My lack of recent posting was due to an extended trip to Santa Rosa, California I just returned from. Normally when I’m about to leave on a birding trip and am not going to have internet access I’ll try to post several blog entries that will appear on upcoming dates while I’m gone. I didn’t feel that would be necessary this trip, however, because Mary has a high-speed Internet connection and I thought I would have lots of time to post entries.
I knew she had been having problems with her provider, but we completely lost the connection over the long weekend, making it impossible to post an entry from her house. It turned out squirrels had been chewing on the lines making the connection unstable. Strangely, exactly the same thing happened to our service in Tacoma a couple of years ago. I wonder how common the problem is?
Actually, though, I found the intermittent dropping of the connection more frustrating than simply not having it available at all. It seemed like every time I was about to post a blog entry the connection would cut out. Under such conditions, I found it difficult to get motivated enough to spend the time writing copy or even cropping pictures.
Not only was I unable to post entries, I was unable to read several of the ebooks books I had taken with me. I was surprised to discover that much of the commentary in my iPad book on Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience required an Internet connection because they were served from YouTube. The same was true of a biology textbook I’m reading.
I have long been aware of how much time I spend on computers but much less aware how much of that time is spent connected to the internet. Looking back at my journal, which automatically tracks my time online, it turns out that most of my time spent on the computer lately is connected to the internet. The internet has become so woven into my daily life that it’s nearly impossible to live “normally” without it. Not sure I like that, but life certainly seems less pleasant without it.
Anyway, I should return to my normal schedule of posting four or five times a week once I’ve caught up here,. I’ll start with pictures from the trip and then attempt to make some comments on Joyce’s The Dubliners, which I finished while cut off from the internet, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses.