Ode to My Android

It’s 7:00am, and Nirvana’s “School” is blaring through two tiny, yet surprisingly powerful speakers. Supposedly, this song is loosely based on Kurt’s hatred of Seattle and its upper-middle-class cliques. The town which now plasters his face on every museum it has, and is now oh-so-proud to claim him as a native son.

What can I tell you, I love waking up to irony.

7:30am I check my calendar.

7:45am Respond to five emails. Repeat this 10 times over next 12 hours.

7:55am Respond to text message. Repeat this 90 times over next 12 hours.

8:00am Spot photo opportunity. Take shot, then upload picture to Google+, Twitter, and my blog.

8:30am Write a short article about some random thing on my blog.

9:00am Fire trucks are racing down 4th Avenue. Take high-quality video of the activity, and upload it to YouTube. If I later find that the video is relevant, log into YouTube and make video public.

9:30am Drive to Bellevue and record trip so I can make a stupid video like this one.

10:00am Receive request for photo. Download from home via Tonido, edit, and email to requester.

10:30am Read latest news via mobile Opera which bypasses awful mobile and WAP websites.

11:00am Watch one of my ripped DVD’s while waiting for a doctor’s appointment. It’s the exact same file I watch on my computer at home. No conversion needed.

11:30am Answer phone call. Google Voice + Skype = cellphone carrier irrelevance.

12:00pm SSH into server to correct a permissions problem, then restart httpd.

12:30pm Make an inane comment on my forums.

1:00pm Fire up Google Music and listen to any song I own. Nothing like a multi-terabyte SD card.

1:30pm Open ‘Rainy Days’ to see if the rain that was supposed to start this afternoon is on time. Find out that weathermen blew forecast yet again.

2:00pm Check Twitter to see if Lisa Van Cise has unblocked me yet. She hasn’t, but I do have 17 new followers, all of whom are scantily-clad women who will gladly have sex with me if I click the link in their profiles.

2:30pm Click 17 links.

3:00pm Re-click 17 links just to be sure. Shed a tear as I realize that none of the 17 women really wanted to have sex with me. It was all a ploy by spammers to get clicks. Audibly curse Twitter.

3:30pm Watch newest viral video on YouTube.

4:00pm I have to go to some obscure location in Issaquah. Fire up Google Nav for turn-by-turn directions.

4:30pm Traffic is heavy, fire up Waze for alternate route.

5:00pm Fire up Evernote, jot some lyrics down and warble a melody that’s been stuck in my head.

5:30pm Approve two pending blog comments.

6:00pm Initiate two-way video chat to my kid’s desktop computer. Help with the day’s homework while eating Ivar’s smoked salmon chowder at the waterfront.

6:30pm Read a few pages of the new E-book I downloaded.

7:00pm Fire up Pandora for a few songs.

8:00pm Check bank balance. Weep.

8:30pm Fire up job search app to rectify situation. Laugh at fry cook requirements. A culinary degree from Juilliard, an advanced degree in physics from Harvard, a credit score of 990, three references from the executive branch, five consecutive clean drug tests, a detailed accounting of your every whereabout since birth, fluency in 12 languages, and an 11″ inch pecker. $9.00/hour. Alas, I only have one of the requirements.

9:00pm Google search for +painless +suicide, realize I’m too big of a pussy to follow-through, decide to play Spy Mouse instead.

9:30pm Clear 5 Spy Mouse levels, get temporary self-esteem boost.

10:00pm Fire up X-Plane, fly Boeing 737 from SeaTac to Boeing Field, then get in Seaplane and land upside-down in Lake Union.

10:30pm Fire up G-Strings and tune my guitar.

11:00pm Use ultimate guitar to pull up the tabs for a song I heard on Pandora. Learn new cover.

11:30pm Surf to local news site, and watch live streaming newscast. Maximize to full screen and enjoy smooth, stutter-free video. Since some 80% of multi-media sites on the Internet use it, I thank Hey Zeus that I have 24/7 access to Flash content.

12:00am Swipe through day’s photos. Post one or two to blog.

12:30am Plug into AC outlet and try to sleep.

1:00am Fail to sleep. Play a season game in Baseball Superstars.

1:30am Lose game to walk-off homerun after pitching fastball over the plate to opposing power-hitter.

2:00am Edit spreadsheet in Google Docs.

2:30am Plug into AC outlet and this time pass out.

Above is a typical day for yours truly. Fine, it’s not really typical, but it certainly could be, and what do all of the above tasks have in common?

They are all accomplished with one, single, solitary device.

My Android Tablet.

Let’s face it, most tech products are superfluous to most people. When a soccermom from Kirkland buys an iPad, does she really need it? Sure, she’ll update her Facebook account twice as often, and she’ll read fashion websites from Starbucks, but were she to lose the device, it’s unlikely that her life would be severely altered.

I, on the other hand, am at the opposite end of this spectrum.

At this point in my life, damn near everything I do is either performed with, or assisted by my Android Tablet, and when I say I use it constantly, I am not exaggerating. It never leaves my side, and even when I’m sleeping, the device is plugged in six inches from my head. The device is so completely integrated into my life, that I have no idea how I lived without it. I’m not sure that I ever could again.

Try as I might, I simply cannot think of another product which has so drastically changed my life in such a short amount of time. While the personal computer or the cellphone may come close, I never used either as frequently, in as many places, for as many things as I use the Tablet for.

The tablet has single-handedly replaced a complete arsenal of devices, and it literally is, for all intents and purposes, my own R2D2. My own C3P0. My very own personal droid.

Just thought I would share.

- Sent wirelessly from my Android Tablet