Category / technology

by Diane Tate

good luck with Your Nonsense

In November I got to hear Henry Cho do standup; when querying the audience about current vocational pursuits, he proceeded to wish one member in grad school “good luck with Your Nonsense.”

Fast forward to this week: the world was riveted by the climactic launch of Apple’s iPad tablet…and a flurry of developments around geolocational services led to l’il ol’ me somehow serendipitously talking to a BusinessWeek reporter about why I love to “check in” to places so much….why being “The Mayor” is so addictive and hoarding Virtual Collectibles so satisfying….and other momentous topics of the day.

When my head stopped spinning from the giddiness of it all, I wandered through the various Ferry Building shops, trying to check in to each one, and was paralyzed by the 5-minute limit that Yelp happens to place on checking in to different spots (in contrast to Gowalla which lets you “faux”-walla into as many places you want regardless of when you do so – as long as you are proximate of course yadeyadeya…).

I only regained lucidity when, not knowing what to do with myself because I was unable to check in every second, I meandered over to a bench because it was located next to some sorely-needed power outlets for my Apple products and struck up a conversation with Eddie.

Eddie was enthralled by all of my gadgets. He had no idea why I was (unsuccessfully) trying to log in with a wireless card, why I needed to use my phone and laptop at the same time, and why I needed to sit 3 inches from a power outlet in the first place. This is because Eddie is unwired. And as it turns out, he also happens to be the Real Mayor of the Ferry Building.

Untethered and free. What was all that stuff I was trying to tweet, log in, check in and post to again?

Mint | Free, Simple Personal Finance Software
by Diane Tate

May I have some opiods to chase my dopamine, please?

My highly social nature + my incessant need to uncover truth has traditionally been a source of pride, enabling me to be a journalist, sleuth and master of no trade (aka “generalist”).

But pride cometh before the fall: thanks to current networking technology, I can now feed my social and search beasts at alarming rates. It started slowly with email….escalated with Facebook….and was fueled to whole new levels by IM, Skype messaging and Twitter. Now I have services like FourSquare which text my phone to immediately notify me who is going where and subsequently permit me to research, add tips, stalk others … the ADD possibilities for those seeking external stimulation are endless!

Specifically, I’m noting that my capacity for reading and writing beyond a short email or tweet is eroding; that my Facebook activity steps up considerably when I am forced to read through a document longer than one page; and that I must multitask with my human-computer interface when encountering a simple human interface, lest I neglect my extroversion of any possible input.

So it was with great relief that I had the patience to read all of this piece (yes, first seen as a friend’s post on Facebook but actually a normal-length article from Slate…which still writes articles vs. being pure post redux). It neutralized my neurosis by stating it in concrete and physiological terms.

And that’s good enough for me. Just proud that I finally finished this post!

This very post is a cry out for intervention. Sponsored by AT&T.

Mint | Free, Simple Personal Finance Software
by Diane Tate

Open to correction

Really, that’s all we can ask of us imperfect beings right? Based on a crazy turn of events this evening, I hereby recant (half of) my cynical life-motto: “If it seems like it can’t get any worse, it will.”

The sordid deets:
It’s 5pm and my friend A is demoing some software on my new idol-worship Macbook, and I log back into my Gmail account only to find this incomprehensible error message:

Lieber Nutzer,

in Deutschland heißt unser E-Mail-Service Google Mail, nicht Gmail.

Sie können Ihre E-Mails in Deutschland direkt unter http://mail.google.com

abrufen.

Ihr Google-Team

Der E-Mail-Service von Google ist in Deutschland nicht mehr über die von Ihnen eingegebene URL abrufbar.

Allgemeine Informationen zu Google finden Sie in Deutschland wie gewohnt unter www.google.de oder www.google.com.

Um….this is disturbing, to say the least. I’m convinced I’ve been violated by a trojan. I’ll stop there.

But sit tight: the incredibly audacious thing is that (even more than the fact that “Lieber Nutzer” means “Dear User” and not, as A prefers, “Dear Nutcase”) this is…LEGIT!

My gmail was truly “rehubbed” and all I had to do was use mail.google.com vs. gmail.google.com

All on Google servers. All legit. All clean.

So in this case, things didn’t get worse than I expected…. they actually got BETTER! C-raz-y.

My Lieber Nutzer message makes me want to break out the Sacher Torte!

Mint | Free, Simple Personal Finance Software