I had just walked in from school, and my Mom came out of the kitchen very excited. “Put down your books,” she sang, “because I have a surprise.”
This had never happened before, so I was more than a little curious. I followed her out the back door and stood in front of our two-car garage. Something was different. The garage doors were different. They were not the old heavy doors that it was my job to lift most of my life, but lighter looking.
She pointed a device at the garage and smiled. “Watch,” she said. She pushed the button and the right door went up. She pushed the button again and the right door when down. She looked at me with a look of wonder and surprise, and a hint that I should be surprised as well. I was.
She opened the door again, and as we walked into the bay, I inspected the door and found that it was now a light fiberglass and an aluminum frame. She shut the door and the light stayed on from the opener above us. “That is timed so the light stays on,” she whispered, “so when you push the button from in the house you have light. We have three buttons. One for each car and on in the house. The button here in the garage is in case you don’t have a button with you. But when you use it to close the door you have to make sure that you don’t break the beam.” She showed me where the infrared sensors were close to the floor so to protect the dogs. Again, she looked at me with wonder and wanted me to share in that wonder.
I was young, and probably failed in sharing the wonder. The technology was not new to me, but for someone that grew up in the 1940’s it was a miracle. She was amazed and was so grateful at how it was going to make our lives easier. Those openers did make our lives easier and worked for us for the next 40 years that I was involved. The same openers, the same doors, the same buttons. It was a relationship. We worked with them as we understood how to use them, and they worked for us within the limits of their ability.
Later in life, my Mom developed Alzheimer’s. My Father had passed, and it was left to me to care for her. I stayed in the house with her to measure and determine how far the disease was progressing, and I found out one night at 3 am in the morning.
I found her out in the garage playing with the lights…turning them on and turning them off. I walked out there, and she told me that the lights were not turning off. The look in her eyes were no longer of wonder from years ago, but of frustration. She was confusing the garage lights with the opener lights. She had lost her understanding of the technology. With a compassionate realization that I was not going to explain this to her, I loosened the lightbulbs. I came to understand, and what this simple technology taught me, was that it should never be taken for granted. When one thinks they know everything about it, and takes it for granted, technology will surprise you.
Tech has become even more complex, but the possibilities for those that plug into it can be endless. The reality is that the miracle comes with a cost and requires support. The cost should make sense and the support should be effective and compassionate. Compass Computer Group is that effectiveness. It allows one to concentrate on their business goals, while Compass supports the foundation and the technology that moves a client forward.
Compass Computer Group has a healthy respect for technology and never takes it for granted. That healthy respect for tech is a healthy respect for the client, and never taking tech for granted is never taking the client for granted.