On the home front, I got some kind of amazing deal on an electric snowblower just after Sandy last year. I thought of using it during the last snow day, but it turned out I'd left it in the box and hadn't bothered to assemble it. This is the sort of thing I put off, because I hate that kind of work. But I bit the bullet, and opened the box. I was able to get the thing together in maybe five minutes. I felt like a genius. Not only that, but I also found long extension cords that would allow me to use it, and tested it. It worked perfectly, it seemed.
But today, when I wanted to use it, my wife informed me that the genius who installed our garage door after Sandy did so in such a way that you could only unlock it from the outside. I couldn't believe that, so I tried opening it from the inside. Couldn't be done. My wife provided me with a key, and it turns out you can't open it from the outside either. The key does not work.
So here's the thing--I can't use the snow blower unless I carry it upstairs, through the house, out the door, downstairs, and then run a cord into the living room. And you just don't do things like that in my house. I don't make the rules here, so it's pretty much the old-fashioned snow shovel technology.
What's the point of living in the twenty-first century when the only innovations that take root are things like value-added and mayoral control?
It seems counterintuitive.
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