High Tech, Low Tech, and On-line Afflictions

I’m obsessed.  I want to know everything.  I’ve hunted for her favorite recipe for Moose stew.  I spend hours on my computer searching for footage.  I want transcripts.  YouTube moments.  Because I couldn’t write the stuff that comes out of her mouth.  And I write dialogue for a living. 

She is…special. 

My husband Gary has pointed out that she is our first Reality Television Candidate. 

I believe my husband is on to something.  Her qualifications would be more appropriate for the television show: "The Amazing Race".  For those uninitiated, Wikipedia explains the show on CBS to be: “a reality television game show in which teams of two people, which have some form of a preexisting personal relationship, race around the world in competition with other teams.”

No matter what you think of her run for the Vice Presidency, there is no denying that she and the First Dude (that’s more fun than Todd, isn’t it?) would make an excellent “Amazing Race” team.

For geeks everywhere today is the day we finally see the device we have all been talking about for the last year. For the last week I’ve seen prediction pools where you get 1 point for each correct answer. Seven or ten inches? Verizon or ATT? Stylus or finger?

All these questions and many more will be answered today at 10am when Steve Jobs strolls on stage in SF and announces to the world the product many of us didn’t think we needed in our daily life.

I’m the tech guy for all my friends so in recent weeks they have turned to me and asked what I think will be announced. “No idea what it will do or how it will work,” I reply, “but I’m saving my money because I’ll order it on the first day.” No computer company has made a tablet anyone wants, but then again no one got a phone right until Steve Jobs pulled that iPhone out of his pocket.

It happened suddenly.  One minute we were together, touching, my hands on his body, as close as always, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, signs of dire distress.  It sounded like a heave or a deep sigh.  But I heard a click in there somewhere as well.  Something more than the whirl of a distant fan.  I heard danger.  I heard Mac’s finally gasp.

And then, after four years together, nine to ten hours a day, seven days a week, for all 52 weeks of the year – half of those trying to work, the other half simply searching together for answers – it was over. 

Lately, he was the first thing I reached for in the morning after my husband, who gets up early, was gone.  I pulled him off the table and woke him up from his sleep.  I demanded that he bring me the New York Times.  That was always the start.

I have a curious on-line/tech dependency on my husband. I do not have an iPod – therefore I am totally dependent on him at times (on road trips, for example) for “his” music choices. His daughter tried to fix this for me and loaded some of my favorite albums onto his iPod which was very nice of her but his songs still outnumber mine about 50 to 1. I do not have an Amazon account. That’s not true – I do have an Amazon account but I can’t ever seem to get it to work. I am constantly emailing him links to things (books, mostly) with a plaintive email that says, “Pls buy this for me. Thanks.”

I am, in fact, a hopeless on-line shopper. Every time I shop on-line something goes wrong. It doesn’t arrive. It is the wrong size. I thought I had success the other day on E-Bay. I bought four curtains for a house we’re presently renting as there were no curtains in the office. The ad said in its headline: Two Sets. For the record, "Ms. eBay Retail Offerer" a set is two curtains. So I thought I was buying four panels which is what I needed. In fairness, the somewhat complex paragraph I checked after only one set of curtains arrived, said two panels, but the headline was completely deceptive and, of course, her ad said, “Final Sale. No Returns.”

I am also somewhat tech-deficient. I don’t have a Kindle (but I don’t really want one.) I don’t have an iPad (about which I’m somewhat more ambivalent.) I do not have a GPS and my relationship with Siri is fractious at best. But my husband bought me a FitBit a month ago. Let’s not discuss the fact that it was an anniversary present (read: jewelry preferable) but for a moment I felt free. I actually had a device that synched to my computer that was just about me. It told me how many steps I took each day. He thought it was remarkable that I could collect 10,000 steps and never leave the house but other people who know me and know that I can’t sit still for very long didn’t think it was that strange.