Grace's+Life+as+a+Tech+User

I remember in elementary school my dad had a computer at home. And everyday when we got home from school my dad would tell me to type up a journal entry. I remember learning about paragraphs in class, so I decided that each sentence (or half sentence) would be a paragraph and was quite enter-key-happy.

This was the time before windows. I was using dos system where we had to type in C:\\ on a black screen to get to a program that would allow me to enter my journal entry. Furthermore we used floppy disks. The smaller hard disks was the coolest new thing. Then I remember when our teacher introduced DVDs to us in class one day and we thought that it was the coolest thing in the world that we could just play a certain portion of a video without having to rewind and fast forward a VHS...

In college, I didn't have a personal computer, but our computer lab at school was open 24/7. So I would write and edit my papers by hand (written outlines, full sentence paper copies) and eventually when I was satisfied, I'd go to the computer lab to type it up and make a final edit before submitting the paper. We had an intranet system and I think I had hard disks which I would save my work on as well.

After college, I finally decided I needed a better storage system for my work so I bought an external laptop hard drive which I still use to store and transfer work.

I didn't get a cell phone or my own personal computer until I was in grad school (2004?). I bought a used IBM laptop and my parents send me a cell phone to use. I used that laptop until a year ago until it finally died. It was a wonderful computer.

When my parents moved back to Taiwan 3 years ago, I got rid of my cell phone. Then I got one for work for a while. Then I got a prepaid one. And then I lost that one. And now I don't have one. I have a google number. That's sufficient. No one really calls me. And I don't call people either. I just sit around and talk to my turtle and my bike all day.

I wake up each morning and type up the dream I had the night before on my laptop. I don't have Facebook (actually I do have a false account with only my students on it that I use to contact them). Let's see... I really have a hard time with Blackboard.

I am on my Gmail a lot. I use it to chat with my parents. Check what's on sale at REI. And find good groupons to use. I also check my school's outlook account regularly too for work.

The story I'll share about technology is this. I used to take adolescents into the wilderness of northwest US and there we would literally be in the middle of no where. What I mean is, once we hit a non-maintenance dirt or gravel road we'd drive for another 12-15 hours before we reached our destination where we'd backpack for 3 weeks. Many times there were no trails - we'd bushwack. As staff, we had a satellite phone which the kids did not know existed. (Cell phone reception was out of the question - yes, there are still places in the US where you can not use a cell phone.) Aclear memory on one of these expeditions in the semi-desert of eastern Oregon was trying to find reception to make a call in to report on the students. I had walked about 2-3 hours to the nearest ridge to where I felt would be the best location to get reception. Made a call, the call was dropped within 10 secs of getting connection, and for the rest of the day I hiked and cursed at the satellite phone trying to make a report. It's interesting to reflect that when I think of technology, I take advantage of it's conveniences and will always remember when it's failed on me.

Also, no way around it, most technology is fragile! I can tell you from experience that batteries will die in freezing weather NO MATTER how much you try to stick them in your armpits or belly area to warm them up. Nothing is waterproof when you are in a flash flood or snow blizzard. Don't think solar powered anything will work even in a desert with the sun shining 16 hours a day (people will tell you otherwise, but I think it's baloney). Rugged computers made for the outdoors still do not survive. We wrapped one up in towels, in a pelican case, carrying like 10-15 extra pounds due to this "experiment" to bring a laptop into the woods. and after the first day, it started to slowly die on us. We had extra batteries but still... it didn't like the fact that it was not in a climate controlled room next to an electrical outlet. By the end of it, we all wanted to throw the thing off a cliff. Useless dead weight.

When I climbed the AT trail last year. I bought a kindle with me. It died 2 weeks in. I got a replacement one. There's still bugs on the screen from being outdoors. I thought I could use it as a map as I had downloaded pdf files of the trail. Rather I decided that finding the white AT blazes on the trees and knowing that the sun rose in the east and moved to the west were the best indicators of whether I was lost or not.

On a positive note: even though my camera and camcorder look like they've gone through WWIII. They are definitely waterproof and shockproof.

Back to my home page with the picture of my bike.