Do you have a life?

[Alien Radio]

Do you have a life?

 

How to determine if Technology has taken over your life:

 

Your stationery is more cluttered than Warren Beatty's address book. The letterhead lists a fax number, e-mail addresses for two on-line services, and your Internet address, which spreads across the breadth of the letterhead and continues to the back. In essence, you have conceded that the first page of any letter you write is letterhead.

You can no longer sit through an entire movie without having at least one device on your body beep or buzz.

You need to fill out a form that must be typewritten, but you can't because there isn't one typewriter in your house -- only computers with laser printers.

You think of the gadgets in your office as "friends," but you forget send your father a birthday card.

You disdain people who use low Baud rates.

When you go into a computer store, you eavesdrop on a salesperson talking with customers -- and you butt in to correct him and spend the next twenty minutes answering the customers' questions, while the salesperson stands by silently, nodding his head.

You use the phrase "digital compression" in a conversation without thinking how strange your mouth feels when you say it.

You constantly find yourself in groups of people to whom you say the phrase "digital compression." Everyone understands what you mean, and you are not surprised or disappointed that you don't have to explain it.

You know Bill Gates' e-mail address, but you have to look up your own social security number.

You stop saying "phone number" and replace it with "voice number," since we all know the majority of phone lines in any house are plugged into contraptions that talk to other contraptions.

You sign Christmas cards by putting :-) next to your signature.

Off the top of your head, you can think of nineteen keystroke symbols that are far more clever than :-).

You back up your data every day.

Your wife asks you to pick up some minipads for her at the store and you return with a wrist-rest for her mouse.

You think jokes about being unable to program a VCR are stupid.

On vacation, you are reading a computer manual and turning the pages faster than everyone else who is reading John Grisham novels.

The thought that a CD could refer to finance or music rarely enters your mind.

You are able to argue persuasively that Ross Perot's phrase "electronic town hall" makes more sense than the term "information superhighway," but you don't because, after all, the man still uses hand-drawn pie charts.

You go to computer trade shows and map out your path of the exhibit hall in advance. But you cannot give someone directions to your house without looking up the street names.

You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon.

You become upset when a person calls you on the phone to sell you something, but you think it's okay for a computer to call and demand that you start pushing buttons on your telephone to receive more information about the product it is selling.

You know without a doubt that disks come in five-and-a-quarter and three-and-a-half-inch sizes.

Al Gore strikes you as an "intriguing" fellow.

You own a set of itty-bitty screw-drivers and you actually know where they are.

While contemporaries swap stories about their recent hernia surgeries, you compare mouse-induced index-finger strain with a nine-year-old.

You are so knowledgeable about technology that you feel secure enough to say "I don't know" when someone asks you a technology question instead of feeling compelled to make something up.

You rotate your screen savers more frequently than your automobile tires.

You have a functioning home copier machine, but every toaster you own turns bread into charcoal.

You have ended friendships because of irreconcilably different opinions about which is better -- the track ball or the track pad.

You understand all the jokes in this message. If so, my friend, technology has taken over your life. We suggest, for your own good, that you go lie under a tree and write a haiku. And don't use a laptop.

You email this message to your friends over the net. You'd never get around to showing it to them in person or reading it to them on the phone. In fact, you have probably never met most of these people face-to-face.

[Reilly]

Yes I keep it in my 'Life' folder.

[The Doctor]

^that

it's next to my Sherlock folder and fangirl folder

[taameen**sparks**]

Not right now i don't..

[i'maveryneatMonster.']

...

[MXColdplayObsessed]

I have a life....... filled with internet use

[rainplay]

You can no longer sit through an entire movie without having at least one device on your body beep or buzz.

 

This is the only one that is true for me, sooo I guess I do

[The Final Track]

I can, but often don't.

[Megalomania]

I didn't even need to go through that wall of text, I know I don't have a life.

[MaxRide]

I don't. :blank:

[ColdplayKen]

yea

[chuck kottke]

I own a set of itty bitty screw drivers, and I use them on occasion too! :laugh3: Hey, we need technologized types to make all this stuff possible and besides, it's fun!:P And anyhow, it's just the part of the matrix we're in, an important part of it. Sure, read some Haiku, sit under a tree:sunny:, drink some Chi tea, that's all nice, but hurry back and enjoy some mouse clicks and USB ports and defrag that hard drive! ;) We are essentially imbalanced, it's a good thing.:waffle:

[MaxRide]

...which is why I never can understand Chuck.

