When Technology Attacks

I have a love/hate relationship with electronic technology.  I love and appreciate the advances that have been made in the world, and I use lots of technologically savvy stuff every day.  But I hate learning the new stuff, and if I procrastinate, it seems that when I finally break down and learn it, something new immediately comes along to replace what I have just learned.  And I am married to a technology addict.  I know it’s a common thing for men to be into electronics and the latest gadgets and all of that, but I think our house is exceptionally up-to-date on the electronic gadgetry, especially when it comes to computers.  My problem with it lies where the technology becomes more of an inconvenience than it is a convenience.  I have a few examples I will share:

1.  Hi-Def Tv – My husband will sit and flip channels in the middle of a show just to try to find the hi-def version of the show.  Of course he doesn’t choose to do this during a Chicago Bears game or something he is inclined to watch.  For those shows, he will actually think about it ahead of the show’s start time.  He’ll sit and flip looking for high-def while I’m watching something, during shows like Dr. Phil or pointless reality shows.  I know, these are dumb shows, so I shouldn’t care about missing them.  But if I’m going to sit and watch something, then I want to watch it, I don’t want to miss any of it, otherwise I’m wasting my time.  So, if I’m watching Dr. Phil, and hubby comes over and tries to find Dr. Phil in hi-def, I might just miss the backround of a guest’s story and not know what is going on for the rest of the show.  Like I said, it’s not like we’re talking about high quality tv here, but who needs Dr. Phil in hi-def anyway?!?

2.  GPS –  I cannot tell you how many times our GPS guy has gotten us lost.  Yes, we have a GPS system in our car with a male voice – he was on sale.  I’ve always thought I was pretty good at navigating; pretty good at being a human compass and learning the layouts of strange cities and towns pretty quickly.  In the years before we had GPS (and kids!) we used to travel by car A LOT, and I was always our navigator.  I’d like to think I got us out of more than a few scrapes with just my sense of direction and an atlas…  But my past experience gets me no where compared to the GPS guy.  He has taken over.  My husband will insist that we follow Mr. GPS’ directions, even while I’m saying they don’t make sense.  For one thing, he’s led us into a lake before, literally.  Well, luckily common sense did prevail there at the last minute…  my husband stopped the car before he drove into the lake, but he was tempted to trust Mr. GPS, and drive into the lake, I know it.  Maybe it sounds like I’m jealous of Mr. GPS, but I’m not, really I’m not.  I just suspect that he might have it out for us, or that he is a practical jokester who gleefully directs us into predictaments just to see how we get out of them…  Kinda sounds like a dumb sitcom – tune in each week to see how we maneuver our way out of whatever mess Mr. GPS has finagled us into this time…

Don’t get me wrong – I do appreciate all the technology most of the time, in a way.  If my husband weren’t so into all these things, I wouldn’t have all the cool gadgets that I have, and I would not know how to use anything, including my computer probably!  But how ironic is it that this post has been sitting in my drafts for weeks now, not getting finished, just because other things kept coming up that I wanted to write about, so I wasn’t getting a chance to finish it.  But how ironic, that today when I went to tangents.org, I got the following message about learning new technology?!?  If you don’t hear from me for awhile, I’m just procrastinating learning the new “back end” of tangents!

Well my friendly bloggers…  I have some great news that is going to make you all very mad!  Yes, you read that right.  Tangents will be updated with the latest versions of the blog software by next Friday and as soon as today (whenever it is released).  Why will this make you mad?  Because the backend you have worked to learn is going to look significantly different.  But don’t worry!  You have the basics down.  Once you take a few minutes to get used to the new layout you will be comfortable again and blogging on Tangents.Org will be better than ever!

Lisa