Too Smart?

Nick had new tires put on my car last week. It was desperately needed since my tires were so bald I felt like I was sliding into first when I came upon a stop sign, and like roadrunner where the wheels would be turning but the car wasn't going anywhere when I tried to leave a stop sign. We have been saving up each month for the tires since we had an idea they were coming soon (another Dave Ramsey shout out!). The following day, Nick drove my car to work to try out the tires and the battery died while he was there. Now I have never had the battery die since I've owned the car for the last 3.5 years, but Nick says it was something about corrosion on the battery terminal. I'm still wondering if he left a light on or something ;)

Either way, apparently when my car battery dies, it wants you to reset the stereo system; some sort of anti-theft protection deal where you need to enter a code. So I get in my car today, and try to turn on the radio. It says, “enter code.” Huh? I don’t know what the code is. I, therefore, texted Nick who told me he needed to look at the paperwork to find it. What happens when our cars are too smart for us? Now I haven’t test driven one of those cars that can parallel park itself, but isn’t that kind of an important thing to know how to do? Does our reliance on technology impair our ability to complete tasks that we used to have to do independently? I always cringe at the idea that schools these days are encouraging the use of calculators for math and not even teaching long division. I recognize we frequently have access to calculators, but isn’t there something to be said for completing a math problem without the assistance of computers? I know I'm supposed to be from a somewhat techy generation, having mostly grown up with computers (hey, Oregon Trail was a computer game), but I wasn't that two year old who knows how to operate the iPad independently. Hey, I still don't know how to operate an iPhone (see The Age of the Cell).

{via}

Needless to say, I completed my drive in silence. This actually proved to be somewhat torturous, because although I am really sensitive to loud radios or bass (I’m one of those highly sensitive people, or HSPs as we are sometimes called), I’m even more sensitive to those little rattles and shakes that cars have. Like the rattle in your dashboard, or the change in your console shaking against each other; it makes me shiver just thinking about it. Now to find that radio code!