December 25, 2003
Stuck in the Dark Ages
Man, this visit to Fort Wayne is killing me. Not a single house that I visited while I was in town had broadband Internet access. What the hell? Do they even make modems anymore? Fort Wayne is stuck in the mid-1990s here. Its very strange. Most folks are paying $20+ a month for AOL dial-up and can’t understand why they would want to pay another $10 a month for broadband access. I keep telling them its faster, always on, and other great things but I keep hearing “Why would I need that?”. Today, our neighbors came over and my Mom wanted to show them Sydney’s web site. By the time, they got connected and the pictures actually rendered on the page, a good 10 minutes had gone by. I will never get that time back.
Furthermore, everyone is still using those antique cameras that you have to put this special paper in — I think its called film. With this so-called film, you can only take so many pictures per little canister and you only get once chance at each picture. If you don’t like the picture, there isn’t anything you can do about it. Very strange. Then — get this — you have to take the canister of film to a special building to get your pictures. This printing process apparently takes some kind of special person or machine. You give them the canister and come back within an hour and they give you the pictures on paper. And on top of that, some people have cameras that you use once and then you throw away! Each time you need more pictures, you have to buy another camera! What the hell?
Today, I was yelled at because I didn’t turn a light off in one room — “What, do you own the electric company or something?” they said. Ok, so I wasted a few cents. These people think nothing of buying a new camera every 24 pictures, driving to some building to drop off the film, then driving back to the building later to get the pictures, and then throwing away the pictures printed on paper because they are no good. Who is really being wasteful here? Get with it, people.
