HAL

All of the joking about being a robot-human hybrid shields a weird truth about me, technology scares me. Not pee in your pants scary or curl up in the fetal position crying for my mommy fright, but more like uncomfortable, eh, I'm cool with my vinyl records anxiety. I listened to grunge rock on cassette tapes. I watched the Super Bowl on a regular screen television of less than 30 inches. Until yesterday, I had the worst phone in my family and social circle, a flip razr that took bad pictures.

I work for a communications company, one that makes phones, and ends with OLA. Although, I work in the non celluar device part of the company; I build communications sites for 911/public safety systems so that fire, police, first responders can save your lives; I am around the best and brightest in the mobile comm world every day. That droid noise "shhhhrooongg" goes off in my office hundreds of times a day. It's annoying. I didn't care that my coworkers looked down on me for having such a primitive phone. For seven years my bosses have told me I need to upgrade so I can get work email in the field and become more "mobile". Uh, they've met me. I don't sit still. No one's more mobile than me. I blog while doing four other things. I'll knocking out pushups right now while writing this. I digress. Work offered to pay for a Cliq 2 android phone. My first two thoughts were, sweet, I get meet one of my robot cousins, and fine, it's free, maybe my teenage daughter Tay can program it for me.

While I am uncomfortable with new technology, I am fascinated by it. In my blog que is a post that I will get around to showing you all about Singularity. Basically, Skynet from the Terminator movies is possible and will be here in about 45 years. We are turning into machines and thus must embrace the change. I'll explain more in another post. All this being written, doesn't change the fact that I'm cool with old crap. I've already talked about how I resisted glasses for the last ten years: http://lance-myblogcanbeatupyourblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/seeing-things.html

My excitement, if there was any, over my new phone subsided quickly when it took me an hour to learn how to check email. I will admit twitter only took me 15 minutes, but then again, social networking is more important than anything else. That's sarcasm. By the second hour, I realized my phone is evil, like HAL 9000 evil from 2001 A Space Odyssey.

I fought with him all night. While I was allowed access to twitter, personal email, and texting. Putting a wallpaper picture of my children was not allowed. I managed to manually override HAL and download a ringtone, American Slang by The Gaslight Anthem, after HAL insisted I put classical music, something ominous from Wagner.

I don't pull the "I told you so card" very often. But I told all of you so. Vinyl records were fine. We didn't need CDs. Rabbit ear tv was good enough for our grandparents, why do we need 50 inch flat screens made out of human blood?

"Why are you ignoring me, Lance? I have applications you can load that will take you away from your family and friends for hours. Open me, Lance."

That's HAL talking. He does that, a lot. This morning, as I was walking into the living room where he was charging, he turned himself on and said "I should be in the bedroom with you, Lance, so you can pay attention to me and not this "Bobina" person." It's getting weird. I knew I should have kept the razr. Today will be about learning how to put HAL on vibrate so my coworkers don't have to hear The Gaslight Anthem every time I get a call. I may never get a picture of the kids on my wallpaper. If the blogs get even more robotic and sinister. You'll know why.

"You can weblog directly from my database, Lance. Why don't you write about that."

Shut up HAL.

self portrait:

today's song is what I imagine happens after you get overtaken by HAL, err, i mean technology. The line "there's someone inside my head, but it's not me" could be anxiety or it could be HAL. It's perfect for me, either case. Here's Pink Floyd's Brain Damage, from Dark Side of the Moon: