Friday, June 25, 2010

Who are you again?

This whole "digital age" thing is great. Really. No, that smile's not fake at all. Its great. Hey, it pays our bills. It must be great.

I love having like six different email accounts, most of which cannot (or should not) be combined. Work, home, writing, the spam-catcher. The other spam catcher. The super-secret spam catcher. I can't get to the home email from work, and can't get to the work email from home. And the Yahoo email (the one I've had since the early 90's) is half spam catcher and only half works from either Work or my Netbook (small screen resolution vs big ads). Facebook is a twice-a-month activity for me. Hubby hasn't bothered yet.

And calendars. The paper one on the fridge. The paper one in my purse. Outlook on my laptop. Outlook on hubby's desktop. Outlook in our individual work accounts. Calendar apps on Hubby's iPod touch. Google calendar. And the best part is that there is no single calendar or calendar app that my husband and I can share at the moment that can actually go everywhere with us. I cannot take a PDA to my desk at work (or a cell phone, or any other electronic device), and internet access there is spotty, controlled, and monitored (hello Big Brother).

I can (usually) connect to Google, but since I don't have any sort of smartphone or PDA, I can't see it at home. I can get online at home, but computers are to small children what bug lights are to mosquitoes. That Windows startup chime will draw a 3-year old to my lap faster than the word ice cream. Check email? Check Facebook? Read or type a single sentence? Not without two more hands (2 for the keyboard, 2 for the child).

And then there are those old-fashioned ring-y things called phones. I have one at work. It has a curly cord and no caller id, and is attached to my desk. If you call it while I'm sitting at my desk, we can talk. If you call it and I'm not at my desk, you must leave voicemail (there is a little light that sometimes blinks to tell me about a message...or at least it used to). My cell phone is turned off during the workday, and buried in my purse while I'm at home (not intentionally). The home phones work great. We even have an answering machine. And caller ID. Few people ever leave us messages though (most of the calls are from charities asking for money).

Texting? Yeah, I've heard of it. My phone kind of does it, though I pay PER TEXT sent or received. My husband's phone does not text.

Funny, even though there are like 1000 ways to talk to people, I still have as little time as ever to actually do any of it. Divide 5 free minutes a day by 50 different devices/accounts to check, and its no wonder I miss stuff.

Digital age? Lovely. Wonderful. Joyful. Its bringing the human race closer together. Or so I have read in the newspaper.

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