Post-Traumatic Tech Disorder

Just sitting here on my 3+ hour layover (don’t ask why I have a 3 hour layover ’cause if I told you then I’d have to bore you) and taking notice of some of the technology hanging around in this waiting area.

• One other person like me is typing away on a netbook.
• Six people have out laptops.
• Two of those laptops are giant screen ones… plastic briefcases stuffed with circuits, lcd and components.
• Two people playing on Nintendo DS systems.
• One person using a PSP.  I don’t think she’s playing games though.  Looks more like she’s watching a movie.  The fact I was able to deduce that makes me feel slightly stalkerish.  So… moving on…
• Twelve people are typing feverishly on their phones.  Texting or tweeting something like "OMGWTFPDA!!!  Some guy with a netbook at the airport is totally stalking me and I’m not even trying to draw attention to myself!"
• Surprisingly, only five of these people have iPhones/smartphones.
• Six people are listening to iPods or an equivalent mp3 player.
• A few of those (like me and my Sansa) are also utilizing other technology.
• Twenty-four people are reading books, newspapers or magazines.
• All using old school paper-n-ink technology.  Not a single Kindle or ebook reader among them.
• Not technology-related but added out of curiosity… nine people are taking a between flight nap.

There comes a day when you’re wandering through one of those massive fortresses of commercialism and notice this aisle full of flashlights.  There are the aircraft aluminum-bodied ones, which are a premium choice for bouncers.  There are lantern ones for those hesitant to play with  oil and fire in the middle of a nice, flammable forest.  And it goes on… cheap flashlights and expensive flashlights and those snake flashlights you can wrap around stuff and point where you want them to go.

You don’t really need a flashlight, but your daughter likes to "camp" in her room and has burned through tons of batteries with lights you kept around for emergencies.  You decide to go with this neat little winding flashlight that can be recharged by hand-cranking it.  Yay!  That battery graveyard just got a little smaller around the house.  And you’re a step ahead… get one for her to use and also get one to keep in the kitchen drawer for emergencies.

And then that day comes when the smaller UPS in your office start with their dreaded wail, "Aah! There’s no power in the house so I’m gonna make this constant annoying beeping sound to help drain the life out of this poor 12-year old battery all the more quickly and wake up the entire family late at night.  Weeeeeee…" 

No problem.  I’ll go downstairs, get my flashlight, look up the number for the power company, and call them up to report the outage.  The sooner they’re aware of the problem, the sooner it can get fixed.

But there is a problem.  No emergency flashlight in the kitchen drawer.  No light means reading the last electric bill for the 24-hour number will be a bit more difficult.

Luckily, my long years as a dba prepared me for such a situation.  I had a backup.  I had a backup where my daughter wouldn’t think to look for one.  I guess it could be considered an "off-site" backup in that sense.  But the things about backups are… if you don’t use them from time-to-time, you can forget them.  That’s just what happened here.  I forgot where I put my backup light source.

Good thing I had my netbook handy with its 8 hours of battery life.  And a nice bright screen.  With my netbook in hand, I got the phone number, called the power company, and even managed to finally track down my backup lights (some nice little 170 hour waterproof LED lights… if I only had a pool, I’d be tempted to find out how waterproof they really are).

So, thank you, netbook.  You may cause my hands to cramp up from time-to-time with your scaled down keyboard and you definitely aren’t helping my tech industry inflicted eyestrain.  But you made a damn good flashlight and kept me entertained in the dark with a mean game of Texas hold ’em as I waited for the power to be restored.

After over a decade of suffering through sleep apnea, you’d think I’d understand the futility of trying to be productive when sleep deprived.  For a while, I had so much going on, my brain wouldn’t shut down at night when it was time to sleep.  It would take me hours to fall asleep.  And of course, I didn’t take that lying down… I just kept working on this and that (very slowly as if thinking through pea soup fog) until I was tired enough to fall asleep.

The major problem with that strategy is I’m a night owl by nature.

So, my wife finally took action.  After the extensive (and obligatory) car chase scene and the showdown fight in some old abandoned warehouse, she was able to force feed me some melatonin to get me to sleep.  An hour afterwards… I dropped like a rock.

I’ve been taking it regularly since then and with some actual quality sleep under my belt for a week, I was able to be three times as productive and get caught back up on work.  Now, I’m looking at all these projects that sat on hold for a long time when I didn’t think I had time to work on them and familiarizing myself with them.  "Hi, everyone!"  "Hey, Jeff!  We missed you!"  "Aww, thanks guys."

And I’m having fun again.