Friday, February 18, 2005
Finally figured out how to post pictures
It took a hour that I didn't have to waste, figuring out how to post pictures to this blog. They aren't where I want them on the page, but I don't have time to work that out right now. At least now I have don't have to embarrass myself by sending pictures through the U.S. Postal Service.
Making the Transition
Ok, it's been nearly four weeks, and I just remembered I have a blog. Mainly because four people, in four different parts of the world, have asked me to "send" them pictures of the family. This reminded me of my dinosaur status. Send, not meaning get some extra prints from the drug store and put them in snail mail. Send, meaning upload them somewhere and then send the URL or whatever to find them. Those same people have done their part, sending me four different web-photo-hosting sites, that I had to sign up for, to view their pictures. [I need a phone book (electronic, of course) just to keep up with the hundreds of logins and passwords.] So I figured I could learn how to put the pictures on my blog, to keep it simple. The only downside is that then people might actually read my blog.
Who has time to blog, when you've got to answer emails and cell phone calls, download stuff, and when you have time, bring home bacon, fry it up in a pan....yes, I'm really dating myself now.... clean up all bacon-associated messes, and never, never, let him forget he's a man... I digress.
I've been transitioning the past few weeks from my humongous desktop at work, to a lightweight, megapowerful laptop - that I can take wherever I go. It has a wireless card which connects to systems and the web at home and at work. I can take my work, keep up with my email, calendar and contacts, update to-do lists for both places, and it fits into my big purse. This "convenience" enabled me to stay up past 1:00 am twice this week, fulfilling otherwise impossible requests of my boss and a local elected leader - after picking up kid, heating a home-cooked meal, and catching up with hubby on pressing house business. I was a hero at work and home kept running. This convenience is challenging my already shaky capacity to set limits. But now that I'm in, I've got to make it all work to my advantage. My goal really is to create more quiet time, while getting the same mind-boggling quantity of high-quality things accomplished. If all this getting up to speed can't do that, then I'm going back to the stone age.
So as I sit here on a Friday afternoon, contemplating my exhaustion, and the list for the week is still unfinished, I ask myself why I am taking time to blog. Perhaps it's a cry for help. But who has time to read it? I'm going away for the long weekend, to a place where no internet connection exists, and hopefully my cell phone will be out of range.
N
Who has time to blog, when you've got to answer emails and cell phone calls, download stuff, and when you have time, bring home bacon, fry it up in a pan....yes, I'm really dating myself now.... clean up all bacon-associated messes, and never, never, let him forget he's a man... I digress.
I've been transitioning the past few weeks from my humongous desktop at work, to a lightweight, megapowerful laptop - that I can take wherever I go. It has a wireless card which connects to systems and the web at home and at work. I can take my work, keep up with my email, calendar and contacts, update to-do lists for both places, and it fits into my big purse. This "convenience" enabled me to stay up past 1:00 am twice this week, fulfilling otherwise impossible requests of my boss and a local elected leader - after picking up kid, heating a home-cooked meal, and catching up with hubby on pressing house business. I was a hero at work and home kept running. This convenience is challenging my already shaky capacity to set limits. But now that I'm in, I've got to make it all work to my advantage. My goal really is to create more quiet time, while getting the same mind-boggling quantity of high-quality things accomplished. If all this getting up to speed can't do that, then I'm going back to the stone age.
So as I sit here on a Friday afternoon, contemplating my exhaustion, and the list for the week is still unfinished, I ask myself why I am taking time to blog. Perhaps it's a cry for help. But who has time to read it? I'm going away for the long weekend, to a place where no internet connection exists, and hopefully my cell phone will be out of range.
N
Monday, January 24, 2005
Dinosaur Evolving
I feel like such a dinosaur. I literally live and breath communications, yet I know little of the new technologies. I thought I was doing something when I got an email account in the nineties, and then committed to not only owning and activating, but also responding to the calls on a cell phone several years ago. They keep adding new technologies that are supposed to make life "easier". I can attest to it being faster maybe. I don't know if being tracked down whereever I am by anyone who wants to find me makes my life easier. It does seem to inspire staying out of trouble and doing what you're supposed to do. I guess there's virtue in that.
Tell me again why I would want to have 5,000 songs on a little thing that I wouldn't even find at the bottom of my purse? Who can listen to 3 of those songs, before someone is ringing your cell phone or sending you an email that isn't really time-sensitive, but they expect an immediate reply because they know you received it immediately? Here's one more interesting paradox: all this advanced communication is less private, more intrusive, yet less personal. My dear friend from college sent me her whole wedding photo album from some website. I was grateful and delighted to be able to vicariously share in the wedding that took place thousands of miles away, but I'll probably never see her again. I remember how my girlfriends and mom rushed over to my house to see the newly printed photos from my wedding. What's more, they were actually at my wedding. I feel I'm slowly becoming desensitized to human contact. Why bother to brush my teeth or do my hair every day?
I'll admit it. All the new innovations and possibilities are exciting. They are stretching people like me, who are used to slow change, out of our comfort zone, into a whole new reality. Stretching creates flexibility, which creates more possibilities. Hopefully(?), I'll be one of those dinosaurs that adapts to the changing environment, and thrives as a modern beast.
So here's my first ever blog - for whatever its worth.
NMRich
Tell me again why I would want to have 5,000 songs on a little thing that I wouldn't even find at the bottom of my purse? Who can listen to 3 of those songs, before someone is ringing your cell phone or sending you an email that isn't really time-sensitive, but they expect an immediate reply because they know you received it immediately? Here's one more interesting paradox: all this advanced communication is less private, more intrusive, yet less personal. My dear friend from college sent me her whole wedding photo album from some website. I was grateful and delighted to be able to vicariously share in the wedding that took place thousands of miles away, but I'll probably never see her again. I remember how my girlfriends and mom rushed over to my house to see the newly printed photos from my wedding. What's more, they were actually at my wedding. I feel I'm slowly becoming desensitized to human contact. Why bother to brush my teeth or do my hair every day?
I'll admit it. All the new innovations and possibilities are exciting. They are stretching people like me, who are used to slow change, out of our comfort zone, into a whole new reality. Stretching creates flexibility, which creates more possibilities. Hopefully(?), I'll be one of those dinosaurs that adapts to the changing environment, and thrives as a modern beast.
So here's my first ever blog - for whatever its worth.
NMRich
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