What's that for again?

This past Saturday I found a bag, from my phone company, with a book in it, on my doorstep. I brought it inside to ask my wife if she wanted to keep it. After I took a quick look at the size of it, my wife threw it in the recycling trash bin. We have not used a phonebook in years. I found myself wondering why does the phone company still go to the trouble of publishing and delivering phonebooks? I'd gladly let them reduce the price of my basic local only phone service in exchange for not wasting a tree. Yes, I still have a land line, I'm old school that way. For some reason I get annoyed when people call me on it. One of the things that caught my eye with the phonebook is how much it has shrunk in size. especially the yellow pages. This it the first time I remember the yellow pages being smaller than the white pages. Now for the confession: Saturday evening came and it was getting close to bedtime. My wife and I kept hearing the intermittent chirp of a car alarm across the street from our house. We did not recognize the car and did not know which neighbor to bother to ask if they knew who the owner was. Wanting to get some sleep, I decided to call the police non emergency number. Our computer was already shut down for the night, so I found myself fishing the phonebook out of the trash to look the number up. I called and quickly found that you have to use a land line to dial 311. The police arrived and found the owner. I ripped the page out and put the rest of the phonebook back in the trash. Thank you AT&T.

Technoholics Anonymous

I recently have been pondering weather we as a society have become increasingly addicted to technology. This idea has been spurred by recent observations of tech around me. I have a son that is almost 3 and he loves to play with my Ipod touch. I have downloaded about 10 preschool apps along with a couple of preschool videos. My son has enjoyed all of the apps that I have downloaded for him, but he has also become curious about the other apps I have. He has recently discovered the app Tap Tap Revenge 2 and loves the Stroke 9 song Tap Tap DomiNation. Somehow he has picked up on the words tap tap and he says "play tap tap". He has also become enamored with the Star Wars light saber app. His fascination with these apps have made me worry that he's too young to be into these types of things and that he'll turn into a video game addict. Also, when he asks to use my Ipod, he calls it a Mypod. Hey, I thought I was a part of the "me" generation. It's pretty scary to watch him navigate through the Ipod. He has figured out how to do pretty much everything except sending e-mail. Check that, I apologize if anyone on my contact list has gotten e-mails with the following text: apowiehjnadshfasfj. I still have yet to teach him how to use spell check.

We use technology so much in our daily lives, that we now don't know what to do when it's not available. On my way home from work (I was coming from a construction meeting from a local fruit based company), the guy sitting next me was multitasking between his 2 Iphones and his Ibook. I'll overlook his addiction since he works for the company that makes those products. I also heard a story about the long term affects of Hurricane Ike in Texas. This June, Texas is about to experience a mini baby boom. Hurricane Ike caused power outages in certain areas of Texas for a number of days. I guess since people were not able to use their everyday tech, well... you can connect the dots. Let's just say there will be about twice as many babies born during the first part of June in the region.
So whats the solution? I'm not sure, but maybe we need to start support groups to help wean ourselves off of tech. A sort of 12 step program for geeks. Step one: Admit you have a problem....
With that I'll leave you with a link to a YouTube video about Facebook. http://rhettandlink.com/videos/#facebook-song

To much information

Over the past week our country has been bombarded with news about the swine flu. Oops, I meant H1N1. I don't want to offend any swine. On one hand I agree that we need to know about virus outbreaks than can become pandemics, but I also feel the media got a little carried away on swine flu updates. I understand how a virus can spread so fast with the globalization of our world, but the virus I'm more concerned with is the media frenzy of both information and misinformation. All of this media over saturation is enough to make you sick. Not once did I hear the mainstream media report about the hundreds of normal flu related deaths each day in our country during each flu season.
Over the weekend, I caught a cold from my son. At one point, I felt bad enough to look up the swine flu symptoms to make sure I didn't have it. Luckily I don't, but I still can't explain my craving for bacon. I'm feeling better now, but am not looking forward to the next headline of bad news to send the world into another information pandemic. "Just in an outbreak has been reported of dolphin flu spreading across west coast beaches".