Techno-advancement?

Okay, so.. as soon as I had written my last post (I wrote it on the stationary bike, finished my work out, and sat my butt on the park bench outside to cool off), I went home. 

As I was walking home (I had walked to the gym because I didn't know what the clubhouse parking lot would look like... water? Debris? Etc.), a guy in an Xfinity truck stopped me at the main intersection. He asked me if we have power. "Yes," I said, "but we don't have our Hotwire internet". He informed me that "the Comcast boxes and a lot of other power boxes do not have any power to them what so ever". He asked if I was "sure the community has power". I again said "yes we have power. Just no internet". He told me that "the power that is no good, is coming from the FPL boxes. It's up to FPL to come out and look at them", but he "will see what he can do" and winked at me. I thanked him, saying "it's appreciated". Off we both went in our separate directions. 

Once I got home, I took a shower, got a cold drink, and checked the router. 

It was doing something funny... it was trying to get online! 

Seriously? Lemme try rebooting; maybe I'm seeing things.

1...2...3..4..30. Plug it in, turn it back on. Sure enough, everything started connecting.

Great! Maybe I can do some work! If I can't get in to the office, at least I can use the laptop at home and not lose another day's pay. 

Scurrying like a fiend in a fire, I get my work laptop on, authenticated, and clocked in. I was able to get a solid 90 minutes before the wireless flicked off again. 

Damn.

Well, I guess I'm using my allocated 10 minute break earlier than expected. 

Then I used my second allocated break.

I was hoping I wouldn't have to take my 30 minute lunch, and everything suddenly went back on. Which meant I'd be eating while working, to catch up with everything. 

Off to the races I went... checking in with my department and splitting up the work load. We have all survived the storm, including the guy who lives in one of the harder hit areas north of me. He is safe and dry and is without internet. I don't know where he was working today, but he was informed by his ISP that the internet should have been up and running by 5pm last night. This morning it was still down. He hopes it is back by Tuesday, as he was taking a half day today and a full day Monday. The other members of my department were good. The exception is one of them is now sick. Probably stressed out or got wet as she's literally 3 streets away from the River. I hope it's the former and not the latter. 

After working most of the day, and flickering Wi-Fi free, you really don't understand how blazing fast speeds on a new laptop feel when you've been without the various websites for two days. Like I said earlier, we take advantage of those little things, and when you don't have it, you gripe and complain. We get so accustomed to it, that we act like children because we can't get our way. We constantly check our feeds, our shopping cart, our news... it's an addiction and it's as bad as too much salt and sugar in our diet. 

Studies have shown (years ago) that the fast food chains ask you to enlarge your meal because they not only know they'll get more money out of you (great marketing... money grab), but they know the salt they overload on their potato sticks, will get you to buy a bigger sugary drink. If you're dining in, you're refilling that cup as many times as you want. Which leads to eating more salt. The sodium content acts as one addiction and the drink acts as another and they feed into each other. This becomes a vicious cycle that has caused all the health problems (dopamine high, insulin resistance / obesity, high cholesterol, etc.). 

I'm not condoning the act of going out to eat, especially in a fast food joint. I didn't get overweight because I've been strict with my diet. I know I've been guilty of eating at a quick serve meal joint just as anyone else has. I acknowledge my problem and am working on fixing it, and it's friggin hard, man. I do eat healthy but there's always that commercial that makes you want something. Or you're out shopping and smell the grease traps starting up at a neighboring restaurant. The smell of the fried food makes you crave whatever it is. It's all a mental game that you have to learn to over come. 

One of the few social network sites internet forums I am on, a user had raised a question about AI and social media. The question was, "are people posting to this site more due to social network issues?" The basis of the question / thread was the person has been noticing there's been a "deterioration and proliferation of AI and misinformation on Facebook, Twitter" and the likes. After registered users went back and forth with their opinions and shares, plenty of pages were full of thoughts. One user had posted a Youtube video explaining how "social media is actually a casino". 

Why is social media a casino? Because the video goes on to explain that both are "designed to create psychological dependencies" at the click of a mouse or pull of a slot machine arm. It's to "keep people engaged". There are other sites that go on about this too. 

The similarities include the aforementioned dopamine high (like you get from the salt and sugar).

A rewards system (algorithms on social to get likes, comments and shares or that rush of a slot machine).

Instant gratification (pull the lever on the machine, get flashy bells and whistles; maybe win some money. Open up a web browser once upon a time ago, and hit "I'm feeling lucky" into a certain site and you'd get a random page given to you).

Unpredictable rewards (you might win, you might not)

Infinite scrolling (the pull to refresh the page tactic on your smart device is similar in how casinos keep users engaged... this I don't understand the comparison).

Sites have been built to grab people's attention - lights, sound, crazy. Just like casinos - flashy and immersive. You can't pass a blackjack or roulette table without being pulled in to it due to the excitement around it.

So technology is creating addicts. We are substituting one vice for another. It is like quitting drugs or alcohol. You find something else to focus on. Some people have multiple focuses going on at once and some times they can't handle it all going around together. That's how people have break downs. 

But oh, am I squirreling down a rabbit hole. This is not good.

Gosh, I went sideways quickly with this and I'm sorry. I didn't intend for that. I let out the conspiracy side unintentionally. I think you get the point? We have been so absentmindedly brainwashed into turning our smart phones on every couple seconds to check the screen and see if something new arrived. We open up apps to various products and see what's there. It's an addiction that needs to stop.

Which is why when there's no way to connect for hours on end, you get a little crazy. And we don't need that in our world. However, like I said earlier, if there was a way to connect with other human beings during a natural disaster, that would ease a lot of people's minds.

Trust me, my mom had the entire world blowing up her cell phone from Tuesday night into Thursday night, wondering if we were safe. People were listening to the national news from far and away, and hoping we were okay. The fear mongering had been happening - the "if you don't leave, you will die" type stuff. And where it's just me and my mother, thousands of miles away from her brother and his family, he didn't want to have to get a phone call that the both of us were missing or dead. The same thing goes for the cousins in Sarasota - their kids (really, only one of the two who called) said the same thing about this couple. I know it's such a bad thing to say or think about, but if you aren't near specific people, your heart is in your throat the entire time you don't hear from the person. 

Yes, we heard from the people in Sarasota. Somehow they got their generator to work. Their community has no power and there's problems in both her immediate area and the surrounding area. But they're fine and they're dry in their house. They just have surrounding challenges. I don't know the whole story, but I know there is debris and stuff in the vicinity. They're fine though; safe. I think even the dog got to actually go to bed early like he likes to, even though the poor thing was scared shitless. 

We all were, Chester, we all were.

It is 8:57pm and I feel like I have been writing this all day. I've been writing it for at least an hour and a half, because I kept getting squirreled by other things, including the need to go outside and attempt photos of the northern lights, which you can't see from here because there's too much cloud covereage.

So off I go because I'm tired (wiped from the last couple days) and need to wash my feet. They're dirty as all dirty from whatever shoes I was wearing outside. I keep a pair of crocs in the garage and they collect the dirt easy. Guess I shouldn't keep things outside and expect to stay clean...

Anyway, have a good night and I'll check in when I can.

Cheers;