Soundtrack

The wireless revolution has left me free to go anywhere, never more than a few seconds away from human contact. I can read email and talk on my phone and anything else I want to do!

Wait, sorry, but I'm not going to do some Walden-esque-technophobe, "Gee, but I just want to enjoy nature and get away sometimes."

Like, I know where the power switches are. No, I'm not writing at all about the claim these weird devices have on my life.

Or how rude people are who talk on their phones in their cars. (Though getting email on my phone while I'm in my car does present a certain sort of dilemma...)

No, instead, I want to talk about the chargers.

The evil chargers.

I now have a cell phone, two cordless phones, two laptops, and a digital camera (with 4 AA batteries and a separate charging unit).

On average, they demand that once a day, I find them an outlet or a base station or a socket or a cradle, involving all kinds of contortions with fragile connectors and strange timing requirements (wait wait! don't recharge that yet, it has a memory). And after using any of them for four hours, they complain that they don't work anymore. I mean, it's when you've been on hold for an hour, and your phone dies right when the person picks up...

It's like having all these little beeping pets.

Huh.

I know people with Palmpilots and pagers and WinCE handhelds and RIM pagers and webpads. It just scares me how much time people must be spending charging all these things. Plugging, removing covers, finding outlets, driving off the road while trying to use that cigarette thingie...

And I think there's a point where this charging and maintenance is too much. If you just have a cordless phone, you can probably remember to plug it in sometimes, especially if you have a corded backup (I don't.) But when the number of chargers and devices and outlets gets above a certain number (5? 10?), you just start thinking, "When do I get to eat?" [beep beep]

I just have to include some guest editorial from Cynthia Johnston:

kewlware: Chargers and hotels are fun. Because I use so many of the plugs in hotels for devices, I always end up making these weird decisions, like... if I charge my cell phone in the bathroom, in the evening, then I can plug the blow dryer in the outlet in the morning, blah, blah. Like I have to actually map out my use of the outlets, chargers, devices. When I come in to a hotel room - it's like a military event: Check, check, test, calibrate, activate, plan for rotation....

Now if they can only figure out how not to glue the damn blow dryer to the bathroom wall next to, what I would call, the premium charger outlet: )

So maybe eventually we get one micro-miniature "integrated" wireless device? That would be a start.

But even better, we could have wireless charging!? Oh please oh please!

Shoot.

Have to go plug in the laptop...