Manos Rojas

Years ago, I'm sure I never had any personal interest in being too clean. I was a boy after all, and children tend to not see any strong personal incentive in being clean, or at least it does't seem to me that they did then. They rough-house and they cannot appreciate the delayed gratification that lies in eating a few minutes later in order to do so under sanitary conditions, for example. They would prefer to eat immediately and take their chances.

Being a grown man now, I have any number of reasons to be clean. It's expected of me, whereas latitude was granted to a boy of little maturity. I had better have clean hands in order to thrive personally and professionally. Even if it weren't for that, I very much prefer to be clean, being somewhat fastidious in very specific, narrow respects. An important consideration is that I now am the one who cleans up after myself.

Just Listen

I'm getting a little bit down on some technology. I think I maybe have complained about how some of what is supposed to elevate us actually keeps us down and separated from each other. I don't know always whether the internet really is more good than it is bad. I'm trying now to be smart about what technologies I use and when. It all has some value if you are very moderate with it and make sure to put people first.

I do love my mp3 player, for example. It's a fun, convenient little thing. I slip it in my pocket and can use it any time without being weighed down. The trouble is that it keeps out the world from my ears. I love music dearly, but I had the idea that in listening to it out of the house, I'm maybe in a sense trying to stay at home even when I leave. Why would I step out among the cars and people if I don't want to hear everything and see everyone?

State Of The Art With A Beating Heart

I think that we too often gloss over the mundane and banal, no matter how amazing it is. Every day, a thousand very impressive technological things quietly operate in the background and periphery without a moment's attention from us. If they should ever fail, our sole reaction is of outrage. I try to be more appreciative on a daily basis for such things as the disposal unit in the sink, among other products on which my happiness and productivity depend.

I got to thinking about this when, once again, I was awed by my little iPod shuffle. It holds hours upon hours of music, yet occupies a fraction of the space that a cassette tape holding maybe one hour ever did, and this does not even take into account the player needed by the tape. Can I really be the only one who holds it in his palm and shakes his head in incredulity, almost angry at this wonderful feat of engineering?

The Walking Blind

I wrote yesterday of my mp3 player, and that got me to thinking about something all to common these days: inattentive pedestrians. I am sometimes one of them, I'm sorry to say. I listen to music most of the time I'm on foot, and there's no denying the fact that it makes me less observant. I'm so into my music that I sing along lustily to virtually every track, only occasionally desisting in the immediate presence of strangers.

It dictates my pace often, does the music. A slow song will lead me to follow suit, and a peppy song will have me really hustling. I may not be so oblivious that I walk into people and jaywalk across busy streets, but an alleyway or neighborhood sidestreet is no match for the head of steam I build up when 'Boogie Shoes' comes up on the Shuffle. I'm cognizant of the risk I'm running in so doing. As they say, knowing is half the battle, and I now look intently while rocking out on the streets.

Untethered

I got my first cell phone during high school, as I recall. I had just started to see people around me get them in the year or two preceding, and these were of course primitive models by today's standards. The one I remember which belonged to a friend's mother of course did nothing but make phone calls and had a little extendable antenna. I used it a couple of times with wonderment when going from school to his home on the spur of the moment. It was neat, but I was then more upset about not having the internet at home. So I got one midway through high school, and I have not done without one for very long at a time since then, the big exception being during summer camp when no phone could obtain a signal.

Recently I had to leave my phone in a friend's car for a few hours by necessity as we went to be at a game show taping. I can only even think of a couple of times in years when I did not have my cell phone on me, and this is one of them. Interesting that this very subject should be brought up by the host during a commercial break (which is beyond my understanding given that the show is not live). Maybe it's an obvious thing, and it does certainly beat talking about the weather, which provides precious little stimulation in southern California.

Whaddaya Trust?

I have bought into technology about as much as anyone, evidenced by this very blog. I'm quite enamored by the ways in which the internet, smartphones and the like have eased life by saving labor and offering solutions to long-festering problems. I've also been aware of technology's shortcomings. Apart from the deep questions about whether or not it's changing society for good or ill, there are other very practical reasons why one should keep a critical eye. I'm always surprised by the total credulousness in some people that enables major calamities.

