Sunday, January 25, 2009

Lights!...Camera!...Action??

I'm usually a little slow to jump on the latest and greatest technological bandwagon. Sometimes it's financial, as in Why yes, I'd love to see a big flatscreen plasma hung up on the wall above the fireplace, but darn it, I can't seem to find that extra $3000 laying around anywhere. Sometimes the item just falls down a little lower on my want list - I still haven't bought myself an mp3 player, even though I'd talked so much about it right before Christmas and could've easily procured one with all the crazy sales that went on. Right now I'm more, Eh; I'll get one when I get one, you know? Now that I have a private office, blocking people out and listening to music is as easy as shutting my door. And it's not like I've been EXERCISING for hell's sake, so those two reasons alone made owning one a much lower priority.

I didn't own a digital camera until a couple of years ago, though I knew once I did I'd use the hell out of it and I have. My little Sony Cybershot is not fancy but for my needs and skill level it does its job nicely. And my dvr? Every day I greet it: Hellooo Lovah, and I would quit watching TV altogether than watch it without this thing. The Internet: we lived full lives without it in our home until the time came it became a necessary tool for bringing extra income in. Of course it didn't take long for it to become a large portion of our home entertainment as well. Somebody in this house has honed his poker playing to an impressive level, (PokerStars if you ever want to play cards with Brian), somebody else chooses Allrecipes.com over her cookbooks half the time, and who the heck needs those big bulky phone books anymore when it's just as easy to go on Yellowpages.com? I don't like admitting to being so dependent on it, but let's be honest here. The first thing I do every morning after peeing is come in here and check out the weather, both here and sometimes where my loved ones reside and I love it. LOVE IT.

So then along comes the webcam. I gave almost no thought to them whatsoever, beyond thinking it's cool that other people were starting to use them. Then back in October, good friend and ex-coworker Joe and I were discussing them and he told me he could get me one cheap from a company they do business with. When I asked him what his definition of "cheap" was he said Don't worry about the price and give me your damn address. Even I know a good deal when I hear one, so I couldn't really argue. A few days later it arrived in the mail. I got all excited and set it down on my desk. And then did nothing else with it for three months.

Then my damn family, the one that has all the cute kids in it? They told me they all use them. When I let it slip that I had one but wasn't using it, they started harrassing me and calling me all kinds of mean names and threatened to disown me if I didn't install it immediately. Not really. But they did keep bugging me. And when I heard stories like seeing Baby R run up to the camera and lift up her shirt so she could get a long-distance zerbertz on her belly, I finally caved. While talking on the phone to my cousin who's the owner of the cute kids this morning, I installed the damn thing. It's hard enough to hear those little voices on the phone and then every time I get a picture of one of them see how freaking fast they're growing - what the hell am I thinking not taking advantage of this awesome device. I'm a little retarded sometimes, I really am.

I think I installed it correctly, considering all I had to do was plug a couple of cables in and click "Next" a couple of times and then "Finish". And now I'm looking at the weird little thing sitting on top of my monitor as we speak and oh..oh my God..there's ME! Holy shit; I need to lose some weight. Of course I misplaced the software and info it came with so any technical questions or concerns I have will need to be addressed with Joe, who will soon regret ever sending me this thing. But right now my green sweater and brown-red hair both look sort of white, so there's obviously some adjustments that need to be made.

Now that it's showtime I'm experiencing a mild case of performance anxiety. Am I supposed to change out of my pajamas, wash yesterday's mascara off, reapply more make-up and brush my hair? I tend not to do those things very much unless I'm leaving the house. For the time being it's only my family who will be seeing me and they've seen my scary morning face for many years. But. I already know a couple of friends who have cameras too and of course will want to use it with them and THEN WHAT??? I have to step up my game, man. And not only do I need to look decent, what if I'm totally boring; I mean, should I line up some card tricks to have handy? Learn to juggle? God, the pressure.

When we were younger, we all talked about having "TV phones" someday, where we'd be able to talk and see each other at the same time. I'm pretty sure they had them on the Jetsons, which is how we formed our ideas for what the world would be like "in the future" when we got older. But back then I never really thought it would happen during my lifetime. It sort of blows my mind, really. Does this mean my dream of owning a flying bubble car might actually come true someday? If so, I'm not holding out for that one; I will have one as soon as possible and I will fly over to your house and visit all the time. We all will. Because what better way to use all this techie stuff than to be able to stay close with the people you love most in the world.

So hey, if you are also a proud owner of one of these camera thingies and ever want to see and talk to me, let me know. It shouldn't take me very long to figure it all out; I don't know, a few months or a year? I'm kidding! Sort of.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just make sure that damn thing is not transmitting when you think it is off...that would not be cool.

Kim said...

Weird - one of my friends just told me a bad story about that JUST NOW on the phone.
I will be extremely careful.
Brian hates the idea of a camera on us anyway, and I see he has it facing the wall right now. Paranoid freak!

T.J. said...

There's so much I'd like to say about your post, but what I have to say would be as long (or onger) than your post, and I don't think that would be fair, especially since I only bounced over here (from wiskeymarie) to suggest sitemeter.

It's a pretty good stat tracker, and the basic account is free.

Buenos con queso,

T.

Kim said...

TJ - Thanks! Whiskey herself recommended the same thing; sounds like exactly what I was looking for.

Kristen Mullane said...

I'm behind with technology too. Being in a relationship with a man who loves that stuff, I've slowly given up and become dependent on him, which isn't necessarily good. Although I have to say, all the aggravation that comes with owning electronics has pretty much vanished now that it's never my problem, haha.

Kim said...

Kristen - I've always made it a policy to be friends with smart computer geeks. It saves a ton of money and aggravation!

Anonymous said...

:D Don't have one (I HATE seeing myself on camera - still or moving). Guess we're going to have to stick to the old fashioned way. (Commenting on blogs is now so old fashioned, when just a handful of years ago we'd be all, "Blog? What's a blog? Hansel?)

Kim said...

Snerk - Yeah, believe me; I'm keeping the camera above gut level and making sure I'm not too close and always looking a little to the left. It's not pretty.