I started out to write a diary about aging and technology, but I seem to have gotten side tracked just a bit. I told my wife that it seemed to get a life of it’s own and go off in a different direction. She fired back, “Noooooo it’s because your old and forgot what you were doing”. I’d like to think she’s wrong, but she has me wondering.
Years ago, I moved back to my parents house for awhile. Along with me came my computer, which should not be a problem, right ?
WRONG, oh so WRONG !!!
My poor old techno phobic dad almost had a massive melt-down over the idea.
He was sure his eldest son, with his evil computer, would find a way to burn down the house. You’d have to know my dad, to appreciate how much fun this was… mom and my little sister had to threaten him with divorce to get a color TV.
Now, all these years later, mom has a laptop, and is busy E-mailing, Skyping, and Face booking with her friends… and it’s driving him bat-shit crazy.
I’m no where near the technophobe my dad is, but I have noticed, that as technology moves faster and faster, I move slower and slower. Where I used to embrace it, I now find myself looking at it out of the corner of my eye, and wondering, do I really need that.
Back in the day, making a phone call was pretty simple. You picked up the receiver, dialed a number, you heard a ringing on the line, then someone picked it up and said “hello”.
Telephones are not that simple anymore…
Thanks to my wife, I am now the proud owner of a Smartphone, it is quite obviously a lot smarter than I am…
It has all sorts of cool gadgets on it. It has a flashlight, which I always forget about when I’m looking around for a flashlight. It also has a compass, and a GPS so I won’t get lost. I can get sports scores, watch TV, listen to music, take pictures, squash bugs, throw ice cubes at a plumbers butt, find lost words, and all sorts of other cool stuff. Hell, I even have my own casino. Which reminds me, I have close to 5 million dollars on the slot machine, I wonder when Verizon will cash me in.
The really neat thing about this is, If I really needed to, I could actually make a phone call. Or better yet ( if I could remember how ) I could text someone. But if I start texting, I’ll have to learn a whole new abbreviated language ( txtspk ).
I wonder why they call places like Face book social media. Seems to me they are more like non-social media… I mean nobody talks any more. They just find silly little things on the internet, aim them at each other, and think they are communicating with friends and family. You also get 8 billion notifications of how well your Face book buddies are doing at Bingo Buzz. My friend Jim, kicked the crap out of a 5 year old on Song Pop, how can you not be impressed with that ?
We have satellite TV, with a couple hundred channels, of which only about 5 are worth watching.
We have a whole bunch of Spanish channels - we don’t speak Spanish, so that is kind of a wash.
We also have a ton of home shopping channels - We are Hall of Fame members of Amazon.com, so we really don’t need them.
Then there are all of the music channels - I have to admit that some of them are pretty good, and we actually listen to them occasionally.
Last but not least, we have the religion channels - my thoughts on this are that “Hell has a special place reserved for the Televangelist”.
Now we come to reality TV. If what I see there is reality, I must be off in the ozone somewhere living in my own little make believe world. I can’t remember the last time I was dropped off, half naked, on an island, and expected to eat worms and lizards.
I would write more, but something really good is coming on the TV, game 2 of the World Series. I got a beer, some chips, and an easy chair. As Sponge bob would say… I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready !!!