As if one special day in a week wasn’t enough it’s MT’s birthday today – 30 July. Can you think why we got married the day before? I bet you can’t guess what the birthday boy got for his present either!
There is so much technology in our house I am getting to the point of being frightened to touch anything. The new boy’s toy is an ipod-touch and I have to admit it’s really wonderful. It’s not just small and slim but it’s a powerhouse of magic. It feels like the sci-fi gizmos of movies I used to watch has arrived in my own living room. MT is of course delighted and now spends hours working out which applications he needs to down load on it so it can do all those useless, useful functions and more importantly games he might play.
I can’t begrudge a hardworking bloke his pleasures but there are increasing amounts of technology that can’t be healthy. Let me just give you a run down of some:
- A home network – the thing that drove the electricians to distraction when they were wiring the house and the thing that nearly drove MT to shoot the electricians
- Wireless music system that also has internet radio – the thing I struggle to get working although it’s quite remarkable that we can listen to radio stations from all over the world
- Computer network that connects the office computer, laptops and backup drive
- Ipods, ipod player and now the ipod-touch which can also now control the wireless music system
- Networked TV so that you play DVDs and watch sky from other rooms – although you can only watch what’s on the main showing as we haven’t splashed out on the multi-room sky box and nor shall we since there are only two people living in this house.
- PDA/mobile phones that probably do all the above things if only I knew how mine worked!
I know I’m getting old as I’m already starting to marvel at how clever all these things are but can’t help thinking is it all really necessary. Surely there must be a simpler way to life. I also have girly theory that all this home entertainment gubbins is made to sound more complicated and fiddly just so the male species can idle off and fiddle with wiring, computer programming and other blokish things.
But since it’s the blokes birthday I don’t begrudge him his fun. My only worry is that with all this equipment we’re going to need one suitcase for clothes for our trip and one full of wires, adapters, wireless routers and heaven knows what else so we can keep up with our usual level of connectivity and on demand technology. And just as I was looking forward to just picking up a newspaper, turning on the tv or radio and consuming news and entertainment in a more conventional way.
Ha, ha, I hear you! Dan’s recently got an iphone and he’s got Charli hooked on a Nintendo. I’m baffled by it all, but the gadgets keep them happy! As for extra baggage – I’ve certainly noticed an increase in ours over the years! We now end up with a separate bag full of cables whenever we go anywhere – oh cripes!
It’s a bloke thing. As Peter works in It and has been able to bring home ‘spares’ the house is a web of cables. When all the boys were at home we had 5 pcs on the network, a bit stressful when broadband here runs at 1/4 mg. And it seems to be vital that everyone (‘cept me) has 2 monitors. When we went to collect Vytas after his 1st term at uni he had already networked all the pcs on his floor (cables taped to door frames). The family like to joke that I’m useless at IT but actually I can do all the things I need to, photos, blogs, the web, documents , charts etc. I have little use for a phone so I have the oldest family cast off just for emergencies. The only time I text is when I’m bored waiting for delayed trains. There just isn’t time for all these gizmos though I do like listening to audio books on my Mp4 player. The most annoying thing is looking for the right phone charger though I hear that this is going to be standardised soon. When I think back to my uni days when I did a course in Fortran and the computer was a room full of machines things have certainly moved on. One of the applications of Vytas’ PhD work is projection of a pc screen onto any surface. Things are advancing so rapidly. I’m waiting for a motion charged mobile phone that you could wear like a wrist watch and not keep losing, now that would be useful.
It’s not *just* a boy thing, because I’m almost as bad as my husband 😉 We have been known to take a wireless router on holiday with us…… and we average 2.5 computers/person at the moment……
Heavens Rachel, you are a couple of geeks. My husband is now very determined to take the wireless router away with us now! JT