Tag: technology

Yep, clutter extends to stuff that takes up no real space

So I was reading this roundup article that tells about how people are having problems being DIGITAL hoarders. I suppose this should come as no surprise. I’ve long been overwhelmed by the sheer number of emails, documents, photos and other things I have to keep track of and organize in the virtual world, so it stands to reason that there are people who simply keep all their virtual things.

What’s sad is that it’s tough enough to keep entropy at bay in the concrete world. It takes daily effort to go through my house and constantly sort and throw items that creep into all my hiding places and on top of counters, desks, and shelves. I seem to have almost no help in this battle, though, since my children tend to be squirrels, and my husband would much rather keep pretty much everything, just in case. I’ve mostly broken him of the habit of picking things up at garage sales and (when we lived in the South and people just put old things on the side of the road to get rid of) bringing junk home that other people were THROWING AWAY. But he doesn’t on his own take the initiative to regularly go through things and organize and toss. I’m practically the lone ranger as I fight the onslaught of clutter.

The great news as computers have taken root in our lives is that we’ve “gone green” in many ways, replacing paper documents with e-versions. Sure, we don’t have file cabinets quite as full anymore, but our Yahoo or Gmail inboxes are overflowing. Junk mail that arrives in my mailbox gets thrown right into my recycling can, and then when I go online, I have to do the same thing with its electronic siblings. And as wonderful as it has been to visually document our families’ lives and travels, photos now proliferate in the pictures folder, a cascading wave of so-so shots of wacky faces and blinked eyes washing over the desktop. In this regard, it also doesn’t help that I have a 16-year-old with her own camera who takes it EVERYWHERE she goes and is constantly snapping shots.

So not only do I spend lots of time and energy daily sorting through the pile of paperwork that seems to multiply like rabbits on my literal desktop, I also sit down at that same cluttered desk and face a screen that shows me inboxes and folders full of unnecessary items that ARE SIMPLY 1’s AND 0’s. Even though they are not “real,” not taking up any real estate in my real life, they still manage to plague me as they multiply in my virtual world. There is something fairly satisfying about cleaning out my house, room by room, or one counter or drawer at a time, but the satisfaction isn’t quite as concrete and lovely when I am simply reducing the number on my inbox from 300 down to 230. Nope. But I have to regularly go through everything I own that only takes up space by megabytes and put it in a tiny little icon that says “recycle bin.”

What has this world come to when I have to clean something that, in a way, doesn’t really exist?

Facebook: public place or not?

Facebook has created all kinds of legal dilemmas, for the main reason that no one knows exactly how to pigeonhole it. Is it a public place? A mere website? How do we consider what people post and how they respond to others’ posts? The latest issue arose this past week over how the “like” button is supposed to be considered legally: is it free speech or not? Here’s a little bit more info, but I’m not going to review it all. Suffice it to say that the Internet and just Facebook alone are making legal types a bit dizzy.

Personally, I consider Facebook to be essentially a public forum. This is mostly thanks to the changes FB continues to make to how it shows and shares user information. Even though it keeps telling us as users that we can change privacy settings and other settings of how we see friends’ information and how they see ours, FB’s settings are automatically set to make us share and see as much information as possible. Even the settings that are tweakable are not nearly tweakable enough. I simply cannot make the kinds of restrictions that I would like to make.

Therefore, Facebook is public. I’m not friends with everyone, but it’s certain that I can see a whole lot of what my friends’ friends post on their walls and vice versa. We may not be sitting out on the sidewalk on a busy street, metaphorically speaking, but we are still sitting in a rather large room in a restaurant, let’s just say. People can overhear us and I can overhear others.

F-word, indeed.

I wrote before about profanity and vulgarity in public places, and now I’m going to apply this same stance to Facebook and other online forums. Imagine that you like to share crude and vulgar jokes with friends. OK, that’s absolutely your right. But you wouldn’t be able to do it at my gym, for instance, if you were working out next to me. The gym has rules against using profanity and vulgarity there. I don’t want to work out and hear you saying the f-word a bunch to your friend on the other machine near us. Simple as that. If you want to tell that joke or show that picture in private, like in your car or at home, then great. But not at the gym.

Facebook is going that same direction. Regardless of the settings, which are really, really imperfect and limited, and which change ALL THE TIME, it is still much like the big main exercise room at my gym. I can overhear you. Please try to find ways to share that vulgar stuff with your friends in a more private way that won’t be seen by so many people who probably don’t want to hear/see it.

