High Tech, Low Tech, and On-line Afflictions

If you have an iPhone (sorry if you don't) and want to take your daily technology coolness quotient to the next level, then you need to pay attention. You won't find silly games or time wasters on this list. These are helpful, and mostly free apps (unless otherwise noted), that will kick your tech life up a notch. 

DirectTV – It no longer matters if you forget to program your DVR. Now you no longer have to miss a thing. This app allows you to set your favorite shows to record no matter where you are in the world. Even if you have multiple receivers.  Search by shows, channel or date & time. It's quick, simple and delivers instant piece of mind.

Remote – Play, pause, skip and shuffle your songs, playlists and album art from your iPhone as if you were right in front of your computer. Works with your Wi-Fi network, so you can control playback from anywhere in and around your home and play it through speakers connected to the network in any room. Gives your home surround sound without the cost of construction. Guaranteed to impress your friends.

As much as I hate to admit it, my husband Dave was right. It hasn’t happened often in our over ten years together – married seven with nary an itch – but it has been occurring more frequently, much to my dismay.

However, I guess even he has to be right some of the time and in the instance of his “insane” (my words) purchase of the video game ROCK BAND last November (2007) I would actually say he was a genius. If you haven’t heard of it you must not have teenagers or been living under a rock. We, like all of our friends’ kids, are completely addicted. In fact, the upcoming release of ROCK BAND 2 has us almost as excited as we were about the iPhone.

What’s crazy about our behavior is we are not video game people. Actually, we both were in the arcade heyday of the 80s, but now most of the games have too many buttons to push and too much violence to lure me into wasting my time. Though Dave’s the King of Technology, except for the Wii, he’s rarely tempted into the gaming world. That fateful day in November changed everything. He suckered me into going to the Best Buy on a Saturday by promising to let me purchase a new game for our Wii console. I don’t know if he was already planning on buying Rock Band, but once he saw they had a few kits in stock, he just had to have one. It was rumored to be the “must have game” of the holiday season and Dave is never one to be behind the technology curve.

Tons of events, corporate sponsors, dedicated fans, traffic, people descending from all parts of the country and world, and lots of bright lights. Super Bowl?  No, it's a political convention. I'm on my way to Denver for the DNC convention, and it feels like I'm going to a Super Bowl weekend.

I've been to Super Bowl a few times and the weeks leading up to it are always spent figuring out which events to go to, how to snag a hotel room, securing a rental car in a scarce market, and coordinating with friends and acquaintances who are going to be in the event city.  This week has been no different and I'm amazed at how similar the lead-up to the two events has felt.

Former veterans of their craft are everywhere, talking heads will abound, and the real bigwigs are determined by who can get tickets to which events and parties. Sounds like Super Bowl to me.

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.