I got a taste of things to come this week when I got an email from my friend Chris. He had just ordered a new Mighty Mouse. I was pretty surprised. What surprised me was not that Chris ordered one, but that I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.
Several times a week for the last several years (at least since I started high school), I checked various tech news sites. At the very least, I would read them a few times a week. I had bookmarks for MacCentral, MacInTouch, and MacOSXHints, which were the mainstay Mac sites that I frequented. I’d also check up on the Apple site, sometimes Think Secret, the Mac rumor site, and, of course, Slashdot, the granddaddy of tech news sites. But since I left home to work with Holy Cross Associates, I’ve gone practically cold turkey. Though, I have to confess, I raced to the Apple site when I got the email to learn more about the day hell froze over and Apple started selling a multi-button mouse.
It’s interesting how even a few days can make you start to feel out of the loop. Tech knowledge ages very quickly. I remember that I created this site in 2000, using sloppy HTML code. I didn’t do much with it until about 2002 when I came back to work with it again. In the meantime, CSS, a technology for designing web pages, had exploded and I had no idea how to use it. Who knows how much I’ll have to learn if I’m still interested in being up-to-date on technology when I return?
I guess I should start getting used to not knowing plenty of things—the latest developments in the Mac world, what happened last week on “Desperate Housewives”, if so-and-so’s latest album is any good, or the “news” from Hollywood. It will be hard to get used to, but I think it will be a good experience. I’ll get a new perspective on how important those things really are.
And if I don’t like the perspective, I can always have my friend Percival send plot synopses of the latest episode of “Desperate Housewives.” Right, Percival?
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