High Tech Defects

I have written before about my preference for simple tools that last. They may be crude, humble, and require some degree of training to use them properly, but they usually are durable and are devices that you can depend on, year after year.

However, the lure of acquiring a new, high-tech gadget becomes irresistible at times. The latest fancy tool can often do a simple tool’s job much faster and with an ease that is enticing. A gasoline-powered hydraulic wood splitter can quickly render a pile of recalcitrant logs into a heap of slender splits that make fire starting a breeze. A motorized garden rototiller can quickly churn over a plot of land and render it ready for planting. Both of these devices are incredibly efficient and accomplish their task in a fraction of the time it requires me to split wood by hand or turn over the garden beds with a shovel.

Yet, as I've lamented before on this blog, these complicated high-tech tools have an exasperating way of breaking down—causing one to face an expensive repair or to buy a replacement. Too often the broken machine must be consigned to the landfill. When I surrender to the siren song of a new tool, I often soon regret giving in and participating in this game.

So here's yet another tale of my yielding to the purchase of a neat high-tech tool, and later coming to regret it. Every four days my wife and I luxuriate in the healing waters of an outdoor wood-fired bathtub. It's a simple, primitive process that is rejuvenating to body and soul. The challenge of properly preparing the bath is to get the water temperature close to an ideal of about 101^o F (38^o C). A couple of degrees higher and we quickly overheat. A couple of degrees lower and it's just a bath—not a healing ritual. That perfect 101degree temperature allows me to soak in the healing waters for an hour or two.

I've used an old-fashioned thermometer over the years to achieve that ideal temperature. It works, but it's become increasingly difficult for these aging eyes to read the numbers—especially in the low-light levels of a winter's evening. Thus, I was lured into buying an infrared digital electronic thermometer a couple of years ago. Oh, it was nice! (Notice the use of the past tense “was.”) The readout was illuminated, so I could see it in the dark. It offered large numbers for my aging eyes, and it was easy to use; just point and click the trigger. 

I even had fun pointing it toward many other objects and measuring their temperature. Beep, my dog's ear was 85^o F (29^o C). On a cold winter evening I could measure the ground temperature that, beep, was 30^o F (-1^o C). Beep, the stove pipe was 240^o F (116^o C). Fascinating! I kept looking for targets to beep.

Then one night my high-tech infrared toy failed. Instead of heating the water to 101^o F, it got up to more like 112^o (44^o C). My poor wife nearly scalded her legs, before she leaped back out from the cauldron. So now we are back to the old primitive analog thermometer. I need my glasses and a flashlight to read it, but it is dependable... and has endured for a couple of decades.