Normally, I don’t dread the  Monday workday, but today I feel its effect.  My Monday’s blue: my Samsung LCD monitor is dead.  It was a nice monitor  but too bad that it didn’t last too long,  granted it has been in service for four years or more.  I don’t know what is the lifespan of a LCD monitor, but 4 years of service is a short amount of time.

Anyway, my boss has ordered a new LCD monitor to replace the dead one. Pretty awesome and generous boss, I’d say.  Meanwhile, I carried and setup my desk with the old, clunky, off white, back-breaker 40lbs  (actually I don’t know the exact weight but it seems to weight that much) 21-inch monitor that I ditched years ago. It uses the analog VGA that I have to find the DVI-VGA adapter for. I have to mess with the refresh rate, sizing, spanning options just to get the screen looks right. Oh yeah, degauss screen too, remember that? Then, I have to adjust the window blind to get rid of the annoying glare reflected on the glass of the monitor. Oh, how I miss my LCD monitor!

There are many things I use and interact with daily without realizing their importance, until they are gone or taken away. Then there are things I simply just can’t live without. It’s funny (or scary) seeing how technology slowly integrates, spoils and soon takes over my life through time. When I was:

4 years old –  These weird sticks have color coming out from them. I can decorate walls with these. Crayons rules!

5 years old- No more sharpening with mechanical pencil. Oh, and markers, how I love to smell them.

9 years old – First digital hand watch with light. Ask me the time . I can’t believe how I live without knowing the time at all time before.

10 years old – First black and white TV. How did I went to bed at 7pm before is beyond me.

12 years old – Calculator. Oh elementary Math would have been so easy. Why did they not telling me about this gadget before?

14 years old – Uncle let me play on his computer with a monochrome screen. Somehow this black screen with a blinking cursor just looked so  attractive.  Spent hours on it trying to beat the Price of Persia levels.

17 years old – First computer family bought. Came with Windows 95 and 16MB of memory. I got email now. Don’t call me, send me email. How come I have waited hours and no one send me an email yet?

18  years old – Created first personal HTML website on Geocities (now defunct.) Oh yeah, I’m on the Internet now. I’m plugged in to the matrix.  Computer is my buddy now.

23 years old – Married to my wife. How did I survive being single before? (Oh, I know this is not a tech “item”, but it certainly fit the “can’t live without” category so it belongs. hahaha)

Well, then comes high speed Internet, pda, cell phone  with data plan and text messages, Adobe Photoshop…  the list goes on so let me stop here. Several items have become must-have items and life is a struggle without them.  See the trend here?

Technology changes our lives, in good way and bad way.  Being attached or relied too much on technology is not all beneficial. I gotta find that balance so that I am not living under a rock, but not being a moth attracted to the technology flame either.

Oh wow, that was long. There’s another long rant of Monday’s blue for you. Well, here’s your reward for reading this far: an epic fail in technology usage (see picture)