Miscellany: Easily Amused

It's weird how even an incremental upgrade in your daily routine can lead to dumb astonishment. I used to deposit checks via ATM, which required a tedious series of actions on my part - endorse the checks, put the account number on the back of the checks, calculate the value of all the checks added together, put in the deposit envelope...

Now, though, they have these newfangled ATMs where you simply slip in the check directly - no muss, no fuss. When I fed that first check in, and saw the scanned image of the check staring back at me from the ATM, I actually said, "Wow." As if a photo scanner with OCR technology weren't available in every copy center, office supply store, and Best Buy in the country.