Process

As I mentioned yesterday the intent behind this is not to journal but to post random thoughts as they occur to me.  I also need to make myself more familiar with Web 2.0 technology.  Information comes in many different forms these days and as I am re-branding myself as an information professional I need to be current on all means of obtaining such information.  On a side note I like the term better than librarian – there are so many stereotypes attached to that.  Yes I have never been married and yes I live with a cat and wear glasses but I am not that stereotype.  I am grateful to the upcoming generation of library professionals who also fight to dispel the stereotypes.  Proof in point just type in librarians into You Tube and you will find some truly hysterical videos – even to the non-Dewey or LC initiated.  Anyway, I digress at bit from my point.

Most bloggers would cringe to learn that I write these posts out in long hand before committing them to cyberspace – with a brief stop in Word to do a spelling and grammar check.  Obviously I’m not adverse to technology.  I’m just cheap.  I would rather spend my money on dance lessons than on more Internet access.  In an effort to simplify my life and save money I eliminated my home Internet access.  This was an agonizing decision requiring a dose of anti-anxiety meds when I took my modem back to my ISP last month.  However I was rarely on the Internet at home because I am around technology all day.  Being the card carrying introvert that I am, I can’t take too much stimulation and need quiet time with a book and the cat at home.  I have also come to appreciate the advantages of mobile technology but the reality is a smartphone was designed for the Gen X and Gen Y out there.  If you are a Babyboomer with bifocals those puppies with their 3 inch screens are murder.  They are just too small to read very well so I decided to spring for a tablet.  The alternative was to get a smartphone and tether my Internet access to my computer.  That however required buying a new computer as I am currently working off a 10 year old Dell – it runs beautifully but lacks any wireless capability.  According to the tech people at my local Staples it is perfectly healthy but too old to upgrade the memory or add wireless capability.  Also I am working off a 10 year old motherboard and hard drive so it would be pointless.  Oh how those children at Staples scoffed at me when I told them I was virus free with no virus protection or firewall.  How I smirked when in voices filled with awe they confirmed my suspicions.  I politely explained that I was a highly skilled information professional and knew how to practice safe Internet searching.  Ok yes I did get a virus once but thanks to someone who is more of a geek than I it was easily eradicated.

So with the knowledge that I was going to have to buy a new computer simply to upgrade to a smartphone and still have Internet at home I started to look at my options.  One morning I opened my e-mail to find a bit of propaganda about a soon to be released upgrade of a current tablet. Since I honestly didn’t understand fully how a tablet worked I decided to watch parts of the 2 hour long presentation.  Sad to say I was hooked.  Much to my surprise, I was able to purchase one the day after their much touted release.  The gentleman at the Verizon store after hearing of its intended use said I would be fine with a 16GB.  But I told him to super size it and I went with the 32GB.  I remember laughing at the customer service person from Dell ten years ago when she told me my computer would have a 30GB hard drive.  I responded ‘what am I ever going to need that much space for?’.  Ahem, I now have an external hard drive because I needed the space. That taught me to never say never.  So I went home the proud owner of a bright shiny new state of the art tablet.  A few weeks later I walked my modem back to its owner.  I am officially a month into this experiment of frugality.  I have found some limitations to the plan but nothing that can’t be worked around and I still have a lot to learn about life with a tablet.

This leads me back to the long hand writing.  One of the things I have yet to figure out is how to make Blogspot work with my tablet since Blogspot is a Google product and therefore a Hatfield to the operating system on my tablet’s McCoy (or Capulet and Montague – take your pick).  So I sit in my jammies in bed at night writing out my thoughts with pen and paper to be transferred to cyberspace when I have access to a computer.  Once I learn how to make Blogspot happy with my tablet I will forgo the pen and paper for the tablet.  As I wrote that I realized the irony in that statement.  When man first began to commit words to some level of permanency they wrote on stone tablets, thousands of years and leaps in technology later we are back to writing with tablets. Upside is they don’t weigh quite as much.