Things were getting out of hand. I had phone numbers scribbled on everything from the back of my hand to the inside of the refrigerator. The only appointment reminders I ever got were phone calls from people wondering where I was. My Post-It notes had Post-It notes.

So I went out and bought a copy of Macroturf’s Lookout 99. What a difference it made in my life! And I thought things were out of hand before.

Once I got the program installed, it was time to re-enter my information. I started with the Lookout calendar, which I was delighted to discover comes with its own set of assumed recurring events. The good folks at Macroturf, apparently, know that all of us have a staff meeting every Monday at 10 am, and reserve the third Wednesday night of each month for quality time with our families.

Lest we forget, all appointments automatically set off an alarm. Five minutes before any scheduled event, your screen goes black, then blue. White text informs you that either Windows has become unstable or you have to be somewhere very soon. This is accompanied by the 1812 Overture played by an orchestra of ambulance sirens.

Speaking of unique musical instruments, I thought it would be nice to be told to take out the garbage every Friday. So I went to the to-do module and set up a weekly occurrence, then found myself looking at a to-do list with 52 reminders to take out the garbage.

Okay. So maybe Lookout 99 wasn’t the best calendar program. At least I could track friends and co-workers with it, right?

I loaded Lookout’s Address Book and clicked the Add button. Up came a dialog box with more fields than Iowa. In addition to entering someone’s name and phone number, there were places to type in their work e-mail address, home e-mail address, secret e-mail address, wife’s name, husband’s name, children’s names, illegitimate children’s names, date of birth, date of death, religion, peerage, undeclared income, buying habits, and whether they are now or have ever been a member of the Rotary Club. Of course, you didn’t have to fill in all of the fields--weight and hair color were optional.

I wasn’t sure why the program demanded so much information, but I dutifully filled out the form for everyone I knew. Then I clicked the Close button and waited as my modem went online. "To best preserve your data," the message said, "a backup copy is being sent to the Macroturf Telemarketing Division."

Since I was online anyway, I decided to check out Lookout’s e-mail capabilities. So I opened up the module and started typing a letter. The great thing about using your PIM as your e-mail program is that you’ve already got an address book. With a click of the mouse, up came every name I’d just entered. Even my mother’s. And she doesn’t have e-mail!

Once I got the letter addressed, I format the e-mail, so that my recipients could see the fonts, highlighting, and graphic effects that define my soul. Lookout 99 offers multiple ways to format e-mail, decreasing the chances that anyone can read your message. I picked "Photo Phinish," which converted my 300-character message into a concise, easy-to-decipher, half-meg bitmap. After a 10-minute upload, Lookout informed me that the Photo Phinish format was not yet supported by any known e-mail programs, although there was hope that it might be readable by the time Lookout 00 is released.

It was getting late and I was tired of trying to master Lookout 99. It was then that I noticed the Make It All Easy button. I eagerly clicked it.

My screen went pitch black, then blue, then black, then blue, as Lookout fired off 57 reminders for such events as St. Gertrude’s Day and the Hoboken Pig-Tossing Festival. Meanwhile, countless dialog boxes reminded me to take out the garbage now or face a corrupted FAT table. The program then e-mailed everyone I know, giving them all of my personal information and advertising other Macroturf products.

There was only one thing left to do. I launched Control Panel, double-clicked the Add/Remove Programs icon, and started uninstalling Lookout 99. After verifying that yes, I did want to uninstall the program, yes again, I was absolutely sure, and no, I wouldn’t submit to a psychological test, the uninstall process began.

Fifteen minutes later, an error message informed me that my hard drive was full and the uninstall couldn’t continue. Apparently, the Lookout uninstall routine permanently stores three copies of the full application inside the Windows Registry--and I didn’t have the free 200MB that the job required. The error message informed me that my only option was to abandon the uninstall, manually remove files from my drive, and start over. It further noted that, until the uninstall was complete, I would not be able to add or delete any files.

Somewhere, I think in the garage, is a Post-It note reminding me to take LookOut out and shoot it.

© Copyright 1998 by Lincoln Spector

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