In June, Sacramento Magazines Corporation, publisher of Sacramento and the annual Northern California Golf Guide, launched the new, upgraded websites sacmag.com and norcalgolfguide.com. Our goal is to extend to the digital world our magazine’s reputation for providing high-quality, local content. We will do this by providing magazine-related insight on the websites and soon we’ll begin adding new information, blogs and newsletters useful to readers and web visitors. You now can go online to explore current or past editions, search for a restaurant or business listing, shop for a home or order a gift subscription. We encourage your feedback and hope you will bookmark the sites and visit them regularly. (Please send your comments and ideas to web marketing manager Ali Zamanian at ali@sacmag.com or to me at mikeob@sacmag.com.) As Sacramento’s quarter-million monthly readers continue to increase their daily Internet usage, we are committed to providing this new service with the same consistency that has been a hallmark of Sacramento in its 32 years of publishing.
While I spend quite a bit of time on the Internet, getting underway with our company websites has put me through a crash course in new media. Thank goodness I’m not the one charged with keeping any of our technology operating properly, for I am a techno-dolt. I have trouble simply deleting all the pop-up windows that bobble and blink across my screen. I turn off or restart my computer more easily than I can turn it on.
If it were left up to me, we might still be working with IBM personal computers or Apple IIs, the first-generation computers from the late 1970s and early 1980s. We would have rotary telephones on our office desks and a stinky, old, original fax telephone. Because as state-of-the-art as our technology these days may be, I don’t find it very reliable. Throughout the day, I use new tech devices&emdash;desktop and laptop computers, cell phones, servers, digital cameras, voicemail&emdash;yet every one of them is highly prone to malfunction as soon as I touch them. The axiom blame the workman, not his tools (my being the workman) applies.
One of my e-mail accounts has had a Warning! Mailbox full message on it for months, despite the fact that I deleted all but 10 messages from it long ago. The other e-mail account I use has some 3,000 messages in its inbox because I got behind in keeping up with it, and a deluge of junk mail became interspersed with some e-mails I need (though now I cannot seem to locate those).
The iMac I use at home recently discarded the account numbers of two bank accounts I frequently monitor. I did nothing to lose them, yet wasted an hour on the phone to have them re-established, only to find that I still cannot access them.
I often forget my secret passwords, and I find myself unable to access various accounts. When, out of total frustration, I angrily ask my kids for help gaining my rightful access, they don’t cooperate at all. Dad&emdash;don’t ask me&emdash;it’s your password!
I am fortunate that Steve Rice, our company’s technology guru, frequently cleans up my messes. He must put the priorities of the 40-odd computers and servers and programs we use each day ahead of me, though. God knows how many hours I have wasted with these problems, plus intermittent crashes and restarts. I wish I had the time back I have wasted on trashing offers to improve my sex life, get a low-interest loan or grow the chest hair of a big gorilla.
Rest assured, I will support our company’s new Internet sites to the best of my ability. Just be grateful that I will not be the one working to increase our technical capabilities. I seem to have misplaced my password.
