jon, get instructions, put the phone down, run back to my computer, do what he said, run back to the phone and tell Jon what I was seeing and get the next instruction, etc. Jon was so patient with me, because I was not a techie and this was all new to me.

I covered the Internet, online forums, Partering on the Web, etc., and finally -- I mean many months later -- all of the other editors got modems and the Web hit warp speed and the rest is history.

At the end of that year, I nominated Jon and his business partner from FMI, Hoyt Lowder, to be Newsmakers "for bringing Partnering to the Web." They passed the vote, and they were our first Web-related Newsmakers.

e-Builder is pretty much the only independent Web service provider in the construction industry among the dozens that sprouted up over the next few years that has survived, let alone thrived. The others died, were absorbed or sold, or just faded away. A few exist today but they are parts of bigger companies. Jon and his current partner, his brother Ron Antevy, didn't succumb to the temptation, as most of their competitors did, to seek millions in venture capital money and spend like drunken sailors. It wasn't easy to resist when most of their highly visible competitors were receiving all the publicity in major business magazines and were seemingly going to be flying high forever. How some of those tanked would make its own book. But Jon., Dave and Ron kept to the original plan of their business, and today e-Builder is still around, still independent, still making money, and Jon and Ron are still the majority owners of their business. And, in 1999, ENR named Jon as one of the 125 Top Innovators of the past 125 years (and I had nothing to do with that selection).

Jon and I have been in close contact all those years. Hoyt and Ron, too, though I've lost track of Dave. I definitely consider Jon a very good friend. I trust him more than 99.9% of people I know. We've seen a lot of growth and many changes in each other. I hardly even remember when he was a 23-year-old entrepreneur who flew all over the country pitching e-Builder but couldn't even rent a car by himself because he wasn't 24. But I remember the principled, dedicated, hard-working person he was then...because he still is.

Where Have All the Outlets Gone?

Have you tried to find an electrical outlet in a hotel room lately? Available, reachable outlets are as rare as a Red Sox jersey at Yankee Stadium. That's true even in recently renovated rooms, unfortunately. What are hoteliers thinking? Clearly they're not. Travelers these days want to plug in, log on, tune in and chime in, even when they're traveling on a so-called pleasure trip. So make it easy for us, already!

I admit it: I'm a laptop addict. I don't have a BlackBerry or a Treo. Probably will within a few months but even when I get one, my laptop has abilities that BlackBerries/Treos don't. Laptops hold a LOT of information. Laptops allow for full-size viewing. Laptops let you download, view, change and update information on documents you need to view BIG, such as PowerPoint, Excel and many Word docs. On a recent trip, a friend with a BlackBerry e-mailed an Excel doc to me. He needed to see it and edit it for a meeting the next morning. I downloaded it onto my laptop, he made changes for an hour, and I e-mailed it back to him. The point is, laptops aren't going away any time soon, even with the smaller devices. So make it easy for us to use them in your hotel rooms!

The gyrations I have had to go through to plug in my laptop would be laughable if they weren't so annoying. I've twisted around like a giant pretzel or crawled along the floor like a bug, or both, reaching behind, under and sometimes through desks, beds and other furniture. I've moved desks, nightstands, couches, heavy chairs and giant lamps to get to an outlet. That's not customer-friendly!

And try finding one in a hotel room anywhere near the bed. I have a wireless broadband card (wouldn't leave home without it) so I can be on the Web while sitting on the bed with my feet up and a bunch of pillows behind my back, usually while watching tv. As I write this, I am on a trip and am plugged in to an outlet at the desk, while listening to "The View" on tv. I can't watch it because the tv doesn't swivel around enough to be viewed when I'm at the desk. That's the case in many hotel rooms. Of course, I could work with my battery but most times I work longer than my battery's capability. The outlets by the beds are unreachable and unavailable. One's behind the bed in the middle where I can't reach it (as most are, especially if the bed is king-sized). Another is behind one nightstand but those two outlets are already taken up by the lamp and the clock. Along the walls there are none. There never are. I think the game is, how many walls can we put into a hotel room with no outlets. I see this over and over in all brands and levels of hotels. Aggravating!

