Note of the Living Deb

Robin got a new 32GB iPod Touch to test as part of his job. It has everything he likes about the iPhone except the phone plus you don't have to get the expensive phone service contract. (I'm tempted to call it the non-phone, though it also doesn't have a camera or a microphone.) He's decided to get one, inspiring his co-workers to welcome him to the 21st century. He will use it for everything he used is Palm for and more.

I used to have an electronic device, too (a Revo). I used its databases for keeping track of loads of things like restaurants (including what we already tried and did or did not like), grocery store prices, and books and movies I want but don't already have. It was done in by a totally amazing thunderstorm, during which I actually gave up on the umbrella (not so useful with extremely high winds) and decided I would just get soaked, especially after having to cross a creek to get home from work. Meanwhile, water had seeped through the layers of things in my backpack until my Revo was no more.

They stopped making those. I replaced it once anyway with a used one. That also broke, though I no longer remember how. I got disgusted and went back to paper for some things and looking things up on the computer before leaving the house for other things.

Apple's website advertises the Touch as a pocket computer as well as an iPod and a game playing system. Here are the computer uses it touts:
* wi-fi - this didn't work at the hardware store where we were. And when we were looking at a map on the way to the restaurant, it kept covering it up with a message saying that it couldn't tell where we were, saying to press a button to get rid of the message, like 8 times within the last mile.
* Safari - web browsers are great, but they are less thrilling when you can't get on the internet as happened to us today.
* e-mail - again, less exciting without the connection.
* keyboard - they call it fast, but it's not fast like typing. It's two-finger typing all over again. Robin swears it's miraculous, and even with his man fingers, it always guesses the right letter. He admits that he is careful and does have to look at the keyboard while typing. For a device smaller than even my hand, that sounds great.
* maps - again with the networking
* social networking - deja vous

They don't actually mention things like word processors, databases, calendars, to do lists. You know, things where you input the information yourself. Robin has already found a calculator he loves for $2. He assures me that there are other great software programs out there super cheap or free. It may actually already have more available programs than any other sort of computer because of how they reward non-employees to write them.

The iPod Touch might be an excellent device to drag on vacations instead of my computer as something to load my pictures onto when I run out of room on my camera.

On the other hand, it is completely vulnerable to water.

To those of my readers with iPhones or iPod Touches, what are your favorite and least favorite uses?

The family lore says I hate change and that I've always hated change. When I was born, I refused to breathe for a while. I never had to breathe before, obviously, why start now? Just let me back in that warm place.

I'm now above average at handling moving (having practiced so much), but the first time we moved, I screamed for hours and hours. I think it might have been two or three days. My poor mother!

Today I realized that maybe it's not change I don't like, it's having things break. You know, like perfectly good umbilical chords. I dread when someone says we're going to update some software. I now realize that my feelings are not because I fear change or I hate technology but because I know the new software will be buggy. So things that used to be somewhat time-consuming and alternately boring and frustrating become extremely time-consuming and alternately boring, frustrating, and impossible. I actually like progress. Of course I like progress. What I don't like is regress.

I have lived through two software changes in my current job and really want to get out before the mother of all software changes (from the perspective of my job) gets started. I just don't have it in me anymore. Maybe it's because I found two broken things today, within 15 minutes of each other, right when I thought I was going to have time to work on my favorite job duty. It's not so bad in a new job where I'm used to being ignorant and incompetent. But after eight years I should know what I'm doing enough to actually be able to just do it and not still be banging my head against the wall.

The only time I ever quit a job without having another lined up was when I realized I could never reach the bare minimum of competence I wanted to reach. (I timed how long someone was waiting in line at my grocery store register and it was 30 minutes. Even if I became as awesome of a sacker as the most awesome person I've seen, I couldn't have brought it down to less than 25 minutes because everyone had such gigantic cartloads at that store. That's not acceptable. It's depressing. I'm getting that same feeling now. I just don't have the proper tools to ever be able to do as good of a job as I want to. Especially when they keep breaking and re-setting the tools.)

I am tired. My head hurts. If only I could live on $300 per month, I could quit working forever.

**

Robin and I recently discovered the TV show "Chuck." It's about an underemployed geek who is forced to do spy work. And hang around hot babes. And also Adam Baldwin, playing someone Jayne-like again (though not as funny as Whedon used to write Jayne).

I love that Chuck is awesome at his job--he's both technically adept and good at dealing with customers. Also, the plot is always surprising me. Also, the computer stuff isn't so fake that it annoys even me (except one time they just couldn't resist "enhancing" a photo to discover more details--grr). And there's some "Office Space"-like fun-making of an all-too-common work culture. Some of the characters are hard to like, but they are mostly harmless and don't bring down the show too much.

The show is in its second season. Deb-Bob says, "Check it out!"

**

Okay, enough with the plummeting. It can stop now. I have now lived through a big, scary stock market plummet. I've checked it off my list. See? Checked off! Done! Ready to move on.

Today at work I got to attend a seminar on multi-culturalism. This was transmitted from another state and we had technical difficulties. First, we lost sound for about ten seconds, then the sound was ten seconds off from the visuals for the rest of the presentation. (Someone e-mailed them about this problem, but apparently the cause was local.) The visuals were slides, so we were generally viewing one or two slides ahead of what we were hearing.

Second, and worse, the speaker asked us to discuss a question and then send in our vote. However, he would not be quiet long enough for us to be able to talk amongst ourselves. Well, we had several good laughs when he would sound like he would be quiet but then couldn't help but say one more thing. As you might expect, one-way real-time communication is not ideal.

Also, the volume was turned up so loud that I decided to take initiative and leave the room. I watched from a bench out in the hall. This was only a problem when people walked down the hall having loud conversations, as they had to if they wanted to be heard over our blasting presentation. That would have been fine, but both times it happened the people felt they they had to come back the way they had just gone and talk some more. People should travel more efficiently when I'm trying to hear!

My sitting out in the hall did help some other folks find the room, so that was nice.

Finally, we lost sound again during the question and answer session at the end. (Questions had been e-mailed in previously.) Everyone just left at that point. We didn't even discuss the content among ourselves.

Overall, the experience was a complete waste of my time. I had heard that the speaker was awesome and we should be thrilled to have the opportunity to hear him on any topic. I did not find this to be the case.

I couldn't even quite figure out his message. On the one hand, we are supposed to realize that people come from different cultural backgrounds, but on the other, we can't go around stereotyping people. We are supposed to respect different cultures and different people and be sensitive to different cultures, but don't assume we know anything about a person's cultural connections just by looking at them or having other cues--we have to treat people as individuals.

The only interesting thing I heard is that academic counselors can help their students deal with being marginalized or feeling like outsiders. Since most people feel like outsiders, one way or another, at least for brief periods, this could be an extremely handy skill. But we didn't get any hints on how to actually do that.

We were given a hierarchy of skills and knowledge relating to dealing with cultural differences and asked to rate ourselves. I didn't even understand really what the different levels were or how they could be considered a hierarchy. I most identified with the bottom (worst) level: you understand that there are cultural differences, but you pretty much ignore them and treat people as individuals. Sounds good to me. So I guess in my case, the presentation was a failure from the speaker's perspective as well as from mine since not only did I not learn anything, but I'm more pleased than ever at my ignorance.

Blog entry of the day - Merle Sneed's Master Gardener Applicant. It starts off as just another guy about to retire who's fantasizing about gardening, but then turns silly. "I may have hurt my chances when I showed up in my homemade Master Gardener superhero suit, complete with cape and Viking helmet. The epaulets might have been over the top, because I noticed a lot of eye rolling."