I understand that the precious iPhone had a little software glitch. Now, that device has been revolutionary by all accounts, offering a bewildering array of incredible features which are often useful. I could see myself using one, and do have a similar phone. The iPhone glitch affected something I use on my own phone- the alarm. Some obscure error resulted in a specific type of alarm failing to go off for a couple of days early in this new year. People are quite angry, and rightfully so, but at entirely the wrong person if they fault the company. Are they not the one who put their faith in a phone which has an undisputed track record of glitches and minor failures? One sufferer of the glitch was resentful that the maker of the phone offered no warning so that she could set a backup alarm. I'd say that would have been a smart and reasonable measure in any case.

Romancing The Bulb

It's another day and another risible exercise in late-twenties nostalgia. The other day, while in the home of a friend, my gaze turned upward and I noticed the light bulbs in the chandelier. Of course they were the modern compact fluorescent bulbs that have become so fashionable. Indeed, it becomes challenging to find their predecessor. I find that regrettable, personally. I am as interested in everyone else in making incremental steps towards greater energy efficiency in order to further that grand plan of saving the planet, but must we give up such a romantic piece of the past as the incandescent light bulb? Surely there's a way to retain the good- to not throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the expression goes. After all, we decided that even with digital photography being the wave of the future, we could not do without Polaroids.

To me the incandescent bulb is the bulb of Edison (and of those he exploited, ripped off and got the jump on). I can't bear to lose that direct link or any of the rest. Every memory of and association with the old light bulbs that I have is a good one; even the bad ones are good. My mind conjures up imagery of a charming and cheap variety. I see a wooden cabinet in an old house, and inside is a flimsy, beat-up cardboard carton with simple, bright artwork on it (or no artwork at all). The bulbs inside are generic and probably second-rate. I take one out of its little cell and bring it over to the lighting fixture, where a dead, sooty bulb remains after surprising me by flaring up and dying with a mild explosion when I flipped the switch. The circuit is still active, and when I screw in the bulb most of the way, it lights up with a warm glow.

What A World We Live In

The other day I was thunderstruck by a recently-wrought feat of technology. It so happens that it was an application made for the Android OS-based cell phones commonly thought of as Google phones. There are a lot of those applications, and many extend use of a website to the phone where ordinary use of the website exceeds the phone's capacity. Others are modest standalone concepts, or ones that simply don't work. This one is an independent tool so effective and breathtaking that its first successful implementation elicited from me a shocked exclamation of profanity, and each since has led me to burst out in hysterical laughter.

It's a bar code scanner. Lest I look like George H.W. Bush (i.e. out of touch), let it just be said that this ability was previously unknown in telephones, and one would expect that an attempt to make a program for them that does it would end in ignominy. I honestly and truly thought that it would be deeply flawed, working occasionally if at all. What I found was that it works in all cases when it would be reasonable to expect that the product could be located via bar code by anyone. Sometimes it seems to find things in the unreasonable category. Made short work of so far have been products such as off-brand napkins, convenience store hot dog containers and beverages contained in aluminum cans and glass bottles.

Where was I?

As I noted in two exceedingly brief posts a number of days ago, there has been for me a bit of duress tied to my phone's effective demise (in that failure of the tracking ball rendered the phone mostly non-functional). For several days, my ability to communicate was badly hampered as I valiantly fought to save the trusty device which had served me so well since the days of my residency in Highland Park. Why did I do this? Not sentimentality, though the way I've spoken about it might lead you to think that.

My New Baby

I have acquired a new cell phone. It is likely that I will be using it heavily for the next two years at the very least. The circumstances making it necessary at this time have in a sense precluded me from writing, as is at the moment my exhaustive exploration of the phone's capacity. I'll have a complete report shortly.

Our Beloved Technology

It used to be the case that I knew a few phone numbers by heart. It was really only the most important ones which I called on a regular basis. Phones didn't hold numbers apart from the ones began to include a speed dial function, and I don't recall that we ever made use of such a thing in my household. There were, therefore, a few that I had memorized. The rest lay written by me in pencil and various hues of ink in a little brown book which remained at home to be retrieved when needed. This was not terribly often, as I was then no more fond of frequent phone conversations than I am now.

I feel a kind of nostalgia ( a word with an interesting lineage) for the phone which did nothing but make calls, and which in itself had no capacity to receive "voice mails". We had an answering machine which recorded messages on cassette tapes. I loved the little lighted numbers on the phone, and the noise they made. One can have that noise now, but it's an affectation, like a computer screen saver. I was just thinking about how you can't hear dial tone anymore. I miss that.