Chaos Attraction

Technological Failure

2006-03-14, 3:37 p.m.

In this past week, I have been feeling kind of weirded out.

Why, you ask?

I depend on technological gadgetry, and it's been failing me.

First was my favorite watch, which developed some kind of ... twitch last Monday. Namely, it would, at certain points, stop moving around the dial and instead, twitch back and forth for awhile before moving on. Thus, I was late to everything.

So I had to resort to my spare watch on Tuesday. Spare watch died within 24 hours because um... it wasn't waterproof.

Out of watches, I then spent the rest of the week having to fumble around through my purse/pockets looking for my Palm in order to check what time it was. I constantly kept looking at my bare wrist.

Now, normally I have a good sense of time. I can probably guess what time it is to within about fifteen minutes when asked (except for the 24 hours after DST changes, because obviously I'm kinda thrown off). But somehow, no longer having the ability to check my watch and confirm what I thought just threw me. I was in a constant state of panic of "AM I LATE? OMG WHAT TIME IS IT? SHIT!"

Punctual people should not be without their watches.

I did manage to replace my watches on Monday, when Jess and I went to the mall to pick up some stuff and I spotted a Claire's. I now have the Happy Bunny watch of my dreams, which says my favorite slogan, "Cute but psycho, things even out." Hopefully THAT won't keel over and die before I get around to getting one or more watches fixed.

But no sooner did I walk out of Claire's, than I picked up my Palm to check the time... and it was sending up severe distress signals. And after that, it would never turn on again.

Okay, so the thing had to be at least 4 years old. But dammit, there are people out there with ORIGINAL MODEL PALMS from the 90's that still work. Why did mine have to die? *sobs*

Here's what's irritating: the model of Palm I had, the i705, had a thumb keyboard accessory. And I loved it. I can write Graffiti, but it's not exactly something one can do fast and easy during meetings. With the thumb keyboard, I could write stuff down quickly AND portably. I loved the little sucker.

Years after I'd gotten my Palm, I'd occasionally browse around in Fry's or wherever and check out other models that I might be interested in when this day came. There was one Palm with a cute little camera on it that I liked. And one Palm (albeit one of the $400 models) actually had a keyboard attached to it. I figured I'd just get one of them when the time came.

Course, the last time I seriously checked Palm models was oh, 2004 or so...

Now? There are THREE models out there that aren't Treo Palmphones. (I do not want a Palmphone, even though it does come with a keyboard. I already signed a 2-year phone contract, and I really don't want a combined Palm/phone. I hate phones already.) None of them have thumb keyboards, even as an accessory. They do offer some spanky net access, color screens, mp3's...i.e. shit I really am not all that concerned about having on my Palm. I already have an iPod that holds more mp3's than the Palm is going to, and I find using net access on a small screen to be really fucking frustrating (not to mention, slow to load). I can get all kinds of goodies I don't care about for my $100/$200/$400, but my top priority one is apparently not popular. And why isn't it popular, anyway? Hasn't anyone else ever gotten irritated when Graffiti mistook what you typed for some other letter? Repeatedly?

So now I'm stumped. I want another PDA, and fairly soon (before work meetings start up again on Wednesday). I preferably want another Palm PDA because I really like them (plus I've got a bunch of .pdb documents I want to still be able to use). But of the three options I've got, I'm not exactly "Yay" on any of 'em. What the fuck am I supposed to do?

Mike is going to come up with a list of possible PDA's for me, so I hope that works out. But I fear I won't be able to find anything I actually want because that stuff isn't made any more.

Given that my gadgetry seems to be taking a crap of late, I am now fearing for my iPod and camera. The iPod is two years old and still seems to be working fine, so I fear my camera will be the next to go, since it has a busted battery door already. Thing works as long as I tape the door shut, but I'd have to mail it away for god knows how many weeks to get it fixed, and I don't want to be without it for that long.

At least my cell phone, the most recent of my gadgets, isn't due to keel over and die just yet. One out of a bunch is...?


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