Geek Out

I'm typing this right now on an Apple Powerbook 15" with its RAM upgraded to 512K. I'm listening to a song I bought from the iTunes Music Store - "The Sound of Settling," by Death Cab For Cutie, in case you wondered - and it's being wirelessly streamed from the computer to my household stereo (there are speakers in most of the rooms) through our Airport Express. When I ultimately decide to post this entry, it will first go to the wireless router downstairs, then to the high-speed modem, then out to wherever the Blogger servers are via SBC DSL. Oh, and I spent the better part of today playing with my new cell phone, which can now send and receive photos, videos and MP3s to and from my laptop, wirelessly of course, via Bluetooth technology.

How did I become this way?

Ordinarily I'd die before playing into the hands of a cliche, but I cannot deny the fact that I am a young male with a technology fetish. It sneaks up on you, you know? First you're getting a universal remote control that will work on your tv, vcr and stereo, then you're rigging up X10 modules all through your house so that you could conceivably, for reasons unbeknownst to anyone, dim the laundry room lights remotely from the garage, and the next thing you know you're standing in the electronics section of Target, explaining to your wife that a 5.8GHz phone system will not only provide valuable expandability and range, but will also avoid interference with the Internet reception in your house, as with, say, a 2.4GHz system. Yeesh.

You're hearing these words, like bandwidth and bluetooth and burr-brown D/A converters, coming out of your own mouth, and fighting the urge to give your own self a deeply-deserved wedgie. I mean, c'mon: it's Consumer Electronics, for the love of Mike. This stuff is *supposed* to be easy to use. Why do I get such euphoria and deep-seated personal pride when I merely get it to actually work?

*****

I spotted a book yesterday in Target - right before hitting the phone aisle, I believe - by John Kabat-Zinn, called "Wherever You Go, There You Are." I happened to flip to a chapter about "Voluntary Simplicity," and the myriad benefits to be had from simply *being in the moment,* doing one thing at a time so as to stay fully engaged in whatever activity is going on in your environment. It seemed like a pretty good idea.

I could use some of that elegant starkness, I think. In fact, let me just skip the track here on the stereo ... yeah, there we go ... and set my phone on vibrate ... alright ... and see if I can't do some kind of Google search for a Mac OSX-compatible mindfulness downloads. I'm sure I'll get it figured out.