Technology was supposed to make things better, right? Then someone explain what is now the biggest epidemic: security questions. Follow me here. I had logged into my 529 site to pay my son’s college tuition, so my mood wasn’t pleasant to begin with. Plus I was in a hurry. I was late leaving from work.

I guessed my name and password. But then the site told me they were upgrading the security and I needed to complete security answers. Thirty minutes later I was on the verge of throwing my laptop against the wall.

The idea, one might think, is relatively defensible. You have three sets of questions to choose from, and then answer them as they are correct to you. But since it’s a joint account, I need answers that my wife would know, too. And instead of asking something simple like “what’s your name?” the exercise was decidedly preposterous.

Here were two of the first four questions: “Your childhood best friend’s first name?” And, “Your current best friend’s first name?” Generally speaking when I’m trying to retrieve information from a website that has my money I don’t like a computer asking me questions. Isn’t that what HAL did in “2001 A Space Odyssey”? And asking about best friends 45 years ago doesn’t improve my mood much.

After thinking about it and choosing the name John, I had to type the answer twice — which wouldn’t seem difficult except the letters were replaced with asterisks — something called “masked passwords.” So you type but can’t see the letters. This may shock the nerd-guy who creates these rules but when you can’t see what you are typing mistakes happen. And when mistakes happen I get mad. And when I get mad I write columns.

I finished and got this message: “Security answers must be at least six characters.” News flash. In 1964 everyone’s name was short — Gus, Joe, Tom, Kurt, Bill, Alan, Marty, Tim. Nobody on the planet had names like Hunter or Jeremiah or Alexis.

I came up with something and moved on.

The next round included questions like, ‘What hospital were you born?” followed by, “In what city did you honeymoon?” The last set of questions asked me, “Who is your favorite athlete?”

And, “What’s your favorite hobby?” Who has time for a hobby when you have to answer stupid questions like this? By now I was just picking one and typing things like “who knows,” “who cares” “get me out of here.”

I clicked on “enter” and got this message: “Your second security answer and the retype of your second security answer do not match. Please retry.”

So I have a solution. Fire nerd guy and let me come up with the questions for people like me who can’t remember what we did last week, not to mention a honeymoon that was 26 years ago. Here they are:

• Where were you when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon?

• Where were you when President Reagan was shot?

• Where is the nearest pharmacy to your house?

• What day is the senior discount at the grocery store?

• Where is the comfort shoe store?

• What theaters have matinees?

• Why haven’t your children had grandchildren yet?

• When was your last bowel movement?

Bill Gates — call me on the landline.

Pretty much every Friday I enjoy the same routine. I load up Bernie and take her to Red Bridge Kennel for her cut and color. About two blocks from our destination, her tail moves with a force capable of disrupting the Earth’s rotation. When I park and open the car door, she dashes down the stairs to the kennel and waits for another door. When opened, her feet spin on the linoleum floor like Barney Rubble. To bring joy to someone who brings you joy — life has few equivalents.

But a week ago Friday was different. Instead of driving four miles east we traveled 200 the other direction. The time had arrived for Bernie to gain redemption in my hometown. You see, 11 years ago, the last time she entered Barton County, things, well, didn’t go so well. No sooner had our family pulled into my parents’ driveway and we opened the mini-van, Bernie was exploring my parents’ backyard — rich in vegetation with a large lake on the north side of the property. Bernie had darted into the backyard and discovered a hen mallard and her nine baby ducks. Two minutes later there were eight ducklings. Lori dispatched scolding, harsh language and other discipline. And that was just me.

Now I was taking just one passenger. Just before I backed out of the driveway Lori stepped outside. “I guess this is our future. You, me and her” — nodding in the direction of the backseat companion. “Yep. See you Sunday.”

Hollywood loves the outdoor dogs — Lassie, for instance, was famous for running in from the country and then holding a pose for the camera. You never saw him perched over an air-conditioning vent gasping for cool air or getting a blow dry at the kennel. Harold Ensley’s dog Country Squire was the canine equivalent of Michael Jordan for us growing up: Adept at plowing through heavy brush to hold a point on a covey of quail and then retrieving the game once downed. A Wheaten, especially one raised in Leawood, is not at that level. So this trip was fraught with hazard.

Our ultimate destination wasn’t my parent’s house. It was 800 acres our family owns 35 miles south of Barton County — Rattlesnake Ranch — named for the creek that runs along the northern-most edge of the property. It is home to two fishing ponds, a cabin and pastoral confines across the road from Quivira National Wildlife Refuge —named after an American tribe Indian that lived in the area when Coronado visited in 1541.

We pulled up early afternoon Friday at the Snake, and Bernie instantly went on a sniff hunt for Bigfoot. It was a rare occasion where she was unconstrained — no cars, fences, streets, other dogs or baby ducklings. She got busy, and I did too. In no time I had three poles out, a folding chair filled, cheap cigar, cold beer and a disabled phone. Experts say that meditation results in changes in brain activity — with a focused attention to internal experiences. That was my feeling — total tranquillity. As the fish were hitting, the quail were sounding off, the shadows grew longer and no one was asking me for money or car keys. I drifted into a transcendental state.

