2 posts tagged “dc”

I am attending a Social Media Club event held by Ogilvy P.R. at one of their offices in Washington D.C. tonight - upcoming.org/event/137953/ I just happened across it today via my Upcoming.org account - handy site.

Best of all the event is free and open to anyone interested in the topic.

I hope to network, learn and add something to the conversation.

You would not believe how hard it is to find one standard Palm brand wireless keyboard for a Treo 700p, even in a suburb of the Washington D.C. area. I had personal experience with this last night.

After a light dinner at a local Thai restaurant in Greenbelt, Maryland, I stopped by a local Staples store in Greenbelt, to find that they were fresh out of them, although at least the service rep made a friendly effort to find it in the back storeroom, where he'd thought one more lingered. Radio Shack in Greenbelt, Md., (Beltway Plaza) told me they do not carry them, the two men there meeting me with an almost palpable wall of unhelpfulness, something I perceived as a dislike for me as a woman but of which I couldn't be sure. Still unperturbed, and sure that Circuit City would yield results, I got directions from the clerk to nearby Beltsville, a place that seemed pretty far out of my way since I'm still new to the area and need directions to go anywhere. So I did that. At first, I thought I was in luck. Seeing one, I happily snatched it up, only to find that the package defined it as compatible with the Treo 700w. I wasn't sure if it might possibly work with the Palm OS or not -- probably not, but I thought I'd check before I abandoned that plan. However, after 20 minutes of waiting and not being able to track down the unattentive store clerks, I frustratedly threw it back on the shelf and headed home. I hit up the Target in Greenbelt as a last ditch effort, because they usually seem to have more gadgets and gizmos than I would expect of a general retail store, but again, I came up short. Dejected after my fruitless search of over an hour, and growing even more ragged around the edges from that morning's scant three hours of sleep, I called it a night, bought one of the few leftover cartons of holiday eggnog I'd planned to pick up from the Giant supermarket and soon climbed into my P.J.'s at home (while many people are happiest out on the town, I prefer to be doing something techie-related in P.J.'s at home, preferably with an endless vat of coffee nearby); then, of course, as usual, I didn't really sleep but surfed the Internet and wrote emails to friends until sometime after midnight. I really must learn to curb my late-night technology tendencies if I ever plan to get a good night's sleep. It's just so hard to turn off my mind sometimes. Sometimes it seems like a wetware version of a feed reader, constantly filling up with new information, potentially interesting ideas that I sometimes scramble to capture as a voice or text memo on my Treo or Luddite-style -- if I'm awake enough.

It's funny how I got so worked up over trying to locate a $60-something item as if it were life or death. It's not THAT urgent, but it seems to be that one remaining piece of the puzzle that I need to complete my mobile communications dream inventory, especially when it comes to my newest pursuit, moblogging (mobile blogging). And once I get my mind made up on something I want, it bugs me that it should be so much trouble. I'm sure this lack of impatience I experience has much to do with being accustomed to being so plugged in to the world through the online medium. I sometimes operate outside of Cyberspace with the same mindset I employ within, and I have to catch myself at that. I mean, REALLY... a change is in order when "LOL" (a chat term for "Laughing Out Loud") slips into your actual daily conversations. Okay, hasn't happened yet, but there was an "almost" moment once...err...twice!?

I expect things to be faster sometimes than is often humanly possible. That's the keyword there, HUMAN. No matter how many eye-popping, mind-bending machines we invent, there will always be the human element needed to interact with them in some way, if even just to program a product with its automated capabilities (at least we can hope the visions in Terminator movies remain as theatrics and nothing more).

Therefore, machines can never, IMHO, be 100 percent perfect. What would be the fun of that? That almighty always future focal point of perfection generates the need for newer and better products, opening door after door for young new inventors to make their marks as they develop smaller and lighter marvels of technology that can host and perform a multitude of capabilities to the delight of feature-hungry consumers.

I am fascinated by the concept of being able to take my writing life just about anywhere I can get a signal with my Treo's tethered broadband. Woohoo! This is perfect, so that I don't have to lug my PowerBook around in my bag all day, when I want to hang out at a D.C. coffee shop after work before the hour-long commute home. My, how far we have come since the Industrial Revolution. Sure I could just take a pen and a notebook around with me, but I like to blog, so I don't relish the thought of writing it down only to put it all down again at a later time in type, so that I can post it online.

Besides... with my Treo 700p, I can:

Record vids for my YouTube profile.

Take photos and immediately post them to my Flickr account. 

Moblog to my heart's content on this blog - what else could I want?

Now that I also finally bought a new pack of styli and a new 1GB SD card for my new Treo, the keyboard has become the missing piece. I think I'll have to surrender my efforts to find it locally and just be happy ordering online and waiting a few days to have it affordably shipped to me.