It's Dai Time

Katie & Scott & Simon & Cecily.

Category: year26 (Page 5 of 92)

I posted an entry each day during my 26th year of life.

Day 349: apple

January 26, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I don’t understand how Apple does it.

Steve Jobs is scheduled to trot out onto a stage tomorrow morning at 10 AM and announce…something.  If Internet speculation is to be believed, it’ll be some form of magical tablet PC with touchscreen capabilities and a way of birthing unicorns.

Based on this unannounced (and as of this moment, completely fictional) product, rumors cropped up about the device hooking into a Barnes & Noble ebookstore.

Based on these unconfirmed rumors about a possible store that hooks into an unannounced interface to a completely secret machine, B&N stock shot up over 13% today.

How does that happen?

How can one company’s press event sway the market with such gusto?  How have they manage to market an image that creates crowds of salivating intelligent adults that scream like Beatles fans when they see a new Apple product for the first time?

I mean, I guess I know the answer.  The company does good work.  They create stylish products that function simply and effectively and sell them at a premium price with a great marketing team that employs both Justin Long and John Hodgeman.  They have a charismatic and likeable CEO who knows how to get people excited about products.  They keep secrets well, meaning that they can launch revolutionary products with less lead-up time than their competitors.  And they’re constantly looking forward, instead of at ways to mimic the competition.

But still.  It’s a bit sick, how fervent and influential the Internet hype is over a product that we know almost nothing about.

Day 348: future tech

January 26, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I wish I could do more things over the Internet.

And it’s not because I dislike people.  I enjoy the company of humans and I’ve been known to even initiate gatherings of humans so that a medium-sized group may form in a single location and we may rejoice over a common interest or goal, like football or cheating at a high-stake baccarat game.

But people make mistakes and people have feelings and other things to do.  Interactions over the Internet are different, especially if there’s nothing but bits on the other end of the conversation.

I renewed my car registration over the Internet a few days ago, painlessly.  I was able to enter in a code specific to my car, view the bill for car registration this upcoming year, and pay with a credit card in a matter of minutes.  The system was able to serve me specifically, without time pressure, and I was able to finish the whole thing without ever having to wait in line or dig my license out of my wallet.

I enjoy ordering food over the Internet because it means that the restaurant gets an exact printout of my order and there’s less room for human error.  It also means that I don’t have to wait on the phone while other orders are taken, repeat myself over a bad connection, give my address every time, or remember to ask if I can pay with a credit card before I hang up.

The Internet codifies routine interactions that many people do so well.  I can do them efficiently and at my own pace, without needing to disturb anybody else.

The imagined future of a few decades ago was wrong.  Computers aren’t here to become intelligent and kill us and the nobody has a personal robot that looks like a person.  No, machines are used to make sure that when we order our custom pizza with a different sauce and two different toppings on each half, we get what we ordered.  And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Day 347: burden blogging

January 25, 2010 / / 0 Comments

As we near the end of my year of blogging, I will admit that there have been times when I’ve sat in front of my keyboard, looking at an empty text box, wondering what coherent and interesting thoughts I could type out that day.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to consider an entry a day a burden (or at least, a burden of any meaningful size), there have been days were I have gotten by with simply a single paragraph of text or a picture or video, instead of something longer.

And the times at which I’ve made my entry have also fluctuated.  If you go back to the days and weeks following my birthday, I would often write in the mornings, right after waking up, or in the early afternoon.  Nowadays, I almost always write my entry right before bed and – recently – often past midnight.

The fact that I consider it a part of my day is interesting; no matter how tired I may be, I know that I’m obligated to write an entry before I’m allowed to sleep.  But it’s not so much an obligation that feels like a chore.  Instead, it’s a bit like the obligation of making soup for your sick spouse; you know you have to do it, but you don’t mind it one bit.

How time flies, though.  I can’t believe that it’s almost February, almost my birthday, almost my baby’s birthday.  I’m excited for all these things, as well as the upcoming release of Mass Effect 2, season premiere of Lost, and the Colts-Saints Super Bowl.

Day 346: baby shower

January 24, 2010 / / 0 Comments

We had a baby shower today, which was joyful and exhausting. The baby got a lot of cool new things (like this awesome diaper cake) and I got a newfound appreciation for the ability to suck liquid from a baby bottle. I also learned, for a short time, what life would be like with a lisp.

You see, we had a contest/game where we competed to see who could empty a baby bottle the fastest. It took me about twelve and a half minutes to empty half the bottle (considerably behind everyone else, some of whom cheated but others who were simply better babies than I was). But the worst part was that after all that hard work, my tongue and jaw muscles had somehow tired themselves out in a way that I had an unavoidable lisp. Try as I might, I could not pronounce an S sound without considerable work and difficulty.

While it was humorous because I knew that I would regain control of my mouth soon (and the lisp eventually wore itself out in the span of 10 minutes or so), it gave me some insight into what life must be like for people who can’t get rid of their lisp that easily. It was so frustrating to know what something should sound like yet not be able to pronounce it correctly.

It also made me anxious to, well, have this baby already. I’m not saying that I want it to arrive early, but now that we’re even more surrounded by baby objects, it’s hard to not imagine an actual baby sleeping in our crib or wearing his onesies or barfing on all the receiving blankets we have now.

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