I ordered what I always order for breakfast - grits, toast, bacon, two eggs medium-well and a Tab (I realize most people start their days with coffee or orange juice, but I drink Tab, which certainly isn't as weird as some of the other stuff I do.) 

As usual, I went over how to cook eggs medium-well with my waitress. 

"I want the white completely done - I don't want any of it to ooze - and I want the yellow almost done, but not quite. Rather than running, I want the yellow to crawl." 

I sipped on my Tab and glanced through the morning paper, awaiting my breakfast. 

The big story in New Orleans was whether or not the state will legalize casino gambling. I'm all for it. Sin was invented in New Orleans. What's one more? 

The waitress brought my eggs. I knew by looking at them they were prepared incorrectly. The yellow had been left on the heat far too long and it wasn't running or crawling. It was just sort of sitting there, hard as Chinese arithmetic. 

"These eggs aren't what I ordered at all," I said. "The yellow is overcooked." 

The waitress was very pleasant. 

"I will take them back," she said. 

In a very few moments she returned with my eggs and this time they were prepared perfectly. 

"I'm so sorry," she said, "but I punched in your order incorrectly on the computer." 

For a moment, I thought she said she had punched in my order incorrectly on a computer. 

That's exactly what she said. 

"You have a computer that you tell how a customer wants his eggs cooked?" I asked, shocked at the very notion of such a thing. 

"We recently modernizedour kitchen," the waitress replied. 

How long, America, oh, how long are we going to stand for computers creeping more and more into things we hold dear, such as breakfast? 

What happened to ordering breakfast, and the waitress hollering at the cook - a guy named Earl with tattoos on his arm - "Gimme a No. 3, crawling, a side of burnt pig, Aunt Jemimah's, roll it in dough with one of them sissy Co-colers!" 

The breakfast was delicious, but that is not the point here. The point is, I do not want a computer involved in any fashion whatsoever with things I eat. 

Computers have caused me enough trouble losing my hotel reservations, my airplane tickets and payments to the electric company. 

"How was your service?" the cashier asked me when I went to pay my bill. 

"The computer botched my egg order," I said. 

"We've been having some trouble with it," she replied. "Yesterday, it was gone for an hour-and-a-half and came back wearing a tattoo."' 

Hearing that made me feel a lot better.