Here at the desk, there are four unused outlets, two on the wall and two on the lamp. That's a good start. But we need them also by the beds so we can easily reach to answer our cell phone while it's recharging, and preferably both of us can if there are two of us. We need to be comfortable while working on our laptops, even if we're not on the Web. Both of us at the same time! I have an extra long power cord (which I guard with my life) so I can sometimes find a plug close enough so it'll barely stretch, but then someone else or I risk tripping over it.

So help us out, hoteliers! Even if you can't give us the outlets we need where we need them, give us the option of power strips that are long enough to accommodate our stuff. I've seen exactly one of those in my last 25 hotel stays. I take so many chargers and power cords with me on trips that I sometimes wonder how the airport screeners let me go through with all of the tangled cords in my carry-on. Why do they let me through? Because there are a lot of us who travel with five or more power cords for our various devices. So hoteliers, give us more places to plug them in!

Cut Off!

My cable television and high-speed Internet connection are both out. Must be a fairly wide and serious outage because it's been 4-1/2 hours since my cable tv got stuck on one sound, which I thought at the time was just an irritatingly bad musical group on "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson." It was late anyway so I slammed off the tv, rolled over and went to sleep. But shortly before 6:00 a.m. I turned on the tv again to see what had happened in the world in the last few hours and got a black screen.

That woke me up!

I tried my kitchen tv. Got the "Early Today" full-screen logo on that tv.

Comcast's local customer service phone line is by turns saying "All circuits are busy" and "Due to a high volume of calls, we are unable to connect your call at this time; please call back later." So they definitely know there's a problem.

So how am I connecting to the Web? Good old Verizon broadband card. I believe in back-ups.

God, it's quiet. I'm used to tv aiding my insomnia. I usually have early-morning tv's going in my bedroom and the kitchen before the sun comes up. I pad back and forth between the maybe-something-in-the-refrigerator-will-help-me-get-back-to-sleep and the let's-try-the-bed-one-more-time. The chatter of the too-bright-and-feaux-witty tv personalities usually distract and calm my racing mind and allow me to get a few more winks before my day has to begin. Insomnia is such fun -- I can tell you what's on every major tv channel between midnight and 6:00 a.m.

Ah, better. I just went to the Web site of my favorite local country music station, WPOC 93.1 in Baltimore, and am listening live. Ugh -- Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" greeted me first. I prefer the new country in the morning, not the stuff from three decades ago. So at least I know that the world is pretty much as it was last night.

Well, eventually they'll get the cable fixed. Until then, I feel kind of disrupted. I hate being cut off. Even if it's bad news, if something's happening, I want to know.

Retail Montana-Style -- Yay Vann's!

Several years ago, I decided to buy a DVR -- you know, a TiVo-type device -- and I opted for Replay TV, a TiVo competitor. Going online to find the best deal -- I probably went to CNet -- netted me a handsome list of online retailers with prices within $10 or $20 of each other.

One of them was Vann's. Vanns.com. They were in Montana and I thought...I bet I'd get treated well by a Montana retailer. I think they were a few dollars more than the lowest retailer but I went with them. Good move. A week or two after receiving my Replay TV, I had a couple of questions and called Vann's. On the phone. You know, the way we used to do things? I could find the phone number easily and when I called, a human being answered, one who spoke English as a first language -- two things that are hard to find these days. And they answered my question expertly. These were not people laboring through a script -- these guys knew what they were talking about. How totally refreshing!

I have bought other things from them since then, most recently a digital camera for my mom for Mother's Day. I found the camera I wanted for my mom in a May 9 article in the Wall Street Journal online in a Mossberg Solution column. (I'd link to it but it's subscription only.) And I went searching for this "under $130" camera, found it at vanns.com for $124 with free shipping, called to see if they could get it to my mom in two days -- okay, so I didn't plan ahead. Yes, for $10, worth it! In 5 minutes the whole thing was done. Mom got the camera on Friday and everybody's happy!

The point is that it was easy, it was as inexpensive as I could get the item anywhere, they handled my special request with elan and didn't charge me through the roof, it took me no time, we understood each other, and there was no hassle. All transactions should be that way.