And then Bernie showed up on the dock. She was intensely curious about my worms, eyeballing my minnows, honing in on stink bait in my tackle box and barking loudly with every fish that splashed its way to the dock. She found her way around my poles, lines, hooks and came close to knocking over my beer. I went from Maharishi to Clark Griswold.

Time to move, I said. I grabbed a pole and we walked to the south pond. That’s when I turned to the west and noticed what froze her — roughly 20 large heifers gathered at the fence row, maybe 30 feet away. Bernie tried to bark. It was like her throat closed halfway through the delivery. I was very entertained. I reached down and rubbed the top of her head: ‘It’s OK Bernie.’ Cue the tail wag.

An hour later we were joined by my dad and older brother Tim. A bonfire followed with brats, more beverages and more fish. At dusk the sounds of coyotes filled the air as temperatures cooled, winds calmed and the grill blazed. Bernie found a spot on the concrete porch and entered her own transcendental state. And life was very good.

My wife handed me the photograph. Her expression was a foreshadowing of what awaited me. “We found this in the tub too.” The tub was a large collection of pre-digital photographs Lori had been organizing. I grabbed it, moved to the couch and sat down. It was a photo I took at Cub Scout Day Camp, with second-grader Thomas McCord, standing with his father, Dan. That summer I was the cubmaster for Troop 3096, Day Camp coordinator and chief photographer.

It was June 2001. Our son Robert had finished second grade. Thomas was his classmate.

The day before camp, it rained three inches. Johnson County was in a flash flood watch. No matter — camp was on. For some moms, this was their first introduction to Scouts, and they had their index finger firmly on the panic button. Moms were asking — “Is it safe?” “Are the campgrounds flooding?” “Are you crazy?” And that was just my house. On that Monday morning, as our bus pulled out of Nativity, Indian Creek at 119th Street and Mission Road was over its banks, which forced a detour of the bus route. Moms who sat in their SUVs as the bus made a sharp left had an urgent need for smelling salts. The next two days we got two more inches each day. Camp Naish — thick with trees and heavy vegetation — became the world’s largest mud playground.

The McCord/Keenan tandem’s introduction to inclement weather was just beginning. We returned to Naish in July a couple years later for Webelos camp when the temperatures peaked at 106 degrees, a record high. The maternal panic button was, once again, engaged.

Robert and Thomas played on various teams. In sixth grade someone politely asked, correction, ordered, me to coach the CYO basketball team. This was the castoff team — the rejects from the A to D teams. I loved that class, those boys, but particularly Thomas, whose sweet disposition made him a favorite with pretty much everyone who knew him. But I was partial to him for another reason — he was on a perpetual growth spurt — settling at 6’2” in eighth grade.

This didn’t surprise his mom, Therese — at birth he was just a few ounces shy of 10 pounds and was over the 100th percentile at every medical checkup. “He had enormous feet from the time he was born,” Therese said. My whole family gave him wide berth in the pews at church because when he stepped on your toe you felt it. They finally stopped growing in ninth grade at size 15 . His football cleats were special-ordered and freakish looking. His flip-flops were like boats.

Through all these adventures Thomas coped with juvenile diabetes, diagnosed in first grade. You never really knew it, except for those times when he self-administered shots.

Thomas and Robert were teammates on a baseball team that played in Blue Valley and, yes, they knew that coach too. We won a few, lost a lot more, and along the way had lots of pizza and pool parties where supposedly one parent broke out a Speedo.

But Boy Scouts was the thread that connected all those years, tracing the trajectory from adolescence to adulthood, and they were rich with memories. At Bartle they spent time carving weapons, chasing skunks and hanging out in exclusive tent enclaves. The rest of their time they wasted.

In October, while a sophomore at K-State, we lost Thomas. He died from diabetes complications at age 20. His funeral included photos depicting a life full of adventure, including many of his days as a Scout. To Dan and Therese, the photo of their son as an Eagle Scout is no doubt among their most treasured, but I have my own.

We miss you, Thomas.

And I’ve always loved fast food.

In the early ’70s, any visit to a large city necessarily included a stop at McDonald’s. And when the day arrived in 1972 when one opened in Great Bend, it was bigger than a contemporary IKEA arrival. Even then, we were infrequent visitors in part because it was packed all day, every day. Plus mom hated fast food and loathed the notion of spending money when she was serving chipped beef on toast with mixed vegetables. But the dam broke in 1975 when McDonald’s rolled out a contest that remains unprecedented even by today’s marketing standards. If you could sing all the ingredients to the Big Mac, in order, in less than three seconds, you got one free. A laughable proposition today — some brat would lose in a disputed finish and his dad would file a class action.

But this was the ’70s. In that decade Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were planting the seeds to change the world. I had more practical goals: a free Big Mac. I remember very distinctly the day we happened to corner the manager and give it our best shot. Kid brother Marty crushed it. I transposed the special sauce and lettuce and got pure humiliation. Recently I read that more people today can name those ingredients than can recite the Ten Commandments.

