Codgeriffic

Nobody likes being a codger, or even just feeling like one, particularly those of us who might, in a bad light, be mistaken for one.

Our library system has installed a self-serve checkout for books. You scan the bar code on your library card, the code on the book, and you're done. That's assuming you can get the scanner to read your card. Up to today, I wasn't able to do that, either at the local library or at the much-better-stocked branch in the next borough. There is nothing like being unable to make a basic piece of technology work to make you feel stupid - somebody who just doesn't get it. You know, a codger. You look around, hoping nobody is watching as you try for the fourth time to get the damn thing to do its magic -- it's just a scanner, for god's sake, what the hell is the problem here? -- before stomping off in disgust to the checkout clerk -- who, incidentally, can scan it just fine with her scanner. What the hell is the deal, anyway?

Trying not to snarl, I told the librarian about it, and she said Oh, the scanner prefers to have you hold the book down low. It prefers? As in, Don't anthropomorphize the PC, it hates when you do that? Well, okay, I know what they mean; I've said that kind of thing lots of times myself. I don't know, it feels like the computer's trying to do this, it wants to do that, it doesn't like this. You're not really attributing intelligence to it, that's just a catch phrase. So, okay, I held the book down on the platform instead of just under the scanning laser's nozzle -- and it worked.

Still feel like a codger though, dagnabbit.