Remember When?

28. Jan, 2010 0 Comments

I first played Rock Band on Christmas Day with the fam and discovered my inner rock star. I LOVE being the lead singer and can sing “Eye of the Tiger” perfectly. So yesterday morning, as I was getting ready for work, I remembered that I had just downloaded the Rock Band app to my iPhone. I turned it on, in hopes of being able to sing my heart out while I curled my lashes.

As soon as I clicked on it, the screen on my iPhone suddenly went large. We’re talking major zoom. I couldn’t minimize it. In fact, I couldn’t do anything with it. I restarted it, didn’t work. Then did a hard restart and it still didn’t work. I sync’d it with my iTunes, still no luck. So I decided to restore it back to factory setting and reboot the firmware. I was convinced that would do the trick but no, it didn’t. I was on the verge of a panic attack. I cannot live without my iPhone. I manage my entire life on it. After a few stressful hours, I finally found a fix for it through Apple’s online forum. Crisis averted.

But it got me remembering about what life was like before all this high tech innovation.

I work in the high tech industry and our entire business is dependent upon email and the Web. In tech, a company’s success is often determined by how soon you get your product or new feature to market. And as soon as its generally available, you’re already working on the next update. Everything moves at a rapid pace, there is no down time. I often wonder, how was business conducted before email? Before the Internet? And you know, that time wasn’t so long ago…

Last week I had a funny conversation with my cousin Jeff. We reminisced about how when we were in college (different schools in different states), we didn’t have email and didn’t know what the Web was. It was the early-mid 90′s and the Internet was just starting to become commercialized. Some of the things I recalled are:

* While working at the health center at school, the IT guy walked into our office and announced to us, “There’s this new thing that’s just come out called ‘Windows 95′. We’re going to use you guys (student workers) as a guinea pig to see if its any good.” The full-time employees thought it was nuisance and didn’t want to be bothered with it. Little did we know how revolutionary it would become.

* That same year I took an Organizational Behavior class. I had written what I thought was a very good paper, only to receive a “B” on it. I questioned the professor to see what part of my paper was lacking. His response was that I got a “B” because I printed it using a word processor and not a laser jet printer. Ummm, what was wrong with a word processor? I’d been using it for 2 years to write papers. My friend’s borrowed it to write their papers. No one owned computer and to be quite honest, I didn’t even know where a computer lab was on campus. Needless to say that I was flabbergasted and I told the professor I don’t remember aesthetics being a grading criteria. He didn’t budge and refused to change my grade.

* I eventually did find out where the computer lab was, but only because I learned that my friend Chris was going there to “write” to her cousin who was attending another school. I was confused and asked her how she was “writing” to her. She explained that it was “some computer mail thing.” I remember thinking the whole concept was just beyond me.

* Jeff had the same experience at his school. He saw a bunch of guys huddled around a computer. With piqued interest he asked them what they were doing and they said they were “chatting” with other people. He went back to the computer lab in his major and was told that it was nothing and they didn’t have that there.

* The first email address I ever got was at that health center job. I remember Jeff asking me what my email was. I wasn’t sure what it was (because no one actually told me) but I guessed and had him send me a test message which actually worked. For a long time, he was the only person I emailed because I didn’t know anyone else who had email.

* I also remember him telling me about some program (for the life of me, I can’t remember the name of it); it essentially was a Web browser and MTV had a Web site. I remember trying to look it up but it was soooooo slow.

* After college, I worked for a management consulting company and had a work email account there. Email was starting to become more prevalent, but it was still pre-Yahoo and Hotmail — people still mostly had emails through school or work. No one had personal computers at home. (In fact, I didn’t even get my own home computer until 2001.)

When I think about it, the pre-consumerized era of email and Web was only about 15 years ago. In the high tech world we’re talking ancient years, but in the grand scheme of things, it was only yesterday.

These days, I have instant access to my email and the Web, but in the very near future, our current ways of communicating (text, IM) will become obsolete and video will take over. All this innovation is exciting but can get overwhelming. But I fully embrace it. Its made the world a smaller place while expanding my world of friends, resources and opportunities.

And speaking of opportunities, I have no idea how kids these days can have a hard time with school assignments…I mean, they had an entire world wide web, full of facts and resources available to them. Do they even know what Cliff notes are?

Workout Update

Wednesday Night:
I ran intervals on the treadmill. It was a really good run. You can read about it on the Daily Mile.

Thursday Morning:
For the 3rd week in a row, I bypassed Body Pump in favor of swimming. I know that leaves me with only 1 day of weight training, but after that one session, plus 2 days of strength and conditioning, in addition to Yoga Tune-Up and running, I am so sore and swimming simply helps me to work things out.

Earlier this week I remembered that when I started swim lessons last summer I signed up at Swim Plan for a personalized swimming program. At the time, I wasn’t ready for it, but now its exactly what I need. So this morning I did my first swim workout (that I didn’t make up myself). You can also read about it on the Daily Mile. It was super hard and the longest one I’ve done to date, but I can’t wait to try it again.

One last thing. I tried a new recipe for dinner last night. Its super delish, quick and easy to make – you should try it out too!