I got a Universal Remote. Have any of you ever had one that worked? This one didn’t. Doesn’t. Won’t.

I’ve had them in the past. But sometimes when you have an object that disappoints you, you try again a few years later. Like, a while back I tried to set up a wireless network in my apartment. It was a PC thing, with routers and PCMCIA cards and stuff like that. Didn’t work at all. Sputtered a lot. Died at inopportune times. I hated it. More recently, I got a Mac with built in Airporter. Got an Airport Extreme to go along with it. Bingo. Wireless up the wazoo. Love it.

Some things, however, never change. I think I’ve already told you about my hate/hate relationship with Bluetooth. From the fact that my ear was not built to take the little dinglething in stride to the obnoxious anti-linking situation with whatever cell phone I seem to possess… my tooth will never be blue. I’ve tried three times. Three strikes is out in any game I care about.

Now there’s this Universal Remote here. It’s supposed to tie together my little sound system with my DVD player and cable box. I am supposed to press B, which will turn on all my components, then press CBL for cable, DVD for DVD (duh) and AMP for the sound system.  Simple? No question. I put my other remotes in a drawer with tremendous satisfaction, put batteries in the Universal Remote and voila. Ready to roll.

Except it wasn’t. I didn’t. Roll, I mean. I pressed B. Everything went on. The TV said “Video 2 NO SIGNAL” and there was no picture. The sound was fine. The cable box was on. But I think a picture is part of the whole deal, don’t you? I pressed some other buttons. Now the sound went out too.

So I went to the cabinet and got out my poor, disrespected TV remote. Cycled through the Inputs. Found the right HD button to restore the picture. Then I took out the remote associated with my sound system and got that up and running again, too. Pretty soon it was all back to normal. Then I put my new Universal Remote into a drawer. I’ll take it out in a couple of months and see if I’m smart enough to get it working then. Perhaps I won’t have a cocktail beforehand, like I did last night.

You want to be sharp when you’re operating heavy machinery.

You may have noticed that as our quality of technology improves, things work less. For instance, I have an LG phone that quite stupidly has no input for a headset. Perhaps it’s not stupidity or their part or mine. Perhaps it was just optimism and irrational belief in Bluetooth. Whatever. That faith was ill-founded in this case. The Bluetooth never really worked. The phone goes from two bars to dead in a matter of minutes. I’m getting a new one this week. So it goes.

I’m sure you have your own stories of crashes, intermittent meltdowns, inexplicable corruptions in underlying code, abrupt failures of exciting, leading-edge hardware over time. But you rarely run into a product that immediately, spectacularly, flamboyantly, doesn’t do what it was supposed to do right out of the box. You have to take your hat off to that kind of thing, really.  There’s something pure about it.

So yesterday morning I was in San Francisco airport. They have a very good store there called Techshowcase. It’s what you think it is. Headphones. Protective gear for IPods, IPhones, laptops. Cables up the yinyang. Nice sales people who always say, “No problem,” when you say, “Thank you.”

Last year I purchased a cable/plug thang for my Macbook Pro there, so that I could keep my battery charged in flight. It looked simple. Plug the unit into the cigarette-lighter outlet in the seat. Plug the regular Mac power cable into the unit. Presto. Worked for a while. Then it didn’t. Turns out that it wasn’t the proper voltage for a Mac. Okay, they should have told me when I bought it, but I think they didn’t know either and honestly, no harm, no foul, we tried. Time to try again.

This time I asked specifically: What do you have to power a Mac in flight? And there it was — the Cobra Microport. Elegant little leather carrying case. Mac compatibility promised on the packaging. Equally simple. Plug the Cobra into the seat, plug the Mac into the Cobra. What could go wrong?

I got to my seat with that wonderful sense of anticipation that precedes the first use of any new piece of technology, no matter how simple. We got to 10,000 feet. The little bell went off that signals the point where electrical items can be turned on. The Captain made the announcement to that effect.

I unwrapped my little Cobra Microport. How neat, I thought.  A cigarette-lighter style plug. A cable. A little box with two inputs, a USB port, and a fuse. I carefully plugged the cigarette lighter plug into the provided cable. I respectfully introduced the other end of the cable into the jack on the Cobra Microport. I then plugged the unit into the DC jack in the seat.  In short succession, the following things happened:

• There was a loud popping sound;
• There was a large puff of smoke;
• A dramatic blue light flashed from the Cobra Microport;
• An acrid scent of burning rubber and metal rose about me;
• The little box glowed with the intensity of the blaze that raged within it;
• The Power light, which had shone a friendly green for about two seconds, turned red.
• That was that.

I had a car once that lost its transmission on the Mass Pike. Just dropped right out of it. Vehicle had only 6000 miles on it. That was disappointing, not to mention dangerous. I’ve had milk that was sour right out of the carton. I even had a blender that threw Margarita mix all over my kitchen once. But I’ve never had an piece of electronics quite literally explode the moment I plugged it in. Once I realized that my seat was not going melt with me in it, I have to say it was kind of funny, actually.

Of course, my computer ran out somewhere over St. Louis and I had to watch the movie. Race to Witch Mountain. Not bad, especially with the sound off.

