I love technology. But I hate how much it can control my mood. Examples:
- My laptop won’t turn on. I’m frustrated*.
- My laptop is frozen. I’m frustrated.
- The internet won’t connect. I’m frustrated.
- The internet is TOO slow. I’m frustrated.
- I forgot to charge my MP3 player. I’m frustrated.
- My heart-monitor watch battery is dead. I’m frustrated.
- The digital photo frame is frozen again. I’m frustrated.
- The universal remote is not working**. I’m frustrated.
- My cell phone won’t make calls. Or allow me to text anyone. Who cares…?
My cell phone decided to die out on me today. It wouldn’t work this morning, and now it won’t turn back on. This is probably the only piece of technology I should actually care about (since it could be useful in the case of an emergency)… but I don’t. I hate talking on the phone, and have a work BlackBerry if I really had to use it for an emergency.
But it made me think – I don’t like how impatient technology has made me become. I want things now now now. I always expect things to work. I get moody when they don’t. Should something inanimate control my moods? Probably not. But they do. That’s something to work on.
Update: Technology hates me. I got home and the garage door opener in my car and the keypad wouldn’t work to let me in the house. Ha. I think that might be because someone was messing around with the fuses though…?
*Frustrated can be interchanged with “pissed off” and “furious” in all of these examples.
**This could possibly be user error.
Just be thankful you understand all this technology; today your Dad and I got to eat subs with Christina and one of her friends from her evening class. As we were eating everyone started to show photos they had on their phones. I don’t know how to do this but I knew I had interesting photos on my phone that you kids have sent me. I asked your dad to find them for me and he said I had over 83 pictures on my phone of the inside of my pocket! That is crazy. I laughed out loud when you wrote the garage door opener didn’t work. Love Mom
mom – Ha ha! Were any of those photos scandalous? 😛 Steven was installing some dimmers in the house, and that is why the garage door opener didn’t work. Of course, I wrote this post on the train, so I didn’t know that! I was just like, “what the…?!”
I’m the same way! Thankfully my husband is a wonderful “computer geek” so when technological things break I just call him over. Some days I bet he wishes he didn’t know so much.
I also hate talking on the phone and screen all my phone calls. I’m also notorious for letting my phone battery die. Drives my husband crazy.
Erin – I rely on my husband as well! He gets angry too, but knows how to fix things 😉 I am SUCH a screener. It’s bad. When a new number calls me, I never answer. And if they don’t leave a message, we’ll that’s that!
All frozen tech and no worky make Kim a MAD GIRL!!!
We just need the image of Jack Nicholson busting through the door with the axe from The Shining but with your head Photoshopped over his to complete the mental imagery.
My cell phone recently stopped ringing. Suddenly my voicemail notification will go off, without me ever hearing the phone ring. But the caller did. Quite annoying. Maybe we still do need landlines.
kapgar – Hey! That would be pretty accurate. You know me too well 😉
Cheryl – That happened to me this morning (Steven fixed my phone). I think it is because I don’t get reception in my building. Could that be the case for you?
Some days it’s enough to make me want to go up in the attic and find my old electric typewriter, and then I remember, I gave it to my kids in the 90s to play with, so it probably has Play-doh stuck in the keys.
Lately, one day a week I don’t even turn on the computer until just after lunch. Though I always did, I find I like writing in longhand even better when it’s on a “no internet” half-day. Now, let’s hope my clients don’t read this. They might not understand that my respite actually makes me MORE productive.
Even low-tech tech can make me crazy – yesterday I unplugged the bread machine instead of the toaster (both white cords) and we had funky smelling dough two hours later.
I love technology, too, but I get frustrated easily when things don’t work as expected. I’ve gotten more patient with this over the years, but still quick to utter a four-letter explicative just to keep myself in check.
Lisa Romeo – Thanks for stopping by 🙂 I should try that half-day. Sometimes I don’t have time to be on the internet on the weekends, and that always feels refreshing!
martymankins – Me too. The cursing has got to stop!
I was without a cellphone for 3 days last week and I did not miss it a bit. I was one of the last people I know to get one and only because work finally forced the issue. I liked people not being able to get in touch with me when I was out eating dinner, shopping, or whatever. I am not a big phone person anyway so maybe that was it. The only thing I did miss was getting my CNN and TVGuide updates sent to the phone, I had to go look them up LOL 🙂
There was a great video I saw recently of a guy (I think on the Leno show?) talking about a flight he took in which another passenger was complaining about how slow his Internet connection on an airplane flight was.
“Internet. On an airplane.” the guy said.
“Think about that – that’s *brand new*. We didn’t have the technology last year!” And he went on to give other examples.
I couldn’t agree more, and posted my own list… Things like
* 8 years ago, nobody had a robotic vacuum cleaner (Roomba).
* 10 years ago, most of us were on dialup, unable to view the movie that inspired the post.
* 15 years ago, people still commonly made pay-phone calls.
* 25 years ago, almost nobody had Internet access at all, the U.S. Internet backbone ran at 56k (the speed of that now-worthless modem most of us were on 10 years ago!), and nobody was using it the way most people do today.
And so on… I agree, technology has made people impatient and quick to take our techno-baubles for granted (including me)…
Felicia – Isn’t it strange how EVERYONE has cell phones now? Even my young nieces do. What the heck? Why would they need one? I sometimes wonder if I need one. I barely use it!
E – I saw some video that talked about stuff like that and how fast it’s advanced! It kind of relates to how some of the most in-demand jobs now didn’t exist 10 years ago. Times are a changin’. Makes me wonder what’s in store for US in the future!