Welcome to 10 Years Ago!

I got a smartphone.

You're thinking, pfft, big deal, I get a new smartphone every time my contract renews, blah, blah, big deal.

But no, this is a big deal.  It's my first smartphone.

I'll give you a moment to stop laughing.

I like to think of myself as current, up to date, one with the new-fangled gizmos.  I love technology - we have several tablets, multiple computery devices, and high speed internet.  But then I remember that I'm mostly a crotchety old lady who would prefer it if you stay off my lawn.  I have to face the facts that my children probably know more than I do about the latest technology, or at least we're coming to that crossroads very, very soon, and there's no turning back.  But that's as it should be.  One day, they will be exasperatedly trying to explain how their new hover board works, and I'll be all, back in the day, we had to use our legs to get from place to place, and that's the correct order of things.  Doesn't mean I won't appreciate new things (where is my jet pack already).

You totally want to pat my head and say, Sweetie, the smartphone is not a new thing, don't you?  And you would be absolutely correct.  I admit I have be stubbornly hanging onto the notion that I could get by in this day and age without one, but that's only part of the equation.  I am also unbearably cheap and didn't want to pay for it.  This is news to exactly nobody: I hate spending money.  Aren't you glad you're not married to me?

However, I have coveted a smartphone for years.  I just couldn't pull the trigger.  I had a super cheap cell phone that did the bare minimum.  I had a small tablet I could keep in my purse and use whenever I needed it.  I even had an iPod I could slip in a pocket to use as a camera.  Didn't all these things do the job of a smartphone.  Well, yes.  And not exactly.  And it all made my purse really heavy.  Plus, it got really annoying watching my dad upgrade to the latest phone over and over and use it as... a phone and not much else.  I knew I could do I better job as a smartphone owner. (Hi, Dad! Love you!)

What was the breaking point?  If I have to pick an impetus, I would say it's an upcoming excursion in which 14 of my closest family members will be traveling together and need to be able to find one another when we're spread out doing various and sundry things.  But that's just part of the picture.  As my kids grow and get more involved at school and in extracurricular activities, so am I.  And how does the school communicate?  How do the other parents communicate?  Through texts and tweets and status updates that I apparently need to read (in the midst of all the other detritus on the internet) (including this) (but certainly not including you - you are the most important part of the internet, yes and truly).  I've been missing out and falling behind.  Do you know how much easier  smartphone would have made my being Girl Scout cookie mom? (Yes, I was cookie mom.  Or rather, Cookie Czar, if you please.)  Soooo much easier. 

And so, after much exhaustive research (exhaustive for my husband who was so tired of my hemming and hawing), I bit the bullet and got my own handy dandy handheld talking computer machine.  And for grins, old Hub got one, too.  Now I can pester him with texts and pictures all the live long day.  Aren't you glad now, Chris?

If you've made it this far, I hope you're at least giving me a slow clap for finally joining this century.  Heck, I give one to myself.  My super power is procrastination.

That said, I'm on the lookout for text buddies.  I'm pretty sure my husband will figure out he can turn off his phone pretty quickly and I'll be out of luck.

Blurred Lines

I enjoy social media, I do.  I use it for what it is named - socializing, talking with people I'm not able to see in person, making friends, keeping up with far flung family.  I love being able to stay connected this way.

But I have a problem with social media seemingly becoming a requirement in life.  Specifically, Facebook.

"Mommy, my PE teacher says you need to take 3 pictures of me eating healthy meals.  You're supposed to post them on Facebook."

I get that Facebook is a great tool for sharing information, but this feels like the lines are getting blurred.  We all have different sides to us - the work version, the parent version (perhaps), the parent-of-school-kids version (also perhaps, just for example), the friend version, the private version, and we don't always want these to mix (how many of us really want our bosses checking our posts, really and truly?).  Also, there is no law that says I have to have a Facebook account, much less use it to help my kids submit homework.  I don't have to have one.  And even though I do, I want to keep my use of social media for social purposes.

