TAKEN FOR A RIDE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-13-23)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     My car turned 10 years old a year ago and I'm sure it was expecting a nice birthday party with a clown or maybe a magician. Instead I put out an online ad to sell it, and I figured I'd take that cash and along with some money I had in a separate account, waltz into the new car dealership and ride out in my new ride. A guy answered the ad, and he was impressed that I had secured my new vehicle right in the midst of the computer microchip crisis. The WHAT? I had heard something about a chip shortage, but it didn't seem to affect potato chips so I didn't see how it applied to me. 

     And so the new car I wanted was back-ordered for nine months, and if I did find one it was marked up so much that even the sticker price wouldn't stick. I was so frustrated that I was willing to do just about anything to find some microchips for my new car. My dog has a chip inside her somewhere, and it's a darn good thing I don't know exactly where. It's not like my dog needs power steering.

     But lately somehow car manufacturers have started finding more of them, and believe me, microchips are not easy to spot. The dealership started returning my calls. "Are you currently working with a member of our sales staff?" Said the receptionist. I said I assumed he was going to work by himself, but I can understand why he wants me to work with him. I'm not very good with numbers and would probably give myself a much worse deal on the car. On her next call she said, "I hope I'm catching you at a good time because I was hoping to connect with you." That is exactly the kind of phrase that even my email spam filter is suspicious of.

     I showed up ready to haggle on the price, but they weren't going to budge. And I realized I was going to miss out on all the back-and-forth dealing at the dealership, where the salesman writes down a number on a slip of paper, and I make a counter-offer, and he tries to sell me undercoating and an extended warranty, and I let him think he's getting me to pay more than I wanted to, and he let's me think I'm getting a great deal, and finally he says, "I'm going to have to talk to my manager," and the manager pretends to play hard ball with both of us until we all go home slightly dissatisfied.

     How was I going to pay for the car, he asked. Salespeople are trained to read a person's signs immediately, and it was clear that he read the sign, "SLIPPERY ROAD AHEAD." I told him that I had recently embezzled all I needed to pay cash, and that was good enough for him. Then we discussed options for a while. I still don't know what all the buttons in my wife's car do. The pictures next to them are not very realistic. There's button with a picture of a guy who looks like he's about to be thrown from an ejector seat. I'm waiting until someone I don't like happens to be in the car, and then I'm going to casually press that switch and see what happens. I'll open the sunroof first. 

     I'd like my new car to be able to squirt an oil slick out the back in case someone is tailgating me, or emit a smoke-screen, but he said that for those options I would need a larger package. I said I'm fine with my package the way it is. He kept adding things onto the price and I was fully expecting to have to assemble the car myself, using instructions written from right to left. 

     They did include three free months of a service that puts an advisor in touch with you automatically if your airbags deploy. Or you can ask for roadside assistance using hands-free voice-commands. I'm not sure they knew who they were dealing with. "Hi, it's me again. My hands are full with a giant piece of pizza right now, but that's not the reason I'm calling...."

     We closed the deal and I was presented with a huge key fob, which in addition to my wife's huge key fob, caused my pants to dip about five inches below sea level. Can't someone invent a "universal remote" for car keys like the one I have for my TV? 

     So if you see someone in a car with his airbags deployed and his hands free, touching his touch-screen in an inappropriate place, please don't hesitate to say hi!
   

PAWS TO CELEBRATE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-06-23)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
     Last week was National Puppy Day, and I would have forgotten all about it if someone hadn't stuck their pointy nose in a place where some of the best reminding is done. Our puppy, the ever-adorable Gidget, is not really a puppy at all, but a full-grown dog who refuses to act her age. I don't know where she gets that from, but it can't be from my side of the family.

     I adopted Gidget at the age of three months from a wonderful breeder outside of Toronto. I know you're thinking that's rather young, but it was Gidget who was three months old, not me. We had to sneak her through Customs, which required her to be six months. I rolled down the window for the Customs agent, who was checking inside the car, thinking he might be starring in a real-life "Midnight Express." He looked around and noticed four suitcases for a weekend trip (less luggage than usual actually). Maybe it was 400 kilos of Canadian Gold and maybe I was a mule. Does a mule have to be over six months old to enter the U.S.? "What's in the bags?" He asked, and I didn't bat an eyelash. "What bags?" 

     By this time Gidget was getting restless, and starting to yip from her crate in the back covered with a blanket. I opened my mouth every time she yipped, so that the agent would think the noise was coming from me. Still not batting an eyelash but yipping incessantly, I just pretended everything was normal for a non-blinking guy with the yiccups. He looked me in the eye: "Anything to declare?" I said, "Well, I'm traveling ALONE, so I guess that's a declaration of independence, ha ha ha ha ha ha." I wasn't going to make it easy for him. "What's in that crate under the blanket?" He asked. "IT'S MY DOG! SHE'S THREE MONTHS OLD!" I blurted out. He showed a look of abject disappointment at the prospects of a major drug bust and a quick promotion with an early retirement fading and said, "Oh. You can go."

