Friday, December 11, 2009

Technology Barely Keeping UP or Are We Falling Behind?

You need to know about a couple of things. First, you can never have enough technology. Get everyone on your list something technical for the generic year-end non-partisan holiday. You know; the one with the tree and the plastic nativity scene.


Obviously I’m not going to get involved in any controversies. Sing Christmas Carols, if you want, I won’t judge.

But everyone needs more technology. We here at the Lake Boren Rapid Transit Report Galactic Headquarters have lots. No clue how most of it works. Examples:

There’s a machine that can stream real time TV on a 3.5 inch HD screen via the high speed cell phone system. To change channels you just swipe your finger up or down on the screen. You need that. Saves the effort of actually going into the room where the TV is and finding the remote.

Speaking of finding the remote: You also need a dozen of those little beeper finder things. They’re intended for the key ring but why not use them for everything? Just attach the beeper to whatever you lost, let’s say the cat, and then instead of hunting for the cat you hunt for the sender. If you find the sender and press the button you’ll never see the cat again. So it’s a win-win. Do you see a problem here? If not you shouldn’t have any trouble deciding.

Another handy item is the Botanicalls DIY Plant Twitter Kit. After some basic soldering and assembly (the DIY part) you just cram it into the dirt under your house plant and then connect it to your household network. You have a household network, right?

Then you just subscribe to the plant’s Twitter feed. The plant sends Tweets about how it’s doing on water. Plants don’t really care about much except water. Just check Twitter and presto you see if your plant is too wet or too dry.

And you need the LED faucet light. It connects to the faucet where the water comes out. Water below 89 degrees (what your plant wants) is blue. If it gets hotter it changes to red. You need that. Your plant wants that. Check Twitter.

Right now your computer is spilling crucial information on your desk from the unused USB ports. Did you know those things can leak data? You need to get stuff for everyone on your list to plug those up. Like a USB flexible speaker. Or a 3.5 inch digital photo frame. Or a Swiss Flash USB knife. Thumb drives disguised as Lego blocks, AA batteries, lighters, and spilled coffee. As data leaks out the coffee puddle gets bigger. Then you need a USB paper towel.

You also need a laptop computer desk for your steering wheel. I ordered mine. Makes it a lot safer than just holding it in your hands. You can read email in traffic and even get real time traffic info on the back-up your accident caused.

Another hot gadget is a set of Star Wars light saber chopsticks. They’ll make your Oriental food taste better. It’s all in how you hold your thumb. Never be intimidated by Szechwan cuisine again.

And a final note: Newcastle is getting a library. The groundbreaking will take place in July 2010. Everyone has agreed to allow the project to go forward even though we still don’t know for sure if it will include apartments.

The City Council approved changing the requirements to eliminate a lot of extra stuff in the structure which paved the way (so to speak) for the library to be built by itself. However, now, for some reason, the Newcastle News thinks apartments are still part of the plan.

I hope to watch and possibly make rude comments as construction goes on. It’s my job now. That’s what we old guys do. In a week I’ll be even older.

Oh, earlier I said something about a final note. You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet. Here’s another.

The person employed to “blog” about Newcastle has quit. Not “fired,” he quit. He said the reason he quit was that nobody should get paid for doing that. What a guy. Anyway, I’m still waiting for someone to offer to pay me. Although I’d probably have to register as a political lobbyist and pay some kind of fee. So what’s the point? Exercising my freedom of speech for free is just about as much fun as I’ve ever had. And I don’t have to get it approved by anyone!

Al

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