Unfortunately, my little “rant” here isn’t going to change anything or anyone’s minds. Most of the people who post this vulgar stuff willy-nilly, tagging all their friends, are either young people who haven’t been taught to respect boundaries or other people’s feelings and accuse everyone else of being either prudes or being overly sensitive, etc.; or they’re older people who have never grown out of that immature phase. Mature people recognize that other people have feelings and boundaries, and we try to respect those as much as possible. I just remember my parents telling me when I was younger that “your right to swing your arm stops where your arm hits my face” or something along those lines. We are free to say and do what we want, UNTIL what we say and do hurts someone else. That’s why we have laws against stealing or assault, for example, and why we have basic courtesy. Yes, we live in a free country, but freedom is for everyone, and we simply can’t infringe on someone else’s freedom.

Yep, this all applies on Facebook and other public places online. The courts are going to have to scramble to figure out how to define and make old laws apply in new situations that didn’t exist even 20 years ago, let alone in 1776 or 1787. In the meantime, we as individuals can do our best to show a little courtesy to others in these public places.

Me and my Kindle: why I’m no longer a paper purist

I think there were always two places I loved to smell. One was Baskin-Robbins. My grandparents would take me there when I was very small, and I can still remember standing in front of one of those freezers, not really even tall enough to see through the glass behind which lay the big tubs of ice cream. And for years, I just loved the smell every time I stepped into one of those stores: milky with the overlay of warm fudge and toasty cones and somehow even the scent of the freezers themselves.

The other places that make my nose happy are bookstores and libraries. While graced with similar scents, libraries (and used-book stores) have the tang of age and dust. Bookstores are crisper and fresher, but both just smell like paper and ink somehow. Ahhh. So welcoming and soothing.

So I love the smell of books. I also love how they feel, just turning page after page, whether a new book with fresh, untouched paper, or an old, beloved tome with soft pages that are worn down like Grandma’s bedsheets.

Then there’s just looking at them. My office walls are lined with bookshelves, shelf upon shelf of paperbacks and hardcovers, fiction and nonfiction, classics and newly published, humor and memoir, religious, dictionaries and thesauruses. I love  swiveling around from my computer to cast my eyes on these old friends. Of course, my living room has a wall lined with books too, some of my prettiest ones, matching sets, coffee table books, and a few of my absolute favorites. And my bedroom has a small bookshelf near my side of the bed, with some books I haven’t gotten around to reading yet but hope to. My daughters’ rooms all have lots of shelves, too, with all the picture books, tween and young adult books I’ve amassed over the years. I can walk into any room of the house and feast my eyes on my paper-and-ink friends.

Now. That said, I was resistant to the idea of ebooks, particularly the Kindle. Considering how much I’ve engaged in a love affair with print books for 40 years, the concept of holding a little electronic device didn’t excite me. It was kind of ugly and just seemed rather pointless. And how could I betray my longtime associates, all with their eyes watching my every move throughout my house?

Sadly, that all changed when the Kindle Fire arrived late last fall. It seduced me with its beautiful, sleek lines and full-color screen. Its multifunctionality is what snagged me, I think. I could watch videos on it if I wanted, in larger size than I could view on my iPod Touch. Knowing that all I had to do was take along this one gadget to the gym for my daily workouts and be able to read or watch a movie or TV show, given what kind of mood I was in, was a huge selling point. I’ve been reading books on workout machines for years, and it’s always been awkward, though I’ve managed. Even using those plastic book-holders that slide over a machine’s console has certainly never been ideal. If the book is slim, the pages never get held down flat, and if it’s thick, it’s hard to turn pages. Argh. So knowing I wouldn’t have to use the plastic thingies as often was oh-so-tempting.

I had also started to be lured to the ebook device when reading a very thick novel. No matter where I was, at the gym or on a comfy couch, holding up that 750-page tome to read was sometimes a little annoying. And knowing that there was an alternative … well, I heard that siren call.

So I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas. And I have been using it practically nonstop ever since. It’s so easy to carry around, and I can switch among books easily. (I tend to like reading two or three books at the same time, and having them all in my hand at once makes switching and choosing a snap.) I’ve downloaded a number of classics that, somehow, I didn’t own … all for FREE. Who can resist free books, people?

I love the dictionary feature. I have a very good vocabulary, but there are still some books that offer up words I haven’t heard or am not too familiar with, and on my Kindle, all I have to do to look up their meanings and pronunciations is hold my finger on the word for a second. Up pops a dictionary entry. I no longer have to ignore my curiosity or interrupt my reading to go on the hunt for a dictionary off my shelf; it’s instant, and my reading can continue posthaste. It’s so cool!! I’ve been reading a series set in the 1700s that features some archaic words and location-specific vocabulary, and it has been the neatest thing to look up meanings so easily and quickly. I love it!

Along those same lines, if the dictionary won’t do it, I can quickly switch over to the Web feature and do a quick Google search for a phrase or place or something else I don’t understand or know little about. Quick, easy, handy information at my fingertips. Awesome.

