Behind The Curve

After a great deal of thought, I have decided not to join the Twitterverse.

Yet.

"The only people who hate Twitter haven't used it", or so the saying goes. I'll admit to a completely irrational disdain for, almost a fear of, anything so insanely popular. This despite repeated instances in the past of my disdain/fear being completely overturned.

I once held iPods in contempt. That's hard for me to believe nowadays, given that any household task is best accomplished with music.

Same goes for Facebook. You know, Facebook, the only site on the Internet with half a billion members? Hated the very concept of it at one point; now I'm on there, minimum, three times a day.

And don't get me started on cell phones. Actually, that's one piece of tricknology I haven't...quite...succumbed to. I have one. Occasionally I remember to turn it on and carry it with me. And sometimes I even (gasp!) text people. About once a month. I find texting to be indispensable...every once in a blue moon.

It's only a matter of time before I'm a Twit among Twits, is what I'm saying. I will probably join up and follow some people for a good long while before I ever open my beak to tweet myself...if I ever do. In spite of all the above, I'm not sure I will.

That's because if I ever start tweeting away, it'll mean the death of the Breadbin. I've thought about this for some time now, especially as my blog posting this summer has been sporadic at best. Doubtless I'd post more often if "posting" meant composing a single sentence. But I find it extraordinarily difficult to distill my thoughts to just 140 characters or less. Sometimes flat-out impossible. Suppose I have a controversial thought (many of mine are). Do I just put it out there, naked and devoid of context, lacking the space to explain myself? No, I don't: that's what this Breadbin's for. So if I still have this blog, what would I put in my Twitter-feed? "Can't decide between Corn Flakes and Raisin Bran this morning"? Shoot me now. And on those few occasions where I do have a pithy thought that must be shared and can be expressed succintly...hello, Facebook status line. I fail to see how Twitter isn't reductionist and redundant.

Then again, I once said the same thing about Facebook.

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I'm slowly catching up to the rest of you folks in one area, though. A few weeks ago, my iPod went missing. Now this iPod, despite being only a few years old, is hopelessly out of date. It has a mere 8 GB and it won't even play video. But damnit, I missed that little thin music-maker. I looked everywhere. Well, apparently not: if I had looked everywhere, I would have found it. It stubbornly remained lost.

I did not lose the thing on purpose. Honest. I might have been tempted, had I any idea my darling wife would get a discount on an Apple-refurbished iPod Touch and present me with it.

I was ecstatic to get this. I christened it 'The Ken Touch' in iTunes and went about syncing my library to it. That took three and a half hours. I was about to meander into the App store and commence mass downloading of free apps when I noticed that the software build on my 'Pod was version 2.0.6 or some such. The current build is something like 4.1.2. Better update that.

About three minutes into the update process, the iPod crashed. Hard. The computer spat out a warning that my iPod was in recovery mode and told me I must restore it before I could use it again. About five minutes into that process, another error message popped up: "unknown error 3003: the iPod can not be restored."

Let's see: must restore it to use it: it can't be restored. Perhaps naming this thing 'The Ken Touch' was a bad idea.

I find computer error messages darkly funny sometimes. Particularly the "unknown" ones. If the computer doesn't know what the error is, how does it know it's an error? I couldn't help but picture some little guy inside the computer looking around going well, THAT ain't right. Not sure how or why, but something's screwed up here someplace. Besides, this particular error, despite being "unknown", seems to be well enough known to have a specific number attached to it. How exactly does this make sense?

Researching error code 3003 online, I determined the problem was my USB connection. The system requirements for the iPod touch state that a USB 2.0 connection is necessary. Despite the fact my hub says USB 2.0 on it, the computer refused to recognize it as such, even after the driver was updated. Man, this is weird, I thought. The connection's good enough to sync music and video, but not good enough to update software. How exactly does this make sense?

Eventually, after much trial and unknown error and imaginary but extremely satisfying machete attacks on my computer, I hit upon the idea of updating the software on Eva's laptop, which does recognize its USB ports as 2.0. Lo and behold, that worked. Now to restore.

Three and a half more hours and everything seems to be up and running. Everything, that is, except the four videos I've collected in anticipation of the day I get an iPod that can actually play video. I watched a snippet of one of them without incident: the next morning I went to watch it again and was told "the movie could not be played."

Then I noticed that all of the music I had legally purchased prior to about a year ago likewise wouldn't play. I'm a pretty even-tempered guy. I was about to blow my stack. Was this some dark, DRM-related Apple-plot to get my to re-purchase all my content?

Turns out it was only a case of iTunes "forgetting" that I was allowed to listen to and watch the items in its library. Simply de-authorizing and re-authorizing my computer did the trick. Total elapsed troubleshooting time: ten and a half hours, but hey. It's all good now. Really good.

This morning I finally got around to the App store. What a wonderland in there, and so much of it is free. There are a couple of games I simply have to get the next time I've got money in my iTunes account. Top of the list: Peggle.

Of course, "free" is a relative term when you're behind the curve like me. Many of the most interesting apps require a WiFi connection that's better suited to (surprise!) an iPhone than an iPod Touch. The navigation programs, the newspapers, even some of the games require the user to be constantly online--which just isn't practical for me. Let alone desirable.

As much as I salivate over these apps, I am quite content with the device I have. You give me the opportunity to go online anywhere I go and I will have the devil's own time going offline.

Some day, this barrier I've set myself will fall, and I'll be wired every waking moment. I just hope by then I've managed some kind of virtual/real life balance. Until then, I'm happily behind the curve, plodding along at my own pace.