Tag Archives: cyberlife

#THROW BACK THURSDAY

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I am a pop-culture idiot.

Early on in college, when the Soviet Union existed and the Cold War was the only threat we knew, my friends assumed that I was a Soviet spy.

Not because I spoke Russian when drunk, or could take down a lascivious frat boy with one hand as I drank beer with the other.  No, no James Bond movie scenario.

The reason was rather simple:  the lapses in my pop-culture knowledge could be attributable only to the lack of social osmosis that occurs naturally with kids growing up in the United States.

Ergo, I grew up in an opposite environment.  Ahhhh, the Soviet Union.  Somewhere between the truth and the propaganda lies the truth.  And painful disparities on so many levels between how we grew up here and how our peers grew up in many countries within CCCP.

So, the facts that I even know about Throw Back Thursday and know that there is even a hashtag #tbt ARE SO BIG.

SOOOOO BIG.

And it gives me a chance to show off my beautiful mom and handsome dad and adorable siblings when life was more simple.

And my pop-culture prowess. Because I know hashtags (thank you Janet2).

Except, please tell me, who on Earth are the Kardashians and why should I care about them?  (P.S.: weren’t they an alien species on Star Trek?)

 

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Time Machine

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I bought an external something-or-other drive for my computer.  It was about time that I backed up iPhoto and iTunes, having crashed my computer a few times.

There is, of course, an app for this.  Time Machine.  And my external whatever drive has 2 TBs of memory.  That means gigabytes on steroids.  Or so I think that that is what it means.

And I have lots of photographs and days of music.

I had been meaning to get one for a long time, but kept forgetting.  That other memory thing.

Pictures are more important to me now that my generation is the keeper of all the memories of the prior generations. But pictures are not the memories.  They evoke the stories that keep the memories of people, and their insane characters, alive.  And the pictures won’t matter when I don’t recognize the people or remember the stories behind them.

And the eleven days of music in my iTunes library won’t matter unless they evoke the emotions and memories that make the music meaningful to me.

If I stick the USB connector in my ear, will this amp’ed up drive store my memories?  Will it remember the stories behind the pictures or the identities of the faces for which I was too lazy to run the face recognition software?  Will it remind me to cry when I hear Jim Croce’s Photographs and Memories?

So, while I finally remembered to buy the drive, it isn’t all I need.  I need to store my memories.  And, that is what computers cannot do.

Yet. 

I am willing to believe that there will, in fact, be an app for this, some time in the future.  As long as the hook-in site is any orifice above the waist, I am good.

Hurry, please.

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Technology Upgrade

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So, POB (partner of blogger) and I have been dancing around the DVR issue.  (To get a DVR or not to get a DVR?  That is the question.)

Why so resistant?  We didn’t want TLP (our son, the little prince) to become too attached to TV shows, etc.  We want him not to grow into a v-idiot who schedules social interactions around an episode of, let’s say, Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

In short, we lost.  “It is only one TV show,” we say to each other as we slide head first down the slippery slope.  And it will make Friday nights around the dinner table with friends and godchildren less stressful if TLP doesn’t have to watch the clock until, as he says, he “must withdraw from society” and watch his program.  (Yes, my son speaks with a dramatic flair that is best left to an adaptation on Masterpiece Theatre.  Nevertheless, his turns of phrase are diverting, if head-scratching.)

I learned that a DVR is not a separate device, but an enhanced computer chip in a cable box.  Who knew?  (Two entire generations knew.)  Our friendly helpdesk person explained that to me and more.  “Sa-ay-yyyy you’ah watching O-O-prah, and you didn’t catch what they said, you can rewind a live broid-cast!!  It’s ama-ayyy-zing.  Not that I watch my programs live, because I am working the night shift here now since I lost my old job 15 months ago, but I’m just say-yin’ it’s possible.”

We chatted some, and I wished her well.  “It was a real pleasuhre talkin’ to you, [POB].”

Did you think I would give my own name?  Besides, the bill comes to POB.

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