When cell phones with cameras first came out, a married couple I know took their new phones with them on vacation.

When they arrived at their destination, they spent the first 20 minutes or so taking pictures of each other sitting on the hotel room sofa and testing the phones by sending the photos to each other.

They thought it was great fun right up to the day they got the phone bill -- as each picture traveled the two feet from his phone to hers or vice versa, they were billed $6.

They would have had more fun for less money pumping quarters into a slot machine.

The reason they spent that 20 or 30 minutes wasting money isn't that they're unintelligent or technologically inept. It's that the instructions for operating the phones were so confusing and so poorly written they didn't have time to figure it all out before they left on their trip.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty fed up with "technological advances" these days.

Especially when the written instructions are provided in five or six languages, none of which is English.

Oh, yes, there is a section of the instructions that is labeled English.

It's just not the English we're all (somewhat) familiar with.

Often, it's a direct translation from English into another language that has been translated back into English by someone who is not a native speaker of English, or who is a native speaker of English but doesn't know a comma or a semi-colon from a hole in the wall.

It should come as a surprise to no one that the instructions are unintelligible.

Factor in that the original document was probably written by the engineer who designed the product, or worse, someone who's had the product described to them in detail, but has never tried to use it by following the directions, and it gets much worse.

Here's a passage from the software package we use at the newspaper. This one, at least, appears to have been written in English by a native English speaker. As you'll see, that isn't necessarily a guarantee it makes sense:

"Users running Mac OS X will notice a few changes in the appearance and operation of release 3.4. Mainly, version 3.4 is carbonized. This means that it runs native in OS X and takes full advantage of the Aqua user interface, and other feaures of OS X."

Well, no wonder I'm having trouble writing my stories ... it's not me, it's my carbonized software.

The "clarification" about what carbonized means leads me to believe the color blue or water is involved, which, I'm sure, isn't true and has nothing to do with it, anyway.

All I can do is shrug my shoulders, slap my forehead and mumble, "Why didn't I think of that?"

One of the ironies of unintelligble instructions is that they mostly come attached to products with options we don't need and never use.

For example, Krups makes an $80 toaster with a digital window that counts down the number of minutes or seconds left until your toast is ready.

It doesn't change the time it takes to make the toast, which might be somewhat useful.

It only tells you there are 38.5 seconds left until it's ready, which, if you can tell time, you could probably figure out on your own, assuming this knowledge would somehow add to your quality of life.

To me, it's just one more clock that has to be reset for Daylight Saving Time or in the event of a power failure. I wouldn't be surprised if it comes with a remote control.

Anyone who needs another remote control device in their home, please raise your hand.

I didn't think so.

My worst technological nightmare came true last fall when the newspaper bought a new camera for me to use.

In the box was the camera itself; software to install on my computer; a DVD of instructions that will assist me in learning how to operate the camera in a "mere 80 minutes"; five or six cords (or more) for attaching the camera to other electronic stuff, although not necessarily the ones we actually need; an instruction book of nearly 400 pages in three languages; a tripod; and a remote control.

The camera takes wonderful pictures.

We're not sure how well it works for video, since I haven't yet been able to quite figure out how that works. I can take the video, but so far can't figure out how to play it back on my computer and use it on our Web site.

Periodically, I drag out the instructions and take another crack at it.

That's how I discovered the viewfinder is adjustable through 180 degrees, an option I had thought was entirely useless. The instruction book says this is useful if "you wish to include yourself when recording with the self-timer."

Perfect.

Now I can record my face turning beet red while I'm trying to figure out how the camera works.

Technology wins again.