Tiny Button Crankypants

Pins. Plotnik needs to find 10 new pins for his map. They have to be a brand new never-used-before color. Where in the city (forget on-line for now) would he look? Probably Flax. OK, he'll try Flax.

And he has to go see if that small Latino grocery store on Mission, owned by Argentinians, sells pre-made empanada wrappers.

And he has to call Verizon to see if they will give him the password to Mummy P.'s cellphone message center, because she can't remember it and it's hard for her to call them to ask about it. The problem is her hearing is getting dodgy so she sometimes doesn't hear her cell phone ring, and then she can't get past the password request to access her messages to see who called her.

And then there's the TV remote control. Make that remote controls. Mummy P. has a lot of trouble making out small visual details. Unless you have a person in your family with limited sight and a memory that is less than it once was, you probably haven't noticed that every new appliance comes with a multi-function remote control. The idea seems to be that the more buttons they put on something, the more they can charge for it.

But to fit lots of buttons on a device they have to make them TINY. Try explaining a new TV/DVD remote control to someone who has trouble seeing the buttons and has a hard time remembering the difference between COMPOSITE 1, VIDEO 4 and HDMI 2.

She'll be 96 in August and Plot knows he shouldn't get all crankypants about this minimal stuff. But the cable modem at World Headquarters was out this morning so he was on hold with Comcast. You understand his righteous ire.