 

:laugh3:

[chuck kottke]

I'm as plain as spaghetti, what's there not to understand?:stunned: All things are as they are. Wait till you get to fractal functions, number theory, and simultaneous equations, and solving by rotation. :nod: The best use of mathematics is as a recreational art, I think anyhow.

[MaxRide]

I already know all of that. :blank:

 

It's just...you can be rather random. :P

[chuck kottke]

I already know all of that. :blank:

 

It's just...you can be rather random. :P

 

Alright then, answer me this riddle: What really is randomness? And I'm not random, just uniquely strange! :P

And what's a mathematical genius doing on here then??:stunned:

[MaxRide]

I'm using the haphazard meaning. As in having a lack of predictability.

 

I'm really too bored to do anything else, to be honest. :P

[chuck kottke]

I am a practiced crazy ivan.

All the heavier elements came from the forces within a supernovae, and yet still I wonder why so many enzymes have metal centers, even chlorophyll, strange it is that organic life relies on inorganic liganded elements as central to its function, but I suppose when the hyperintelligent mice created the earth, they designed things that way. Really, we're all just sodium-potassium ion waves matrixed with numerous organic macromolecules suspended in the magic of water, all we do is quite amazing, more than I can put to words really. It's simply incredible.

But I digress. Haphazard? Lack of predictability? I just tend to follow the random walk of the electron. You can find its location, check any orbital, but not it's momentum, or determine its momentum but not location, but neither both quite so. Anyhow, we inhabit both the land of fuzzy logic, various levels of consciousness and foci, and often enter a dream state, depending.

and babelfish goes well with a side order of chips. :P

We are all life, we are all complexed together in so many ways, we are a superorganism within a superorganism Gaia within a Universe, and we are as we are as well. No need to feel insecure, accept the beauty of the truth of the universe as a oneness with it, within it. Embrace the totality of existence.

[MaxRide]

Thank you for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference. :mellow:

 

...see what I mean? Unpredictable. :P

[Destrokk]

tl;dr

[MaxRide]

Exactly.

[chuck kottke]

None of us are predictable really, except by choice and conditioning. But given the opportunity, I would venture a guess the admixture would fall somewhere towards randomness, depending on the constraints of the culture in which the yogurt is taking place.

Berries and yogurt is the best though, it's on the menu in the restaurant at the end of the universe, just under babelfish. ;)

Anyhow, I believe we have more than just one life, for in some ways we are all part of a continuum of all life. And there's a good 7 billion of us on the planet, so if you're pointed in your equilibrium, chances are there are zillions of other points to round things out.

And just what makes you, Anna, predictable? :vanish: laatkomertje, vas is this?

[MaxRide]

I'm pretty predictable. I eat the same breakfast and lunch every day, and nearly the same dinner every day. :P

 

Laatkomertje is a Flemish word (thank Celien for that) that means "latecomer". This is because my youngest half-brother turned 27 two days ago, and I have two other half-brothers. Not to mention that my mom is 60 and my dad is 68.

[chuck kottke]

I'm pretty predictable. I eat the same breakfast and lunch every day, and nearly the same dinner every day. :P

 

Laatkomertje is a Flemish word (thank Celien for that) that means "latecomer". This is because my youngest half-brother turned 27 two days ago, and I have two other half-brothers. Not to mention that my mom is 60 and my dad is 68.

> Incredibly consistent I would say, at least regarding meals! ;)

> Ah, thanks for defining that word. Well, you're getting the best of both worlds then - wisdom and wild oats! :laugh3: Here I have three half sisters and one full brother, making 2.5 in total. :P

But as per the quiz, I think too often we attempt to categorize people neatly into boxes, when we're so amorphous in nature and all sorts of admixtures of this and that, we change with every new day, hardly quantifiable.

Maybe it would be simpler just to say we may need some sunlight and exercise on occasion, or turn us in the window every now and then so we bloom more evenly? :daisy:

 

 

[MaxRide]

My dad is the same way.

 

That reminds me, I need to work on my exercise/education/sleep/nutrition/whatever else I want to put on it plan before the year is up.

 

This plan will probably not be complete before then. :P

 

...wild oats?