Normalization of Relations with Cuba is Long Overdue

President Obama is (finally) taking steps to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba. Why is this a big deal? We have normal diplomatic relations with our World War II enemies Germany and Japan. We have normal diplomatic relations with our Cold War enemies Russia and China.

The problem, of course, is that we have a community of Cuban expatriates in southern Florida who bitterly oppose this move. But frankly, those who oppose it most vehemently, those who actually lost their land or businesses in the Cuban Revolution, are mostly over 70 years old. Their children and grandchildren, and other younger Cuban-Americans do not feel the same way. Most of them would like to be able to exchange visits with their relatives in Cuba.

I worked as a translator at Fort McCoy, WI when some of the Cubans who participated in the Mariel Boatlift were there during the summer of 1980. Because the United States did not have normal diplomatic relations with Cuba, they were considered political refugees. Had they been from any other country in Latin America or the Caribbean, they would have been considered economic migrants, and returned to their country of origin. Not to mention that Fidel Castro would not have been able to send along folks from Cuba’s prisons and mental hospitals.

Our lack of diplomatic relations with Cuba allowed Castro to “play us” in 1980. It made no sense then and it makes even less sense now! What makes sense now is for the United States to position itself to be able to influence the political direction Cuba takes in the post-Castro era. For that we need to have normal political relations with Cuba. That’s the big deal!

Tech Support

Back in the 1990s, when AOL (America Online) was still a significant ISP (Internet Service Provider), I took a job doing phone tech. support for a company I’ll call TelCo in Madison WI. We were sworn to secrecy about who we were providing support for, so hopefully enough time has passed that they won’t come after me.

I didn’t work there very long, in fact I did their two week training and then lasted about two more weeks before I quit ahead of being fired. I don’t remember much about the training, except that the point of emphasis was to get off the phone with a client as quickly as possible. Calls of less than a minute were good; calls of over five minutes were unacceptable. I later learned that if a call went over five minutes your supervisor would come to your desk and glare at you with as angry a look as they could muster, until you hung up, and then chew you out. Fortunately my supervisor Julie was actually a decent person, so it never came to shouting or actual verbal abuse.

My problem with doing tech. support the TelCo way was that I really was interested in solving the client’s problem, whatever it was, and had enough knowledge of personal computer (PC) hardware and software (from previous jobs) to have a shot at fixing many problems presented by the clients. Of course there are those folks who are hopeless as PC users. A story I’ve heard, which is probably more urban legend than truth, is about a user who called tech. support to say the monitor on his desktop PC had gone dark. The techie asks him to check that the monitor is both plugged in to an outlet and connected to his computer. The client responds that he can’t because it is too dark under his desk. The techie then asks if he can turn on a light or use a flashlight to check the cables, and the client responds, “ I could go look for a flashlight, but the power is off here so it’s hard to find your way around!”

I never had a client that clueless, and, frankly, most folks I talked to had legitimate problems – though most had nothing to do with the AOL software. The problem that got me “fired” is a case in point.

JoAnn called to say that her PC was “stuck” at a Microsoft Word error message screen. First names only was another TelCo rule; I’m Dan, by the way. She had turned off and restarted the PC several times and it always booted normally but went right back to the error screen.

Quite coincidentally, due to personal experience, I knew exactly what the problem was and how to fix it (but not in under a minute or even 5 minutes).

An engineer designing IBM desktop PCs had come up with a new feature the company called the Resume feature. When enabled in the BIOS of a PC, this feature allows the user to turn off the computer’s power switch at any time, then turn it back on later and return right back to where they were, with all the applications and documents that had been open, open again to exactly the same application screen and line in any open documents.

Sounds wonderful doesn’t it? The computer stores a record of exactly what applications and documents are open automatically, so you can be doing your budget in an Excel spreadsheet in one window, while working on the next great American novel in another window, and when you’re done for the day you just turn off the power switch, secure in the knowledge that when you flip the switch of that PC tomorrow morning, everything will be right where you left it.

Obviously, this is the scenario the IBM engineer envisioned, and convinced his colleagues to buy in to. Great right? What could possibly go wrong?

Let me tell you. If any one of your open applications or even Windows itself should encounter a fatal error condition, your PC is stuck right there, forever, unless and until you turn off the Resume feature in its BIOS.

So, I talked JoAnn, a competent PC user who didn’t know what a BIOS was, through the fix. You turn off the machine, then turn it back on and immediately hold down the F8 key (sometimes it is F3, but hers was F8). Eventually, you will be taken to a screen labeled B-I-O-S. Using your keypad to navigate (make sure the NUM-LOCK light is on) through the different BIOS screens, find the Resume feature, select it and turn it off! Then navigate to the screen that lets you save your BIOS settings, do the save and exit.

After that the PC booted to the Windows desktop, JoAnn thanked me, and I hung up.

My supervisor, Julie, had showed up at my desk when I was in the middle of explaining what a BIOS was and why JoAnn needed to go there to fix her PC. It took a couple tries with F8 to get into the BIOS, and more time figuring out how to navigate in her BIOS, and changing the Resume setting also took some back and forth. So by the time I hung up, Julie had been standing over me scowling for about 10 minutes.

To her credit, she did not bother to chew me out. She just said, “You’re going to want to resign before next week so you won’t have being fired on your record.” I thanked Julie, finished the night and quit the next day.