Perhaps that's a naive vision, given the way society is moving.  But I just think it's a dangerous game and an extremely fine line.  Some years ago, Sammy's teacher and I developed a personal friendship that came back to hurt me when we disagreed over his treatment in class, and that was without internet intervention.  I try to keep the parent teacher relationship in a bubble now, at least until the teacher isn't my child's teacher any more (them all bets are off, as some of these people are so awesome and I really do connect with them).  So I hesitate to open a door to another part of my life to people with whom I basically have a business relationship (albeit a friendly one).

I feel as though I'm not expressing myself very well and perhaps I'll upset someone reading this, but that's not my intention.  It's not that I have anything to hide (because if I did, I certainly wouldn't be posting it for the world to find).  I'm just not comfortable with boundaries getting so distorted. 

I'll take those pictures, but they'll be printed out and sent to school the old fashioned way.

A Tale of Two Interfaces

I’m going to admit something. I just cannot bring myself to like Facebook. Sure, I use it to keep up with far-flung friends from the past and to check out pictures of everyone’s kids, but I don’t use it use it. I forget to check it regularly, and it bugs me that I can only go back so far before it tells me there are no older posts (only a week’s worth, really?). And don’t get me started on the games and ads and other mumbo jumbo that gets stuck between actual updates from people I care about. I understand that social media has become another, and highly prominent, means of promotion and advertisement, but it still bugs. In fact, although I love contests and coupons and all ways I might save a little moulah, I refuse to Like anything for the sake of Free. And there’s the issue of there is a LOT going on on Facebook. I mean, I wonder if anyone has accessed WOPR through Facebook (come on, somebody get that).

In my mind, most people are either Facebook folks or Twitter folks. Yes, of course, most of us do both, but come one, if you really think about it, don’t you favor one over the other? For me, it’s easily Twitter. Short, easy, to the point. Small bites I can keep up with. Can’t get too overwhelming with 140 character nuggets. And even if a Brand (Capital B) gets into my stream, I can breeze right past it.

I don’t know. When you boil it down, they’re a lot alike, and yet, I gravitate in one direction. Actually, that’s somewhat surprising, seeing as I am the most indecisive person in the known universe. Seriously, my preferences for Twitter and cereal for breakfast are about the only definitive things about me.

There’s no real end for this navel gazing, so I’ll just ask the question: are you Facebook folk or Twitter folks, and why?

Visions

In the midst of our latest bout of computer terrorism (somehow, we must have acquired HAL's cousin for our PC), my dad and I were swapping components around to test things out. This pissed off HAL's cousin quite thoroughly, and it fought back. As Dad plugged in the power cord, I watched and he felt the electricity arc and shock the heck out of him. Twice.

The result (as far as I can tell right now, but you never know what else come to light): 2 blown monitors.

So off to the big box of geekdom we trekked, and thankfully, I got lucky, finding 2 very decently priced units that fit in the cabinet space I have, no problem.

I hooked Sammy up with his new monitor, and you'd think I just gave him the golden ticket into Fantasyland. He just sat there glassy-eyed and whispered, "Thank you, Mommy, for my new computer." You got it, little man.

He's probably updating his secret blog right now.

Get Off My Lawn

I am a creature of habit. I am also quite sure this comes as a surprise to exactly no one in the known universe, and most everyone else. Once I establish a way of doing things, I like to stick to that routine. Order is good. Change is the devil. I’m working on that, but really, change is the devil.

My son is already exhibiting signs that he has inherited this particular portion of my DNA.

There has been much computer stress around here of late, but I thought I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Everything seemed to function normally for the past week or 2, and I was slowly migrating and organizing files (a compulsively happy little tasks to us order junkies). But then software does as it does, and today I was forced to upgrade to the 2007 version of Seattle’s finest, even though I was quite content beck in 2003 or 2002 or maybe 1998, I don’t know. I knew how to work in that year, how to navigate, how to finagle, how to be. I am now in foreign territory.

I’m quite aware I’m well behind the times (I do have a calendar that I can read the 2010 on), and that I probably have to turn in my techie card (if I haven’t already for admitting I don’t have an iPod), but I really don’t care. I was fine with the evil I knew, and now I have a whole new kind of evil. And this evil don’t look nothing like the old one. Oh joy. I’m not really enjoying the forced facelift.