So my partiality to fast food has continued. When our boys were toddlers, on Saturdays I would take them to the fast food trifecta on Metcalf and 119th Street — where Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC are all in one place. There I would eat three of the four food groups: a Burrito Supreme, a four-piece original recipe meal (extra biscuits) and a mini pizza. Other beloved hangouts — Captain D’s in Mission, especially during Lent, Don Chilitos, and my favorite, the White Castle on Metcalf, where an aroma of grilled onions still wafts in the adjacent airspace. One time at the Big 8 tournament in Kemper, I ate a funnel cake chased with a supersized Dr. Pepper. I didn’t know BMI from BMA. I was skin and bones.

And then I hit 50 and my metabolism vanished. Someone shot me full of air. The CVS robot kept calling me. I needed new belts. Probiotics, active cultures and anything else Jamie Lee Curtis was selling took on relevance. Lori started pushing blueberries, blackberries, brain foods, super foods, natural foods. When channel surfing sometimes I would watch infomercials for food blenders and colon cleansers. Tomatoes got into the act.

I rallied. I had regular checkups at the blood pressure machine at Wal-Mart, while staring at the stacks of Depends. Dermatology found its place — with Lori checking my discolored freckles: “Get that looked at. Plus that one. Call my doctor.”

And the news last week about the Mediterranean diet made my day, week, year. It would be cliché to call it a game changer so I won’t. But it was. It dominated the media and happily pushed sinkholes off the front page. It also flabbergasted the pointy headed organic food know-it-alls. Greek yogurt has been jamming our fridge for years now. But Greek food? Best known to me by Tasso’s and its acclaimed drink Ouzo.

Central to the diet is wine. The study encourages seven glasses of wine a week. A continuation of now compelling evidence of the health benefits of wine, this gave me the ammunition I need on a nightly basis. Merlot, Pinot, Burgundy, Cabernet, all to ward off strokes, heart disease and help lead a happy, healthy life. Goodbye, Jared. Hello, Robert Mondavi.

I had gone 54 years and 39 days before anyone had uttered to me what my barber said to me last month.

I was sitting in the barber’s chair at JD & Jake’s in Martin City, getting my hair cut, enjoying the sports page, and my mind was in a care-free zone most parents rarely get to enjoy. And everything came to a screeching halt when he asked me the following question: “Do you want me to trim your eyebrows?”

My brain skipped. My heart fluttered. My throat tightened. My eyes crossed. I looked up and I imagined a series of life events, running together like the Coke Zero ad — babies born, birds flying, leaves rustling, water splashing, people shouting, bulls running, and the check-out lady at Price Chopper repeating to me over and over: ‘paper or plastic?’ When I snapped out of my funk, Jake was standing in front of me, staring above my eyes, waiting like Edward Scissorhands, ready to pounce.

Everyone else in the barbershop seemed interested in my answer — even the toddler who had stopped playing with his Hot Wheels. This was not a moment for Q&A — like, “What?” It was decision time. “Uh, no thanks.” He moved on to my sideburns.

I returned to the sports page but the question never left. My worry list was plentiful and didn’t need any additions. For him to suggest that my eyebrows needed a weed whacker means I’ve been, well, blind to the issue. My brain trolled the database of people with eyebrows that had work done — trimming, waxing, shearing, or even fake ones that fall off, as happened to Ron Paul during a presidential debate last year. I always thought bushy brows were an endearing feature — like those adorning the eyes of Ted Koppel, Andy Rooney, Regis Philbin and Vincent Price.

Body language experts say eyebrows represent a huge part of the facial expression matrix — anger, confusion, dismay, even joy — all but the last one I was experiencing at that moment.

“The barber asked if I wanted my eyebrows trimmed,” I said to Lori when I arrived home. I was off kilter a tad but she was surprisingly tone deaf to it all. “You should have said yes. You have some long ones. They could use some attention.” My daughter chimed in. “Dad, OMG yes.” Bernie cared nothing of the bush-brow crisis du jour. Besides, she had her own hair issues.

Who knew? Who cared? Who declared a crisis?

I went to the bathroom and tried to get an upclose look. It was hard to do so without readers, which I refuse to buy. I squinted and got a sense for things. Generally speaking, these kinds of inspections are the domain of dermatologists and absolutely no one else. My face, my eyes, my bags — my skin resembled an asphalt road with too many salt treatments. The Mars rover Curiosity beams back more appealing images. The brow had some issues, no question. There were some grand-daddies in the mix. I briefly looked for a clipper to maybe, just maybe, do some trimming but stopped on further reflection.

It may sound strange to ask this but when you are my age and have a hair that has never been cut — how old is it? Fifty years? Forty? Like my own personal redwood tree. I admired those hard working buddies and pondered how many times they had to flex over the years. Moments of joy, sadness, confusion, anger. Amazing! When needed, they were there. Cutting them down? No chance.

If this is the first time you’ve ever read a column about a man’s eyebrows, you probably have lots of company.