How do you do it?

I am relatively new to this blogging thing. I have been around the Internet in one incarnation or another since the advent of BBS’s. I remember the old days when you would dial up to play those crazy space trader games and stuff. Boy did I think that was cool. I would play for HOURS!

Then came 14.4 dial-up, whoa now that was sweet! You could call a phone number and tie up your phone line for hours as you tried to surf the Internet…

We steadily climbed the ivory Internet tower to 56k Modems, then once DSL or cable modems came..whooey then you could really scream with 10-base T.  Now they have Gigabit cards that really move stuff and you can get bonded T-1 Lines for a decent price, and just a few months ago my postage stamp sized lawn in front of my terribly overpriced house was torn up and a box with fiber optics was stuffed in the ground. Now I can get some SCREAMING speeds if I want to pay for it.

I have a house with a personal network that hooks up to my TIVO, the computer, and I have a wireless network that serves a laptop, and I can actually surf the Internet form my brother-in-laws Sony PSP. Yeah… one of those little tiny hand held game things… It is nuts! If I had an X-Box or PS3, I could hook up those too.  My parent company builds circuit boards you put in vending machines that allow you to hook THOSE up to the Internet so that parents can see if their kids are buying candy at school… talk about crazy!

I remember the rotary dial phones.. we had two.  My best friend was on a “party line”, now THAT is old! then wee jumped to the buttons that would tick the needed number of times, then onto touch tone.  Cell phones were expensive!!! I remember standing in line for Depeche Mode tickets, and having some girl there with this HUGE brick phone that was trying to call into Ticketmaster at the same time she was trying to buy the tickets in person. I remember thinking how rich she must have been to have a sweet bag phone like that.

Then came beepers for us folks that couldn’t afford cell’s… for $30 a month, we could get people’s phone numbers on some stupid box. I remember we had “codes.” some numbers were from girlfriends calling to tell you they were thinking about you… a number with a 911 at the end meant call FAST! and There were other ones too… like 1134 meant call a certain buddy to find out where the party was that weekend. (upside down it read hell.)

I remember my first cell phone… the plan was CRAZY expensive for like an hour of minutes.  Now for half the price I paid before, I have texting, (I have no idea how to do this,) Instant messaging, (again, no idea how to use this,) Internet access, (ditto) and music download capability…..Oh yeah, and an FM radio. I JUST NEED A FRIGGIN PHONE!!! Seriously, I have no idea how to do anything but make calls from my phone…that has a color screen…that I can actually watch television shows on.

So we come to the evolution of writing… I remember some on-line journal places in the early days… I must have started 20 of them. Then came websites. (I have 3, and no idea how to make a decent website.) And…Now blogs.

I have been told time and time again throughout my youth, to keep a journal for my kids. I start it, and I write about every 3 years, only the problem is that I get all nostalgic, and then I start getting serious, and then I start writing things that I never want my kids to read, so I stop.

All this technology, and some people are really good at using  it. Me, I suck at it.  Seriously, I am terrible. All this technology, and I hate it. It is supposed to make my life easier, and all it does is introduce more stress and anxiety into my life.  I have even gone so far as to look up those sites on the Internet on how to go buy a place in the mountains and live off solar power and stuff… I can’t seem to find enough time between my Internet surfing, Instant messaging, Cellular phone call receiving, video game playing, emailing, and MP3 downloading to write in my blog.

What the heck was wrong with journals, letters, and rotary phones… I guess then, I was too busy building tree forts, playing outside, hucking pine-cones at my friends, and running like a maniac through the back acre to write anything then either.

Who invented time anyhow?