I'm not a Luddite technology hater but I'm not a Cell Phone Zombie either. Sometimes walking the line between the two gets wobbly and I end up falling in the drink. Thus I've spent this past week drowning in techno gizmo gibberish frrustration of why doesn't the effing thing work if it's so effing smart??!! Just once why can't there be a 'Send to Device' button right there where the website says it's supposed to be in their gibbering instructions? And for the love of . . . where's my #$%&ing ANT stick??!! My refrain of woe used to be 'where's my #$%&ing phone' but now my life is all about the ANT stick.
By way of explanation, I started back up working with my triathlon coach which meant I had to dig my heart rate monitor and cyclometer out of hibernation which lead to all the troubles. Because I'd lost my cyclometer last fall and my HR (heart rate) monitor died. My attempts at bathroom surgeries to resurrect it worked for precisely one workout. Why just the one? To tease and confuse me I suppose. It would have made to much sense if the thing had flat out refused to come back to life, but getting a hearbeat for one workout, well, that's more complicated and gives you hope that more surgery will work and sucks more time and aggravation from your life and in the end you finally break down and spend the $$$ on the fancypants Garmin GPS gizmo that you've been avoiding for the past 15 years or so. I'm the only 15 year triathlete in Boulder and maybe in all of triathlete-land that has never had a Garmin. Because that's crossing the line into Cell Phone Zombie Land. A HR monitor is nuisance enough, do I really need to know how many times I farted during that last interval and what was my % of max. heart rate, elevation gain and average pace during those farts? In the end will it make this any more fun?
But on the other side of that line is data and I loves me my data. Is there any better porn than a spreadsheet? Graphs, charts, overlays of said graphs and charts - total geek porn. I could stare at that stuff all day and that's the problem. And Garmin gives you data, SO much data, you can set up 4 metrics to watch per screen and there are 4 screens you can toggle between. 16 data points you can monitor during your workout. Cell Phone Zombies Unite. When do you get to look at the sky and the birds and the angry rattlesnake who hasn't had his morning latte yet and is about to bite you on the leg? And yes that nearly happened to me last weekend. Too bad I wasn't wearing my HR monitor strap because that would have been an excellent way to measure maximum heart rate. I was able to re-live the whole thing in graphs though, thanks to Garmin. That huge spike in speed on the uphill before the gulch? Yeah, that would be where the snake and I had our rendevous. Another story for another day.
It all sounds well and good but it's taken an enormous amount of time and mental energy to get this gizmo up and running and doing even the simplest of things that it's capable of doing. And the thing is so stinkin' smart that I don't even know half the things it can do never mind what it's doing behind my back. Kind of like Strummer. Just like Strummer. And I have about as much control over it.
Can't I please just go for a run or a bike ride without the gizmo tattling on me? Because it tells my coach everything whether I want it to or not. She knows all about that 20 minute super slow old dog Lola walk I took with it as a test. Whether she wants to or not. Because I have no freaking clue what that thing is sending out into the universe. And I've put in all the effort I care to to find out.
Then I got a new phone after over 2 years of iPhone purgatory. Lo I am delivered from both iPhone and Sprint!!! Oh happy gloriousness of freedom from the tyranny of that dynamic duo! Except now I have more gizmo gibberish to deal with. Fixing my contacts, setting up email, setting up voicemail box. Because after less than a day of joyous freedom and a phone that actually works I got an email from someone telling me my voice mail box is full so I have to email you. And then there's the Scooby Doo Mystery of the blinking blue light. Why? And how do I make it stop? And what other basic thing isn't set up properly and how will I find out about it?
So after a week of tekno burn out I think it's time to hit the bike and see if there are baby buffaloes yet. Because baby buffalo wallpaper will take the edge of the techno-hassle of the last week.
No comments:
Post a Comment