I’ve already mentioned how it’s much easier to read a very thick book on my thin Kindle. It satisfied my hopes in that vein. The Outlander series I’ve been enjoying so much, set primarily in 1700s Scotland (so far), comprises about 8 very thick books. It’s been a lot easier to handle these 700-plus-page tomes as ebooks.

And let’s not forget instant gratification. I thought I’d “try” the first Outlander book on my Kindle because of its length, and I got hooked on the great story and characters. When I finished, I had to know what happened next, so all I had to do was go to the Kindle store and press a button. In seconds, the entire second book was there in my palm. Ahhh. No waiting for a trip to the library or a book to arrive in the mail (because we no longer have a bookstore here in town, thanks to Borders going under). Oh, no. When I really want a book, I can get it immediately. I love that!

All in all, my Kindle and I are very happy together. Sure, it has its downsides. I have to charge it every couple of days, but it doesn’t take long. And the Fire is hard to read in direct sunlight, such as when I’m driving in a car at certain times of day. That’s a problem. And like all electronic devices, I’m sure it’s going to give me a few fits. But even so, I’m still thoroughly enjoying my Kindle. I still love to look at all my books on the shelves. And the series I already have in hardback I’ll still finish buying in paper form, just to have a complete set, or I’ll buy certain books in their standard form for other sentimental or practical reasons. And even though I can borrow some books on Kindle from the library, most I still have to get in old-style form. That’s OK. For now, I like my new e-pal.

Gratitude

So many talks have been given, quotes made into cute signs, and so on about gratitude. I am sure I have absolutely nothing new to say on the topic. Nonetheless, I’d like to take a few minutes to share some of the things that move me and leave me with a sense of gratitude for the abundant, luxurious life I live. I am not wealthy, just fairly middle-class, but I recognize that I am rich compared to so many people across the world, even in our own relatively wealthy country.

First, I am frequently very grateful for the conveniences we take for granted in our first-world life. Aren’t running water and electricity amazing? I love having a climate-controlled home. I don’t like the heat too much, although at this point, I’ve lived 25 years in warm climates where there isn’t much snow and the summers are either very hot and dry or hot and so muggy you might as well be in a steam room. I don’t mind the cold; I like bundling up, but I have come to appreciate not having to navigate around with snow on the roads or sidewalks. I appreciate just being able to go about my business unhindered. So I appreciate air conditioning and heating. When I moved to the South as a 10-year-old from the cold climes of Pennsylvania, I went to an elementary school that still didn’t have air conditioning. I sweated through the first month or two of school (August!) and walked home in a haze from the bus stop to my (finally!) air-conditioned house. Mom would often be waiting with a Popsicle. How sweet and wonderful that was.

And plumbing. To have hot water or cold water whenever we want it, without waiting, without hiking to a well or going outside to a pump. Wowee. And toilets: it’s pretty nice to flush the smelly stuff right out of your house and not have to use an outhouse that always smells (no trips to said stinky wooden shed in the middle of the night either when it’s dark and who-knows-what might get in the way).

Technology never ceases to amaze me. Sure, we’re living in a media- and tech-saturated society, which isn’t always a good thing, but I’m in awe of how much good can be done with what we have. I just think it’s cool if I or one of my children has a question we can just take a quick moment to run to the computer and Google it. When I was a kid, the only immediate sources available were my parents and the encyclopedia. If neither of those all-wise repositories of information had the answer, I was sunk, just stuck with a question and no satisfying solution.

All of these little things are just a sampling of blessings I appreciate on a daily basis. Of course, what matters most to me are my family and friends, my experiences and memories, the things I’ve learned. I have a husband who has his imperfections and little quirks that can make me a little crazy, but he is just overall a kind and unconditionally loving man who has been better to me than I could ever have imagined these past 19 years. My daughters are astonishing in their beauty, their talents, their sweetness, their good natures. I wish I could just sit down and enjoy them non-stop, but my own needs to be alone and do things for myself as well as just the daily needs of a household keep me from doing that. But I do enjoy the moments we have, even the hours, in which we talk, read, play or otherwise have fun and share together. I also have some wonderful friends whom I admire and love a great deal, who I wish could all live on my cul-de-sac and be available all the time for fun and commisseration. There have been many other people who have been kind and good to me over the years, and I hope that any good I do can just “pay forward” in their honor.

Finally, I am grateful for my faith in and assurance of a God in heaven. It is always comforting to know that he loves me and has a plan for my life, in this mortal existence and afterward. I try to live to show him how much I appreciate his goodness to me in so many ways.

Sure, it’s only March, but every day can be Thanksgiving Day, can’t it?