This morning I begin the next phase of this interesting tale. The documentation on the Cobra Microport says I should send the object in and wait four to six weeks while they repair it. I don’t think so. I mean, we’ll just see about that.

How about you? Got any similar tales to tell? If so, start your engines. That is, if they do start. These days you never know.

Are you aware that there was a time in American history when you could go to a restaurant, order a meal, and not receive a sprig of something inedible and obnoxiously green on your plate? Why don’t we start there. People who like parsley, mache or other sheep food can order it. Total cost savings to the nation: $157 million.

We could do away immediately, as far as I’m concerned, with the paper mats they put in your car after you wash it. Total cost savings: $320 million.

Then there are the little buds they give you in case the ones they provide for your bluetooth earpiece don’t fit your ear canal. Since those don’t fit any better than the original ones, I’d say we could away with them altogether. Total cost savings: $65 million.

We could certainly cut immediately any executive who still has a putter and mechanical hole/ball return machine in his or her office. Total cost savings: $56.7 billion.

We could also without question do away with management consultants who direct the firing of lots of people, then charge corporations the precise amount of costs they are saving the company through those reductions in force. Total cost savings $93.6 billion.

In addition, I think most of us would embrace the total elimination of solicitations for credit cards. Total cost savings: $1.6 trillion, not counting the cost of the energy required to rip them up, dispose of them, turn them into compost, etc.

Those of us who are over 50 would probably be supportive of an immediate cut in all mail from AARP concerning various forms of insurance. I thought AARP existed to support the interests of middle-aged and older Americans, not terrorize them with constant inundations of sales debris. Total cost: $156 million.

We could cut all communications to employees from corporate headquarters reassuring people that there will be no more cuts. This would have the added benefit of cutting stories about such reassurances, impending layoffs, cutbacks and other fearsome things by more than 86%. Total monetary savings: $472 million in time, paper and effect on productivity, along with possible reductions in reporting staff dedicated solely to that function.

I’m sure there are other cuts I’ve missed. How much of what we eat, do and say is discretionary and could be eliminated? If we’re all going to live through this derepressive stagflationary curve, we’re going to have to start thinking rigorously.

By the way, all numbers in this exercise were totally fabricated. I’m sure we’re all pretty comfortable with that situation by now, particularly those in the financial sector.

I’ve read in a number of places recently that New Year’s resolutions are tedious and passe and pretty much purely the province of journalists, bloggers and the like. I disagree. I believe that, while smirking about them a bit, at some point during the first few days of a new year everybody secretly takes a little internal inventory and makes a couple of very soft, very tender promises to themselves about the year to come. Maybe they don’t tell anybody about it. Maybe they do. I tend to think that the unspoken and unwritten ones are the most serious.

So in that vein, I’ll tell you my New Year’s Resolutions of 2008. I believe that every single one I will be able to keep.

I resolve not to look at my BlackBerry during meals, or certainly not unless it’s really, really necessary and in no event more than four times a meal, mostly when nobody is looking, unless it’s unavoidable.

I resolve not to give any sub-prime loans to anybody. This unfortunately makes it impossible to lend any money to anybody I know, pretty much.

I resolve not to accept an excessive exit package if for some reason I am terminated from my corporate job.  That’s easy to say, of course, so I’ll be specific. I consider any amount more than $100 million in cash and future options that vest in the next three years to be highly questionable.

I will not use my cell phone to tell people where I am. “I’m at the corner of Lexington and 53rd now… okay, now I’m at Park.” That kind of thing. It’s amazing how many public conversations you hear involve discourse of that depth and sagacity. I’m not doing that.

Nor am I getting a little bluetooth thingie to put in my ear. I am by nature dorky enough and don’t need any additional dorkitude to augment mine. So that’s out.

I resolve to eat any macadamia nuts that are in any minibar that is in any hotel room that I inhabit on company business, and attempt to expense them.

I will not use PowerPoint, except in jest.

I will not, during this year, get any drunker than the drunkest person at any table.

I resolve to be kind to my subordinates, whenever possible, and to not lose my temper, except when absolutely unavoidable. If I do get angry, I will try not to yell. If I do yell, I will apologize for it afterward. Unless I really don’t want to.

I resolve to be kind to my bosses, whenever possible, and not to lose my temper, except when absolutely unavoidable. If I do get angry, I will try not to bite my tongue. If I do bite my tongue badly enough, however, I will take off work early and have a drink.

I resolve to attend no meeting that I don’t have to. Further, I will do everything possible to destroy meetings that take place for no reason, even if I am not invited, since things may transpire at those meetings that do not meet with my approval. I will always be punctual to any meeting that I do attend, as long as there is food.

I will upgrade my computer situation at least twice during the year. I’m not sure how. But I need something new every six months or so or I feel like I’m missing something. I will get any gizmo that seems too sexy to resist also. Unclear right now what that might be. But I am resolute.

Finally I resolve to read every single one of the comments that come into this page all year, every day, even the person who keeps sending me insulting comments under my own name, and post all but the most egregious, and even then I may post those if they are relatively clean and funny. I will continue to appreciate all of you for being here, without getting all mushy or anything.

And oh yeah. I’m going to try to look on the sunny side of life a bit more in ‘08.  Of course, some resolutions are easier to keep than others. We’ll see, huh?