Saturday, February 9, 2013

Welcome to the 21st Century

Today officially ended our hiatus from the internet - or at least from having internet access at home.  After a year and a half of driving to Starbucks, McDonalds, and the (not so) local library (about a 30 minutes drive), we finally have internet at home again.

What's more, for the first time we have a smart phone, aka a mobile social isolation device (look at me, I'm surrounded by people and yet totally oblivious to their presence).  Heather finally couldn't take using an old fashioned flip phone any longer, so I agreed to pay the monthly charges if she would buy the phone.  Heather went with a Samsung Galaxy III, and I get to pay the monthly bill for unlimited calls, text and data (with throttling after 5 gigs).  We can even tether devices to the phone, hence the ability to post a blog from home again.  I just got done doing some banking online and it felt marvelous.

I have to say that while having no internet at home was tough at times, it definitely forced us to wean ourselves off of our connected dependency.  I even got totally off of Facebook during this time, and don't feel particularly inclined to get back on, though I may eventually.

But on to the really exciting part.  Heather's phone is super cool!  After playing with it a while I realized two things.  1. This phone is more complicated than my iPod touch, in a good way.  2. I may have to get one of these things.  Unfortunately the budget isn't ready to absorb a second phone right now, but someday in the future I expect I will finish the final migration into the present.  In the meantime the iPod touch will just have to suffice.