A Passion For ‘Puters

Earlier this week, I read a post on Lifehacker that got me thinking.

When new people come to my apartment there’s usually a point in the visit where they stop and ask, “wait, how many screens do you have?” (from http://lifehacker.com/5625890/why-technology-is-so-addictive-and-how-you-can-avoid-it)

I started wondering how many screens I had in my house! First, though, I had to define a screen because there are some gray areas. For my purposes, a screen is anything that displays information digitally (even just time information) but is not a digital clock. That would have sent my numbers soaring… So, the cable box is a screen as it displays the channel I’m watching, but the digital clock next to it is not. Clear as mud? Yeah, you may want to re-work that definition If you decide to do this…
For me, I came up with 21 screens in my house. Considering that I have 6 rooms (not counting bathrooms), that’s kind of crazy. We have TVs in four of those rooms, a desktop computer with 2 monitors in one and laptops, e-readers and cell phones sprinkled throughout. Is it any wonder we get distracted and sidetracked so easily? In my living room alone, I found 9 screens from the entertainment center, to the Harmony remote to the two laptops, iPad and Kindle that tend to live in there while getting charged up. These are, admittedly, decidedly first world problems, but it can be a problem.
I’m a reader, I love to consume books in any format and fashion that I can get ‘em. Even though most of my reading these days takes place on a screen (Kindle or iPad), I still don’t read as much as I used to because there is nowhere in my house where I am not presented with the distraction of a screen. I could go outside – we don’t have a yard TV yet – but if the weather isn’t cooperating (and I live in Missouri – the weather rarely cooperates) that isn’t all that comfortable.
These are not just passive screens, either. Some are – the TVs don’t generally turn themselves on and beg to be watched – but some, such as the cell phones or the iPad, have reminders, alerts and various other ways they try for our attention. (Also – I just realized I’d not counted our land-line phones, all of which have screens to display the caller ID information. That’s three more, for a total of 24 screens – and I bet I’ve forgotten a few others!)
I’m the last person to argue for fewer techie toys (did you notice I have both a Kindle and an iPad? I’m a gadget whore….), but I do wonder what all these screens will do to the attention span and distractibility of our upcoming generations? There are some interesting comments at Lifehacker’s post, so if you haven’t read that one yet, go check it out.

I’m coming up on the final classes needed to complete my BSIT (Bachelor’s of Science, Information Technology) degree. Now I need to consider what I’m going to do after that milestone is reached. I’m considering (while whimpering about student loans) going on to get a Master’s degree (in Library Science? In IT? In ???) but that will put me at paying back my student loans just about the time my son goes to college and I have to start paying for that…
Basically, I’m trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. I’m excited about finally graduating from college, but now I have to consider what I’m going to do after that. I’m positive I’ll stay in IT, but as a librarian? As something else? This grown-up stuff is hard. Can I opt out?

There have been a lot of blog posts about people’s personal experiences with their new iPads, but I wanted to add to the noise and write one of my own… I got my iPad (32G Wifi+3G) on Thursday and spent the first day and a half (Thurs and Friday) on cloud nine – enjoying the fact that I had one and filling it up with applications. I did notice, because someone asked on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, that brand new, without a single app on it, it had only 28G of space free. I was OK with that, though – I was in lurve!
The first apps I got were the utilities that I use all the time, Evernote, Dropbox, Kindle and Netflix. I connected my email (Gmail, of course) to the email application that came with it, replaced the Calendar app (which will only sync with Outlook) and got an app that will sync with Google’s calendars. On the suggestion of a family member who had an iPad, I picked up RDP (a VNC client) and a couple of other utilities. On the suggestion of a friend who has an iPhone, I got an astronomical identification program and a game or two. I also picked up PacMan and Osmos (a very nice iPad specific game that has entertained me greatly over the past few days).
After I’d gotten some familiarity with the machine, I got a PDF annotator (Noterize) a sound/notes application (SoundPaper) and the WordPress application that I’m using to compose this post.
One of the first things I did after I got my iPad was to hook it up to my computer and sync it with iTunes. I noticed that the machine came fully charged, but not fully up-to-date – it took a while (almost 2 hours) to do the syncing thing.
So far, I’ve used it to keep up with my friends on FriendFeed, get Facebook updates (pushed via the iPhone Facebook app) and to watch my Netflix streaming videos. As a content consumer, the iPad is damn near perfect. It’s heavier than I (or anyone else who’s gotten a hold of it) expected and it caused some left arm aching on Friday as I got used to having it set on my arm as I watched or played with it. With the prop-able case, though, that is pretty well an occasional thing, because I can just set the case up to hold it for me if I’ve got a flat surface nearby.
Getting content on it is more difficult. I keep all my photos on Flickr, not my computer, so there is a distinct lack of pictures on my iPad (so far) and I own no other Apple products, so I don’t have a lot of native content in iTunes to transfer over. Typing this up without the dock + keyboard accessory would be difficult. Short bursts of text (FriendFeed comments, for example) are fine – any more, though, and a full keyboard is pretty necessary.
Saturday night, though, I think I made my biggest mistake – so far – of my iPad owning time. I bought Plants vs. Zombies. This would be a complete time sink for me, except for the fact that my son has discovered it and I’m having a hard time getting a hold of the iPad today (Sunday) all day… I may have a problem in the future, making sure that my iPad stays mine! I’ve picked up a few other games, but I think that PvZ is going to be the killer app on my iPad for a while.

The upshot of this post is that I’ve decided I was not completely remiss in being so excited while waiting for my iPad to arrive – it’s just as exciting to have it in hand as it was to anticipate it. Content creation is difficult (Google Docs support would be lovely, too), but not impossible, as evidenced by this blog post. I got some of my Flickr pics on it and the slideshows are just gorgeous – even reading PDFs is really pretty on this screen. The games that I’ve tried are fun and utterly beautiful on the big screen. I’m very pleased with my purchase and think that this will be a useful item to have around for a long time!

Of course, just a day or two after I posted the announcement that I have a Google Voice account and the number, I discover that when I dropped my phone the other day, I bent the internal circuitry to the point where it will not recharge. I have a new one on the way (thank you, Sprint insurance!!), but until then, I’m pretty much not reachable immediately. Of course, you can call the number (573)321-webg and leave a voicemail, which will be transferred to my email, and get a hold of me in a roundabout way that way, but it won’t be immediate until my new phone shows up, sometime later this week.