Gadgets

Enough with the gadgets!  When did I become one of those people who have to be plugged in constantly?

 

For close to forty years, I wasn’t missing anything not having all the technology we now have.  I didn’t even use the technology available then.  I didn’t have or want a cell phone or pager, if you wanted to reach me, call me at home.  If I wasn’t home, leave a message.  If I wanted to talk to you, I’d call you back, when I had time to talk.  If I didn’t call you back, it was probably because I didn’t want to talk to you, but I could tell you that my machine was broken and I never got your message.

 

Now I can’t leave home without my cell phone, iPod and Kindle.  And if I’ll be gone more than one day, my laptop’s coming too, which also means tracking down the broadband card.

 

It started innocently enough, with the partners deciding that they just couldn’t wait for me to call them back on my schedule, I must be at their beck and call.  So okay, I’ll carry around with me constantly a lifeline to work.  I’m a woman, I rarely have belt loops to attach a holster, so I must carry it around in my hand like a Borg implant.

 

I came back to my office one day to find someone there waiting.  “Where were you?”  “I was in the restroom.”  “Aren’t you supposed to carry your phone with you?”

 

You did not just say that to me.  I consider bathroom time “me” time.  Do you really want to hear me flush the toilet?  What possible issue in claims handling can’t wait two minutes?  I said all that in my head, along with a few other choice expletives.  Aloud, I said, “I’ll have it with me next time.”  Dream on!

 

So eight years with a cell phone, it’s something I’ve never forgotten or misplaced.  I don’t like talking on the phone, I prefer seeing facial expressions and body language.  My friends know not to call to chat, if you want to talk, we’ll meet for dinner.

 

But a year after the cell phone came the business cards with my cell number on them, which they took upon themselves to hand out at a trade show.  What are you people thinking?!?  Total strangers are calling me up at all hours from all corners of the world expecting me to have answers for them on hand!

 

After that little debacle, they were not allowed to hand out my business cards again.  And technically, they never actually said I had to hand them out.  So out of a box of 250 cards bought seven years ago, I have two thirds of a box left.  I’m good until we change the logo or they change my title to President, whichever comes first.

 

I was such a good girl that Santa brought me Kindle xmas before last.  Kindle is my bestest friend in the whole wide world!  She’s my perfect sized mobile library in a pretty red dress.  She can carry lots and lots of books, and we go on so many adventures together.  She entertains me for hours on end, and I love her times infinity.

 

Dad and I got mom her own Kindle for Mother’s Day, and Santa and I pitched in for dad’s this past xmas, so we’ve got triplets!  Mom and I traded Kindles for one long five week period, but it just wasn’t the same.  First of all, she only had five books on her, only two of which I wanted to read, which took less than a week.  I had to resort to paper books for four long weeks!  Oh, the horror!

 

You laugh and say I’m silly, but really, once you go Kindle, there’s no going back.  Go ahead, I dare you, prove me wrong!  Paperbacks feel like college textbooks in my hands, and I have to remember to turn the actual page instead of tapping the margin.

 

This past xmas, Santa brought me a gift card to take Kindle shopping.  Kindle had already been spoiled all during the year and had an overabundance of toys to play with.  During the drive home from Daingerfield, as I changed CD’s for the eighteenth time, I decided to finally buy an iPod.

 

Along with the iPod came all the other stuff they made me buy: two speaker docks, one for home because I can’t walk around with earphones, one for work because I can’t walk around with earphones; the plastic cover so when I drop it, and I have, and I will, it won’t break; the car adapter because no one told me about the MP3 plug that’s supposed to be there, and now that I know about it, I can’t find it anyway; the earphones that don’t feel like stones grinding in my ear, for those times between home and work and the car.  Wow, I am that just-born sucker!

 

The phone is always on me, Kindle is my always faithful companion, and my laptop is rarely off, but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of this additional piece of gadgetry I just spent a fortune on.  I leave it at work at least once a week, then worry all night that it won’t be there in the morning.

 

Now wouldn’t all of it just be simpler to keep up with and simpler to lug around if I had a phone that was a Kindle that played my music that let me play games and write too?  You’d think.  My phone can get KindleReader, so technically I could read books on my phone through my Kindle account.  But in reality, I have a hard enough time reading text messages on it, a novel would drive me insane.

 

I can also download music on my phone, but the sound is terrible at best.  And my phone is nowhere near large enough to hold my music library.  And isn’t that iPod Shuffle button just the greatest thing since Kindles were invented?

 

With the push of one button, I get Michael Jackson being bad, then Brad Paisley’s online persona, then Nickelback’s four-foot weeds, then Elvis Presley begging me to love him tender, then Will Smith saving me from the worst scum of the universe, then Donny Osmond crooning about puppy love, then Collective Soul bleeding, then Tangerine Dream on the beach with Lily, then Michael’s back chasing that smooth criminal.

 

For the most part, I can leave the laptops and broadband card at home.  You’d think I could do with just one laptop, huh?  But no, I have a work computer, which is 32-bit, and a play computer, which is 64-bit.  Since we only have 32-bit at work, we only have 32-bit VPN, not 64-bit.

 

Do I sound like I know what I’m talking about?  I really don’t, all I know is that I can’t connect to work from my play computer.  And the work computer is wayyyyyy too slow for play.  So the broadband card gets shuffled between the two, rarely in the computer I just turned on.

 

I recently borrowed my mom’s netbook to test it out, as I’m thinking of getting one, because apparently two laptops still aren’t enough.  I must have a work computer, a play computer, and a writing computer.

 

Alright, that’s just too silly for words.  I’ve just talked myself out of it.  I’m writing this on a perfectly good laptop and it’s not causing me pain or inconveniencing me in the least.  So that’s it, no more gadgets.

 

Although that iPad is looking pretty promising …