Technology – can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

I just coined that original phrase last week as we’ve been dealing with a number of such issues at the office.

When I first joined The Times in 1983, I was using an electric typewriter. When I broke that one, I brought my own deluxe electric model from home. When that one broke, we were just beginning to transition into the computer age.

My, how times have changed…

But whether it’s typewriter ribbons or web servers, the technology of the day always seems to break down at some point or another.

Computers are great and all – and they have in many ways made our jobs easier and more efficient – but when they break down you’d think the world was near collapse.

The past couple of weekends we’ve experienced some Internet hiccups, as those who like to frequent our homepage may have noticed.

I won’t even pretend to understand it, but two weeks ago some of our equipment gave out, forcing us to change the way our Internet “stuff” is housed and stored. Those trying to visit www.fhtimes.com or perhaps send a letter to the editor using the form on our homepage were prevented from doing so.

By that Monday most things were back to normal, though we still had some internal bugs to work out.

And once you reached our homepage, the address line may not have said “www.fhtimes.com.”

This past weekend another glitch caused those trying to reach our home page to be directed to another Internet site we own, which likely caused some confusion out there.

That issue basically rectified itself by Sunday.

Between those lovely technology-related episodes, we had a friendly visit from the Fountain Hills Rural/Metro Fire Department and Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

Last Wednesday we started smelling an electrical odor – kind of like burned plastic – in our offices, but there wasn’t any haze or smoke.

You can’t take any chances in those situations, however, especially because with vents, crawl spaces, attics, etc., there could be a fire somewhere not readily visible.

The fire guys from Station 2 on Saguaro Blvd. did an awesome job checking everything out – even using the nifty thermal heat sensor camera – but found nothing.

We suspected one of the air conditioning units all along, however, and our intuition proved correct.

Something was definitely “melted” up on the roof when it wasn’t supposed to be…

Our upstairs offices were quite toasty late Wednesday and throughout Thursday, but by Friday morning we were back in business.

So if you were impacted by any of our computer issues or my smelly body odor, I certainly apologize.

All I can do is rely on computer guys and more deodorant to get us through these tough and sweaty times.