I Had Forgotten All About You...

I like to think of myself as pretty tech-savvy. I know how to get around on a computer and can fake my way through most computer programs. Sure, I won't be doing any complicated graphic designs (as you may have guessed by this site's sweet, sweet layout), but I can navigate the information super-highway with the best of them. The one problem I do have, though, is balancing multiple Internet fads at once. If I start using a new social tool, I will immediately stop using my old one.

For whatever reason, I just can't keep up with whatever the new Internet craze is and stick with the old one at the same time. I do this in real life, too. When I get a new job I invariably fade away from the people I met at my old job. It's not intentional. It just kind of happens. MySpace was supposed to help me with this problem. I was going to sign up, contact a bunch of old friends and reconnect with them. Only I signed up and didn't really do the second part of the plan. I think I got distracted by finding just the right Celtic wallpaper for the background. Then I started doing this blog and now I couldn't tell you the last time I even logged in to my MySpace.

I bring this up because of what happened yesterday. Whenever I sign in to blogger, I also open my Gmail account. Gmail happens to be tied in to my old AIM (that's AOL Instant Messenger, for those who may be curious). Completely forgetting about that, I left my GMail open while I typed away at my blog post. I hadn't intentionally signed on to my AIM account in a couple years, but it turns out that people actually still use that thing. Imagine my surprise when a chat window opened unprompted. At first I assumed it was a pop-up. Then, I had to figure out just who the hell I was talking to. When you haven't chatted for a while, you forget what clever nicknames various people had chosen for themselves. In real life you can fake it by calling people by names like chief or buddy. On instant messenger you feel pretty stupid typing those out. That's the perils of ignoring technology - eventually it comes back around and gets you.