I'VE HAD a tough time with modern technology lately.

John, a buddy of mine, was supposed to get back to me recently with the answer to a question, but I never heard anything from him.

After a day or so, I sent word to him by another friend, who left me the following message: "John said he sent you a text message with the answer."

Now "text" to me is written words on paper, so I waited for the mail to arrive and looked in my box. There was no letter with a message.

Unable to reach John, I called my friend the messenger and told him that I had checked the mailbox and there was nothing from John. He just laughed.

"John sent you a text message on your phone," my friend said. "Check your phone."

That seemed odd, but I did what I was told. I hung up and started looking at the kitchen phone on which I had been talking. I saw nothing.

I went into my office and picked up the phone there, but there were no words on that receiver either. What was going on?

I have phones in three bedrooms, so I took a look at them. Nothing was written anywhere.

Back to the kitchen I went and checked that phone again. Nothing. I even unscrewed the mouthpiece on the receiver and looked inside. No text message there.

Maybe those words were too big to squeeze through the wires and into the house so I walked outside and looked all about the box that brings the wires inside. I saw nothing written anywhere.

Finally, I just gave up. If John had sent me a text message it must have gotten lost somewhere en route. So I just called someone else and got the answer to my question.

I think that was a better solution because I don't want writing on my kitchen wall phone. That would look pretty tacky.

A few days later, I was having lunch with a couple of buddies and we were discussing the baseball playoffs and how some of the games came on TV at inopportune times.

"Just program your DVR," one of my buddies said.

"I don't have a DVR," I replied.

My friend was stunned.

"You need a DVR so you can watch the games at your convenience," he said.