Technology

We have certainly come a long way since the days of smoke signals and carrier pigeons. In spite of that, I'm not sure about the reliability of our technology. Maybe it's just me that lacks reliability. When growing up, everyone had rotary land phones. There was no such thing as cell phones. In fact, the invention of the princess phone was a big deal even though it was rotary initially also. The one thing I do remember is that we never dropped any calls, the sound quality was always good and consistent, and it was easy to avoid calls by just taking the phone off the hook.

Phones now are smart. But, sound quality is not always good. You can't always connect. And calls are still dropped at an alarming rate. But this is progress. My cell phone is a lot like me actually, it's dumb. Sure it can text and take pictures, I just haven't figured out how to do it. And you know what, I'm no poorer off for it. My phone is more of an electronic leash than a communications device. Only a handful of people have the number and other than my wife, no one calls it. They know that I may not hear it if it is on, or more likely it will be off. Who really needs it. So much for phones.

Let's go to television, music, stereos, etc. I used to love the old days with LP's and stereos. First, vinyl LP's when they are first played sound so rich and full, Unlike CD's. I acknowledge that after about 10 plays, the vinyl LP's don't sound as good as they originally did. The CD's always sound the same. No deterioration. Unfortunately LP's are obsolete now. (I know they are making a small come back and there are audiophiles who will always treasure them.) How ironic that the CD, which replaced them, is also becoming extinct. Giving was to streaming music and downloaded music. Not sure what streaming music is. Anyways, it seems like a lost for our culture.

Stereos used to be the thing. A good stereo with a pair of three way or four way speakers, the bigger the better, was what it meant to be cool. They were easy to set up. Only two speakers to connect, a turntable, the receiver, maybe a preamp, and you were good to go. I just bought a 5.1 receiver for our living room. Our living room is kind of funky shaped and for true surround sound, I would need to run yards of speaker wire around the room. We have a 20 foot cathedral ceiling and an open floor plan so essentially I have only two walls and an island where the fireplace is and the television mounted above it.  I have some speakers from an old pioneer home entertainment system from years ago. I thought it was hip but no HDMI, HD or any other such thing. I bought the receiver with plans to use the speakers from the old system. Unfortunately, the sub woofer is not powered and so won't work with this receiver. While the speakers might work, they are to big for the space and not capable of being mounted. Hence, I guess I need to buy a new set of speakers.

Now let me talk about Blu-ray players. Great picture with my LG LED TV. Unfortunately, it is always freezing up. My friend said I lacked sufficient bandwith to run the streaming of Netflix, etc., and that is why it's freezing up. OK, I can buy that but it also freezes when were playing Blu-rays or DVDs. So much for that theory. Do you know how annoying it is to have to unplug the player, wait for a minute, plug it back in and hope it works? Sometimes, you have to repeat the process several times. (Reminds me of shampoo instructions in the old days. Wash, rinse and repeat.) VHS players had problems too such as when the machine would eat the tape. For some reason, that didn't seem quite as bad. DVDs and Blu-rays are going obsolete too as streaming movies and shows is the way to go now. That is fine as long as the equipment performs as advertised, which is not always a sure bet.

Anyway, enough of my gripes for now. Some how writing about it eases my frustration. Thanks for reading this and if you have any horror technology stories, I would love to hear them.