This is but a small gripe, and over time, I’ll learn, but for right now, this moment, I’m embracing my inner curmudgeon and crabbing about what was so wrong in the first place and why can’t they just leave well enough alone. As if I don’t have enough curveballs thrown at me on a daily basis with this whole parenthood thing.

Back in the Saddle

A brief update on the chaos that has been going on around here as of late.

The Computer Saga, Part I Lost Count: God Bless My Dad. I swear, this has been a pain in the everything. We tried to save the original hard drive, no go. Then he brought me a computer with a brand new hard drive, which I promptly screwed up by installed too old software. This led to complete reformatting, flowing by 2 brand new drives, and the third time I had to start over linking e-mail, setting up bookmarks, and installing all the software. To say I am tired of geek work is an understatement. But it’s working (now, cross your fingers), and I’m finishing up the software uploads, so all that’s left is the tinkering (meaning which photo of my delightful children do I choose as my wallpaper – oh wait, they are incapable of taking a decent photo together, so that shouldn’t take too long).

The Hub Turned Old!: During my sojourn, the Hub had a birthday. I won’t go into specifics on his age, but it’s up there. At least, older than me. It’s a comfort to me, really. I threw a party in his honor, which included a menu that was 90% meat. (The other 10% was cake.) I think everyone had a good time, expect my dining room, which somehow got coated in chocolate frosting. Thank heavens for Oxyclean is all I can say about that. I wasn’t too thrilled about the food fight some of the kids started – with plastic and wooden toy food for maximum damage – but at least it was in the garage and was halted as soon as it began (thanks, Mom, eternal warden of the family – you’re good).

Frozen Tundra: It snowed for 24 hours yesterday, and it looks like the Swedish Chef went crazy with the buttercream frosting all over everything. I do not live in Canada. If it didn’t make the kids so happy, I’d think it was a sign of the Apocalypse. Then again…

And let’s just take a moment to appreciate Sabrina’s artistic prowess…

On her toy box.

Technical Difficulties

The computer is down. Repeat, the computer is down.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I started getting nastygrams from my computer about the hard drive going bad and to backup and replace immediately, if not sooner. Well, that has snowballed. I did everything I could to prep for a hardware-ectomy, but it's looking more like a lobotomy is in order. My personal technical support, my dad, tried to do a simple backup and restore to a new drive (I know, I just lost some of you, sorry), but it's never that simple in this house, and by the end of the day, the computer was in pieces and Dad was muttering something about taking everything to a wood chipper.

I'm so sorry my dad has to go through so much frustration every single time the computer in this domicile goes wonky. And it takes wonky to new levels. I wholeheartedly believe that this house has a ghost. And it is a ghost who hates technology. A computer that works absolutely perfectly in any other building under the sun - I mean it hums like a finely-tuned Corvette - will roll over a play dead the nanosecond it's pulled into a socket in my home. We always - ALWAYS - encounter at least a handful of complications (and not a dainty, ladylike hand - we're talking Wookie-sized paws here) that would send the Geek Squad crying to their dungeon masters (I know, cheap shot, apologies). I cannot tell you how many times the word Reformat has been uttered, and then executed, followed by numerous hours of me reinstalling, remembering access codes and passwords, and cursing under my breath.

It's time for an exorcism. Seriously, I'm thinking of having a priest over for dinner and casually asking if there are any special prayers or incantations or something.

So thanks, Dad, for all your help. I'm looking forward to the next iteration your computer building prowess to go up against our tech-averse spectre. And getting all my files back (I get a little antsy since every picture I've taken for the last 5 years is on those drives - backed up, of course, but still, away from my controlling mitts). Perhaps I'll light some incense or burn some sage of something for the install.

All of this is to say posting may be sparse until I have my actual machine up and running again (this one's a loaner). Please feel free to recite a mantra or cross your fingers or something to make sure this works out with minimal frustration for all parties.