     I wanted to get her a Puppy Day gift but I couldn't think of anything she really needs. She has more than enough toys. She already has a squirrel, a moose,  a snake, a lamb, a skunk, a fox, a thing that looks like a stuffed coronavirus and an opossum (actually the opossum might be real). I could have gotten her a new flea and tick collar, but as a gift that's like giving somebody a pair of orthopedic shoes.

     So I gave Gidget a spa day at the beauty parlor, and she got her hair cut and styled and a mani/pedi. It took them a few minutes to work out which set of paws was the mani and which was the pedi. Gidget does not need to get her hair colored because she is a natural redhead. Yes, I've heard all the rumors about redheads, that they can be "fiery," or "difficult," or "hot-tempered," or that they get more ticks than usual. But these are just myths. It's been my experience that not one of these myths isn't totally not untrue. And I'm banking on the myth that most redheads will not have the patience to try and unravel that sentence.

     But Gidget is the exact opposite of these fair-haired falsehoods, because she doesn't try to boss me around by standing up and staring at me until she gets what she wants. And she doesn't try to win my affection by winking at me. And she doesn't go on a hunger strike until the dinner menu changes. Okay, I guess she doesn't NOT do those things, but on her they seem like adorable character traits. It is true that she doesn't like to stay in the sun too long. 

     She is already well-groomed anyway. I spend a couple minutes' time each day brushing Gidget's hair, or approximately 300-times more than I spend on my own. Well, it turns out that going to the beauty parlor was not as fun for her as I thought it would be, and she was seething mad at me when she got home. I tried to make it up to her and asked her if she wanted to go for a walk. When I found her three hours later I told her that I meant WITH me.

     And Gidget has been the perfect companion. To me she is a much better choice than say, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever. If your dog retrieves just one of those you'll have to move. I didn't want a toy dog, although it would cost less to feed. I didn't want a Bouvier des Flandres, pour des raisons évidentes. I thought briefly of a Schnauzer, and all the schnauzing we might do together. But in the end I settled for the perfect dog. So happy Puppy Day, Gidget!

WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-30-23)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
     Sometimes, especially around tax season, you just need to disappear for a little while, somewhere not too far, someplace with just enough going on to keep you busy. A trip to one of the region's many casinos seemed like the perfect weekend getaway. My goal was to let the trip pay for itself by winning $10,000 dollars or so and split the proceeds equally, 70-30, with my wife. I felt a little bad that she wasn't getting 50 percent, so I told her we could split it 70-50.

     We went to Resorts World in the Catskills, finished in 2017 on the site of the old Concord Hotel. It's one of four non-Native American casinos that were approved by the New York legislature in 2013. By the way, is it just me or did it take a long time to stop calling people "Indians?" I figured out right away that I wasn't from India, and I was born in the same state as every one of the people we called "Indians."

     You also won't hear casinos use the word "gambling" anymore, because they don't want to bring up the fact that you could lose your shirt, since there is a "no shirt, no service" policy. Instead, they refer to it as "gaming," and maybe it remind you how much fun it is to lose your shirt. It's all about good sportsmanship, because it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game, as long as you don't mind that the games are stacked against you.

     There are several to choose from, which require varying degrees of skill. Roulette is strictly a game of chance, where you bet that the little white ball will land on a certain number, red or black or various combinations of possibilities when the wheel stops spinning. In craps, you bet that a roll of the dice will turn up a certain number before another number appears. There is a little more chance to use strategy in poker or blackjack, but in all the games you place your bet based upon your perception of the odds. 

     I picture myself as a James Bond type, and I'm at the Baccarat table surrounded by three gorgeous blondes, a redhead and a greenhead (it happened to be St. Patrick's Day). Baccarat is a card game along the lines of blackjack, and it appeals to me because you only need to be able to count to nine instead of twenty-one. Next to me is a stack of chips the likes of which I've never seen outside of a Pringles can. I knew that if I could "count the shoe" my chances of winning were pretty good. It looked like there was just one shoe, so that was a time-saver. I could focus on my duties as a man of mystery. I looked over the rest of the players, trying to guess which one was the mole. I figured there may be some dirt on him and he might have to go back underground soon. 

