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08/13/2005 Archived Entry: "Complexifying the simple life"

MY DSL CONNECTION WAS DOWN more than 24 hours this week. Once, I'd have been tearing my hair out. Now I think, "Hey, a chance to pick blackberries!"

Still, my Netless day had its frustrations, which led to observations. The first was a familiar one about the complications of even "the simple life" in the twenty-first century. The second (related) is what a a truly, truly amazing amount of service we give to the machines that are supposed to serve us -- maintaining and repairing computers; feeding, fixing, and insuring vehicles; bowing to the dictates of our telephones. Third: Damn, I shoulda made copies of some of those pages bookmarked in my browser.

Yes, I thought "Ah, I can pick berries!" Then I discovered the canning recipe I really needed was locked up on the Net. No big problem. My trusty old copy of Putting Food By had an alternative. And Carla Emery could also have come to my rescue. But I don't always have hard-copy substitutes for needed Netstuff. Lazy, relying on bookmarks. Time to start copying some of those marked pages to my hard-drive. And making actual (gasp!) paper copies of the most crucial.

Posted by Claire @ 01:26 PM CST
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