I'm ashamed of how much time I spend on the computer, and how much of that time is spent merely keeping it up and running. I also resent that I have by no means fully exploited the technology's potential and usefulness, mostly because of my own lazyness.

Although I am fully aware of how much this medium could enrich my life, in all honesty, that's not how I use it. It's very much like TV. I have a beautiful picture and playback capability, and access to scores of high-quality channels, but I watch commercial crap. I also resent how every day I am expected to become more and more addicted to the communications aspect of these devices, and how the society expects me, even demands me to use it more and more. No, I don't want to pay my bills online, or download the user manuals to all my appliances, or get the rest of the story by going to a website. And I'm sick and tired of being sold shit I don't need, don't want, and can't afford.

Its like living next door to a university library and spending all my time reading cheap paperbacks and supermarket tabloids. If it wasn't for my wife's immersion in the technology, I think I would just pull the plug and take a break for a while--although I realize that if I ever decided to come back the tech would have moved on without me, and I wouldn't even know how to get wired up again. Everything I know now would be obsolete and I'd have to learn everything all over again, from scratch, because Bill Gates wanted to sell me something "upgraded". I don't want to learn new things, especially when they are all temporary. Its like studying dead languages.

I am torn between having an enormous resource at my command which I do not use, and the idea that I am constantly being sold something I want no part of, and that takes up more and more of my time just keeping up with it.

And I gave up driving solo in Miami a long time ago. It's too complicated, crowded and too dangerous to navigate without a co-pilot. I used to love to drive hard and fast in the snow or in the mountains, but I'm afraid of the freeways in Dade County.