Someone with a heavy accent called me yesterday and left me a message saying she would send me the supplies I needed if I would call her back and tell her which of two addresses they had on file was the right one. (I just moved.) Her accent was so heavy that I couldn't understand her name or what company she was calling from. I'm sure she was legit, but, sadly, that's more what I'm used to these days. I've made a lot of phone calls to change my address since I moved -- you can't do everything online, unfortunately -- and probably half or two-thirds of the time, I talk to someone with a heavy foreign accent. Or try to, anyway. Sometimes I have to repeat my address or my name or the spelling of my name or my street or my city three or four times. What a great way to spend time, eh? And they're not all in India.

It's to the point where I thank them if a human being answers before I've been on hold for six minutes, and thank them if I can understand them immediately and thank them if I'm off the phone in under five minutes. Vann's is about the only one I've thanked lately. You can bet I'll do more business with them. Here's to Montana and to Vann's!

Back Up Your Hard Drive -- Don't Do as I Do, Do as I Say!

I'm a (semi) techie. I write about information technology. My life revolves around technology. When I travel, my various chargers take up more room than my clothes. Well, certainly than my shoes. We write about data storage and the importance of keeping data secure. And of keeping data, period.

I recently read a good article about backing up data based on the disastrous experience of a tech site columnist. "Back up your data," he advised. Strongly. Good idea, I thought. Did nothing.

So...here I was on St. Patrick's Day eve and my trusty Dell laptop, only two years old, was acting up. Just not responding right. You know, when you live with something every day you *know* when something isn't right. The bond between you and that inanimate object (inanimate? I never think of them as not living) is so strong that any little quiver is significant. Long before any symptoms, as such, show up, you know.

Well, my Dell quivered. I don't worry much about Dells. I've owned probably half a dozen of them and won't buy any other brand of PC. They're not moody. They're able to withstand a decent amount of dropping, jostling, shaking and food invasion. That's why I buy them, among other reasons. So I wasn't overly alarmed.

I rebooted while in the middle of a good chat with someone because it was acting sluggish and I figured two minutes later I'd be chatting with my friend at my usual furious pace.

Wrong-o!

To make a long, painful story short, that was it. I couldn't get past the beautiful blue ("crystal") background pattern on my screen. No access to programs, documents, settings, etc. This couldn't happen to my laptop that my company owns and supports, where they would take it away and bring it back all better. No...this happened to my personal PC, which had all kinds of things on it that are not backed up on our servers at work and that were not duplicated or retrievable from anywhere else.

I (fortunately) paid for Dell's "Gold" service when I ordered my Dell, which meant I could get a live human being on the phone -- at no charge to me -- who would stick with me until the problem is solved. And they're U.S.-based, a rarity these days in tech support.

The diagnosis, after probably two hours of trying everything, was that my partition had crashed. This is like when my trusty (really!) auto mechanic tells me that the solenoid is bad. I don't know what that means but I know it's not good. Well, I was told that I'd have to reinstall the operating system, which meant wiping out whatever was on the hard drive. All my data would be gone!

To make another long story short, I looked into several data recovery services and was given prices from $350 to $2,700. For the same thing. Ugh! How many times have I focused on what's bad about my life and then it's struck me that if we all threw our problems in a huge pile, I'd fight like crazy to get my own back versus anyone else's? All I wanted was "mine back."

Thank God I have a friend who's a true techie, and he has a friend who's techier than he is, and that friend took away my ailing laptop and came back with my critical data on five CDs. I didn't get all of it back, some was just gone (all of my music but it's on my MP3 player, also a Dell, so I could get it back onto my laptop after the OS had been reinstalled...and my saved AOL mail, which, unfortunately, had a lot of phone numbers and other info embedded in it). But pictures, Quicken data, tax data, etc., were all on those precious disks, so I could reinstall and not be totally screwed.

I'm still not "back" totally, but I'm getting there. Lesson learned: back up my hard drive!! So now I have critical data on CDs and thumb drives and intend to buy an external hard drive for backup. Yep, I'm gonna do that. Any day now. Sure.