NEW SYSTEM INSTALL 1.0
Wednesday Sept. 24, 2014
Opening boxes – being sure all components listed on packing slips arrived, assemble, plug and play, boot-up, software already installed.
Cars, vacuum cleaners, computers, cameras, phones, IKEA furniture – every product you might imagine can be got from manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer – or some guy who picked it up as it fell off some truck.
Easy to follow Instructions.
For almost-new technology, we buy at stores, on-line, Kijiji. From friends, flea-markets or street corners. When we want that full meal deal experience, latest and greatest, we deal with the OEM (original equipment manufacturer).
When we, the people, come to market we arrive in a perversely different way.
While there are surrogacy, adoption and refugee examples, the very large majority of us arrive the same way – we are delivered. Not my UPS, mail service or FedEX – but by MD’s, midwives and doulas.
Not shipped in bubble wrap, packing peanuts or plain brown wrappers. No overnight delivery. Takes nine months to get here – shipped inside our own air-bag filled with fluid – arriving factory-perfect without warranty, without operators manual – and there is no 1-800# help-line for support. No return-policy. No repair-depot.
Breaking-in period – physical needs (food, clothing, shelter, transportation) are taken care of by OEM (a.k.a. parents). When they fail, society (in theory) steps in to provide for us.
After-market equipment may be installed on some older-models. Mostly maintenance items for original equipment break-downs: braces, eye glasses, hearing aids, replacement joints, stents, organ transplants, prosthetics, valves and bridgework.
On our own.
Stages are universal: weaning, teething, walking, talking, puberty, 16, 18, 21, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60 … and 63.
There are further stages.
Please stay tuned …
Mark Kolke
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: 15C/59F, overcast but thinning out, gentle breeze and easy walk – amazing how good it feels to walk on a gorgeous day, on a day where so many good things are set to happen: because I’m going to make them happen …ooh-rah!
