My Love/Hate Relationship with Technology

The reason for my recent lack of entries is because of a combination of a family vacation to San Diego and coming home to a computer hard drive crash. Technology and I have a love/hate relationship! I love the ease and quickness of paying bills, emailing and accessing knowledge. I hate discovering my paralysis when technology is not available to me!

Modern technology is amazing! I love the size of Ipods and the huge amount of music they can hold. But, when your on a family road trip, like we were to San Diego, and my husband and I are in the front seat talking to our three kids about the plans we have once we arrive at our destination...talking about when the kids were little...talking about other trips we have enjoyed with them and laughing at the comments we are making...I turn around to see their reaction and they are smiling back at me, quietly listening to us...and my husband and I talk some more about the funny cute things that we have seen our children do and this goes on for an hour or so...then I ask the kids a question and they don't answer. I turn around and ask them again and they are smiling at me like before and I ask louder and all three "pop" an Ipod earpiece out of their ear and say, "What?" AND thus we discovered that the last hour or so they hadn't heard a thing we said because they'd been tuned into their IPODS! I hated that!!!

I love the fact that I can drive practically anywhere in the world and not get lost using GPS systems. A couple years ago my husband and I traveled through Europe by car. It was a wonderful trip to remember if he can ever get past the fact that we got lost...many times and drove right by the Black Forest--which was supposed to be a highlight of our time there--we drove past it because we were using a caveman map and not a modern GPS. We never did see the Black Forest, among other things. As soon as we returned, my husband purchased a GPS which he lovingly named "Thomasina" and she has a lovely voice.

A couple months ago, we drove to Yellowstone and had Thomasina on the dash of my jeep where I also have my own jeep navigational system--which I named "Geeps" and he is always telling me I drive him crazy! We decided to have both systems turned on at the same time to see if they would give the same directions. I would never recommend doing this...especially in the vicinity of Montana or honey bees!

We pulled into a gas station to find out where the nearest off-roading experience was and the attendant gave us a map, but I said, "That's OK, we have a GPS." A lady in line immediately piped up and said, "GPS's are wiping out the honey bee!" We all looked at her and she went on, "They are confusing the honey bees tracking systems." Hmmmmmmm. Other than that I really didn't have anything else to say. CLEARLY... I wasn't going to mention I had two. I walked back to the jeep visualizing confused honey bees all across Montana and Wyoming pollinating doorknobs, lamp posts and stop signs!

Another reason to not have two GPS's going at the same time is because they begin to argue. It went something like this:

Thomasina, in her lovely voice: "Turn right ahead."

Geeps: "Make a U turn as soon as possible."

Thomasina: "Turn right ahead and then take the motorway."

Geeps: "Take the next left and turn around as soon as possible."

Thomasina: "Turn right and stay to the left...keep straight."

Geeps: "What the %$#@?"

Oh wait, that last one was my husband!

It was like having another couple in the car and we had to turn them off and pull out the caveman map with the signs and symbols... and, we had just driven past our destination!

Truly, technology can drive us crazy.

By the way... another thing I wouldn't do again is change Thomasina's voice to a deep, male voice--my husband almost got into a car accident when he heard it and was trying to change it back!