I am an anti-geek. Depending on electronics is a worrisome thing to me, I’d probably be better off learning smoke signals. That said, there are some benefits to, say, telephones and computers. And that said, I can always start a fire, but getting a computer to clear its head and do my bidding isn’t always as easy. And the fire can also cook, microwaves are mysterious. (I can boil a cuppa water, tho’.) Oddly enough, I have come to depend on a wireless telephone because I can walk around the house and yak my head off if I want to. So when it stopped working yesterday, and the nearest replacement is 40 miles away on a maybe they have one basis, starting a fire seemed a good idea. The problem is that the person I wanted to talk to is 1500 miles away, plus or minus. The other person of interest is on the other end of the telephone wire, too. All that is not to say there aren’t any replacements in the immediate area, it means that if you want all the bells and whistles, you have to shell out more frns than you need to. I have only two requirements for a telephone; one, make it possible to talk, and two, come with a headphone jack. Caller ID? No need or desire. Call waiting? I don’t care who has to wait, the person I’m talking to is the most important contact I could have at that moment; otherwise it is disrespectful in the extreme. The headset is important because I leaned many years ago that some people like to call while I’m making dinner or something else worth doing, and jamming a handset between my neck and shoulder for a chat so I can use both hands is about guaranteed to give me a crick in the neck. Some other time, I’ll relate how I made that discovery. Then there is the computer. A boon, a boon I say, especially for us olde pharts whose penmanship has decayed over the years. The price paid is crashes. Program crashes, hard drive crashes, virii, Trojans, all kinds of traps you can fall into, just like a carny of 50 years ago. Let us not neglect spam. Used to be, you just took the advertising flyer that magically appeared in your mailbox and used it to start fires. Now, with the magical electron taming device on your desk, you can spend an hour a day cleaning out the inbox and/or spam trap. Time saver? Hardly. Paper saver? Sure, but then I have to wonder how many trees (real and prehistoric) went into the power plant firebox to push those bits and bytes into the wires. Another side to modern life that isn’t a really good thing is that kids don’t get the training they need for A) spelling and grammar, B) cursive handwriting, C) hand printing, (cursive and lettering are both too sloppy to pass a draftsman’s test) difficult to decipher, and D) they can’t do simple math without the calculator function. What’s the gain with computers in the classroom? Learn to do on line research instead of learning to read in the library when the power goes out mid day? (not to mention texting each other during class, if not sharing test answers. Back in the day we had to be pretty creative to hide a magazine to read in class, now every kid has a laptop open on the desk. (And I’m betting a LOT of them have two windows open ---) The guy I bought this house from had a couple of neat lights installed, motion detecting outdoor fixtures, the idea being to light up the deer crossing the yard and visitors in the driveway. The one in the back didn’t work at all; didn’t care if the switch inside was on or off, it was off. The deer he intended to see, nobody saw. I’ve replaced that fixture that I can control, and not depend on the electronic brain to think and fail to think correctly. The two on the garage end are also both motion detecting and photocell controlled. And they don’t control properly, either, their brains are also scrambled somehow. I think I have a way to make them do what I want them to do, but that is yet to be determined; the right test conditions haven’t presented themselves. It isn’t as simple as turning them on and off, and I may need to install a timer to get what I want from them. I’ll let you know if I’m right. If I’m wrong, there will be new lamps on the house fairly soon. Do I want to go back to the 30s and 40s or earlier? No, but I’d settle for the 50s or 60s and be prepared to go to the 20s or earlier. Thanx for listening, I feel better.
I hear ya. You're out of it now but you should see what happens in a corporate office when the network is down. $7 Billion a year reliant on a TX / RX cable the size of a wooden match that blinks light on and off a quadrillion times a second. I can remember the way we could get records to play by turning the turntable by hand when we lost power. Now I have 6 email addys and total server administration in my pocket. Reliance on technology creates a whole 'nother set of issues for the survivalist that may not really need to be on the prep list. I have a solar charger that does nothing more than recharge batteries of small devices... I'm going to fund raise to send you something frivolously mobile and electronic for Christmas this year- you have wifi?
We need to clarify between geek and ubergeek. I consider myself a geek. computers 24/7 50 weeks a year. pounding out code, tethered to a cell, more email addresses than i can count (but i still know all the passwords). half a dozen companies that call on me for intermittent emergency HELP!. I have 3 workstations on my desk. a Laptop by my side. with your address i can pop an image of your property, know where you property boundaries are, measure the distance from the road to your house. I was doing surfing the net before most. I remember CP/M and when portable computers weighted only 40 pounds. I've had an acoustic coupler for dialing in. I've been an early adopter spending far more money than i should have if i'd only waited 6 months. I am but a lowly geek. An ubergeek adds those 2 extra weeks a year doing all the above. what do i do with the other two weeks as a non geek. I turn off the computer, I shut off the cell, put my email on vacation response, turn off the tv, voice mail. Then put the family in the 4wd, toss in the tent, fishing rods, cooking, camping, hiking, biking gear. point the the rig in gear and head north. If we decide to come back early, i work in the garden, build another barn for some new animal that the wife is sure to bring home, cut some fire wood, take the boy fishing, come up with another hairbrained idea on how to use rainwater to water the garden and the animals, build a fort, tinker with a motor, disassemble a gun and see if i can put it back together, check the larder. my brother in law is an ubergeek. if we are without power or fuel to power a generator for more than a week. I fear he will die. As for us, we love when we get hit by an ice storm. The house is toasty, watch the birds outside flitting by the feeders like it was 'Animal Planet Cable' (the cats do too). cook our meals in the wood stove and wonder how the ubergeeks are fairing. And as daylight fades into darkness, we toss a few more logs on the fire. Curl up in sleeping bags on the floor and fall asleep to the sound of the logs crackling in the fire. So not all geeks are electricity dependant. Only the useless ones
lol, acoustic dialer reminded me of a cassette tape drive I had on an Atari 800 XL. Used to take about 15 minutes of tape squack noise to load a program. I graduated to a Commodore 64 and still think that system was way ahead of it's time.
Nothing wrong with technology, as long as you can live without it, when it doesn't work anymore, and it doesn't get in the way of the important things in life.
