So, we got a note from the apartment people that they were finally changing out those irritating electronic locks and we'd all be getting new locks and keys yesterday.

And we thought, "Hooray! No more getting home at 10:00 at night and finding out that the battery in the fancy but temperamental high-tech lock had died and we couldn't get into the apartment!"

Sadly, we were faced with yet another electronic lock and yet another mutant key. Looks like something out of 2001.

Time will tell how well these work. They swore that the batteries in the last ones were supposed to last six months each but a maintenance man, when cornered, admitting that that was based on one exit-entry cycle a day. It's like...they thought we'd leave for work at the same minute every day, come home at the same moment, and sit huddled in our apartment the rest of the time, afraid to go out for fear of using up the battery.

Lunatics.

Not everything has to be high-tech. A decent low-tech lock is still a good security measure.

At the time they began making these changes, they claimed they had a concern with security and being able to track who entered and left the buildings, in case of a problem. They advertise "secure buildings" in all the ads for the complex and, indeed, there used to be security. You had to have a key to even get in the building.

But it's been years since they took those off. You can't lock the front, side, or back doors of the building, doors which are habitually propped open and left that way by the cleaners, and the window to the laundry room not only doesn't lock but doesn't latch, so I fail to see how putting fifty grand worth of locks on the apartment doors is going to be that useful.

I miss my old low-tech key. We had a low-tech key and a low-tech deadbolt and they worked fine. No matter what time of day you came home, no matter how often you went in and came out again, they worked.

Of course, I also miss my old neighborhood. When we moved in there, it was a pretty nice neighborhood, but it's gone downhill over the years. I don't know if it's going to come back or not.

On the one hand, there's now a Wal-Mart and a strip club, down around the corner, which isn't promising. And the little mall across the street...no one can figure out how it's stayed open for the last decade, since it lost its last anchor store. It used to have a fairly high-class reputation but now...the biggest store there is an Ace Hardware. Useful but not upscale.

Of course, they tore down the mall on the other corner and now there's a swanky Whole Foods store, so that looks promising.

Still. I like a proper key.

Sometimes I post just for the sake of posting.