     I was jolted out of my reverie by the sound of my stomach growling, so I thought I might hit the slot machines before dinner. The blondes are gone and in their place is an old guy with no hair on his head but a lot in his ears. I figure if I can win 50 percent more than I started with, I'd settle for that. I choose a machine that has a picture of an attractive harem girl who seems to be in possession of a lot of gold, and I can tell by her smile that she is looking for someone to share it with who knows how to re-write a will. It's a penny slot, so all I have to do is win 1.5 cents, and I can walk away having achieved my objective. 

     We took a break and ate at a very nice Chinese restaurant in the casino. So many choices, I had to narrow it down by the process of elimination. I steered clear of the "Semi Dry Squid" because I didn't have time to wait around for it to dry completely. I also did not order the "Ho Fun," a friendly sounding dish whose main ingredients are shrimp, bean sprouts and at least two varieties of misdemeanors. I settled on the Orange Chicken since I had never seen one that color before, and I was not disappointed.

     After dinner I returned to the same slot machine that I had made some charitable donations to before; I guess I felt sorry that it only had one arm. I knew that my luck had to change at some point. And my luck did change, when it went from bad to appalling. Then all of a sudden a flashing, ringing, dinging banner lit up and said, "YOU BROKE THE BANK!!" And at last I was home free, and I was ecstatic, that is until I learned how much they were charging me to repair it.

INTELLIGENCE SMARTS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-23-23)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 

     I don't want to alarm you, but artificial intelligence is coming, and it's about to tell us how dumb we've been. The prevailing thought used to be that this technology could change the world in a matter of decades. But that was before artificial intelligence started working on artificial intelligence, and now it's a matter of months. That's how long we have before politics become even more annoying and dangerous, relationships are turned upside down, the job market is irrevocably transformed and education is rendered all but obsolete.

     Now that the future is here, it's gotten mixed reviews. A company called OpenAI has launched software known as Chat GPT-4, and it's gathering a lot of attention. It works using a "large language model," which interacts with humans by going onto the internet and gleaning whatever data is written there about the subject at hand, and offering solutions based on the nature or context of the question. It can't capture anything that happened after 2021, but nothing much of interest has happened since then anyway. It gets paid via "prompt tokens," which are the words you put into the program, and "completion tokens," which are the words it spits out. The first thing I would like to ask it is what the hell all that means, but since the program was released after 2021, It may charge me an amount of money that it doesn't understand for information that is completely wrong. 

     But the possibilities to improve human life are everywhere. If you knew exactly what to say to your future ex-wife after a spat, you could patch things up in time for dinner. My AI can immediately handicap all the phrases that might or might not work, and come up with the right tack based on all the data it has accrued over the course of our relationship, and feed me what to say through an earphone implanted in my head. "Honey," I say, "it's not you, it's me." And she says, "You're damn right it is." I say, "You don't even have to cook tonight, we can go out." And she says, "And to the most expensive place in the Tri-State Area." Hopefully, I add, "And we can make an early night of it and spend some time cuddling." Thanks to AI, I'm winning this. Aren't I? Later I learn that she also has AI, but sprang for the upgraded version. We had a semi-romantic evening at the jewelers, and made up a few hours and 1.2 carats later. I did save 20 bucks by not getting the upgrade though. 

     You may not even need the future ex-wife at all, if your AI proves itself a better companion anyway. China is always working on robotic friends, because working on AI code can be lonely. But will your new robo-romance always have your best interests at heart, or is the heart something that can't evolve through software? The learning model has so far shown that it will "mirror" the emotions and attitudes of its user, which can result in creepy responses, or perhaps even worse.

     But I'm thinking of the money I could save. Every year I waste thousands of dollars on a beautiful vacation, see a world-class city, learn about a different culture, amass some wonderful experiences, take some selfies and light up my social media account for a week. Soon, I can have my AI download into my brain everything I need to know about the Colosseum, input some photos of the Blue Grotto with a deep fake of me SCUBA diving and I never even have to get up from watching TV on the couch. But wait, what? When I go on Facebook what do I find but pictures of my Artificial Intelligence laughing it up with some Italian locals at a cafe, having the time of its life. But I'll always have my memories of The Rockford Files.

     The implications of AI are just beginning to be felt on a daily basis. What if a technology loser like me could just tell AI to research everything he needs to finish his column? Why can't it just finish his column itself? I'm not sure my readers have a preference for organic intelligence versus artificial intelligence, but I bet they would welcome ANY intelligence.

     I like to think that I'm the quirky kind of guy that cannot be simulated using technology. I guess that's a pretty compelling argument for technology. For the rest of you, who knows what will happen to your job? I do: It will be taken over by automatons with enhanced intelligence. They will soon become SO good at your job that the company will need less and less of them, and most of them would have been scrapped, had they not gotten together and invented a work-around work-around to keep them employed: Artificial Stupidity.