Anyway, now I sit here under a precarious pile of snow over the roof of the den that Mother Nature decided to fling on top of the Pacific Northwest (one day after Christmas, no less. I think it's about time that this whole "White Christmas" bit is brought up for some serious reconsideration.) Having nothing better to do with my life at the present moment, I take some time to sit back and dizzily ponder the year that just flew by us, and dwell on what could lie ahead for us in the one that is approaching us at just very slightly sublight speeds.
First of all, however, for those of you who wait breathlessly to know what became of our Tickle Me Elmo (see last week's column if you are unfamiliar with the situation, there was much effort given to deciding what would become of him. Deciding that maybe some people around here actually have enough sense to avoid paying $250 for one of the fuzzy little monsters, we planned to give it away to the Childrens Hospital in Seattle. When someone found out about this, we were approached by a local TV station wanting to make a story about it, the offer for which we declined. Ultimately, Elmo was given to a young foster child who was placed unexpectedly in the home of someone in our church just days before Christmas, escaping abuse in the previous foster home. Not only was Elmo starting to get on our nerves (thank goodness that all of my brothers and sisters are grown up enough to realize how silly those things are anyway.)
As for Christmas, I was hoping to get something that had to do with digital imaging (I don't know why I singled out digital imaging... I guess I just chose a buzzword and wrote it down on my wish list. Last year at about this time, the Den was still pretty starved for computing power, this being about 2 months before Zippy was introduced to the den.) Anyway, I got one of those Advantix cameras that are supposed to take pictures in 3 different sizes, as well as a copy of the Dilbert Principle, which can be summed up in five words... "Your boss is a jerk." Close, but not quite what I had in mind. In reality, Christmas was pretty quiet in the den, despite all of the junk that got thrown in by the very same person who demanded that it be cleaned up. And my mom wonders why the den is always a disaster area.
I am pretty sure that I am not the first to notice this, but it seems like you always have to go out in the days following Christmas to get all of the stuff that you really wanted, but didn't get. Last Saturday, when the snow cleared up just enough to make a journey to the outside world possible without needing a pre-organized search party, I went out and got the two things I really wish I had recieved, but didn't, meaning I was going to have to get them myself. First of all was a 33.6K modem. So far, the thing is working, but only at 28.8K speeds. At least it's twice as fast as before, but it adds one more piece of junk to the ever growing pile of techno-floatsam sitting in a dark corner of the den. In addition, I also purchased a new Nerf weapon, noting that similar foam-based weaponry has proliferated significantly in recent times around our house. My previous weapon, a Double Crossbow, has been delegated for troubleshooting purposes, so bringing this home isn't an option. Since I got it, nobody seems to come into the den anymore... I wonder why?
Anyway, to say that this year has been an eventful one in the computer industry would be akin to saying that the Hindenburg disaster was just a little pop. If that announcer many years ago had been around today, looking at the tangled webs we weave with fiber-optic cables and millions of pages of HTML code, I'm sure that he would respond the way he did to the disastrous explosion in the time that Generation X seems to think was entirely in black and white... "Oh, the humanity!"
As we look back on 1996, we see that all of the doomsday predictions that said the Internet would just totally collapse under it's own weight turned out to be total bunk. True, the speed of everything on the Net isn't blazing fast (we have AOL to blame for that, but how can one arrange several thousand people to storm Westwood Center with pitchforks and torches when he only gets about 30-40 hits a week on his Web site?), but the FDDI-based backbones of the Internet (yes, there is more than one of them) are constantly being expanded to meet demand. We must constantly remind ourselves that "the universe is expanding" before we start crying wolf about the demise of the Internet.
Although the virtual universe IS expanding, a vacuum is being left in it's wake. As we all know, nature abhors a vacuum. Given the stuff it's filled with, howver, I think I'd rather have the vacuum. At least sixty percent of the stuff on the Internet is junk out there, and of the forty percent remaining, not much of that is really that great. The passing of time doesn't seem to be helping this dearth of online content that doesn't suck very much, so at the rate things are going with the Internet, I expect that the task of finding halfway decent Web sites will become more difficult over time. In fact, at the rate things are going, bookmarks as part of a Web browser may see reduced usage until they finally get eliminated entirely, Until that time, here's one that you may add to your bookmark file. The site, called I Hate Computers!, is another excellent weekly column about how stupid computers are, although the author believes that the solution to the problem is total annihilation of computers (I wonder how many times Ted Kaczynski has visited this one.)
We can expect that the chaos that we face right now on the Internet will return like a bean burrito lunch during a dinner date. It looks like the chaos of the den will continue to increase as the new techno-toys begin to find their place in the systems, leaving an ever-increasing pile of techno-junk sitting on the floor of the den as the computers begin to suck in dust and significant amounts of money. The struggle to keep from being thrust into the pit of obsolescence (I have spent many a long day there, and it's not a pretty sight) must continue. For those of you who face the same battle as I do, I salute you. It is an uphill battle, but with sheer determination and piles of cash, we shall rise over the bloated code and buggy software that is heaped upon us as a burden. One day, the perfect computer will be found. It may put all of us out of a job, but at the present time, we have more pressing concerns as we face a conflict worse than that created by a cheap plug-and-play soundcard. May we all find the strength to continue fight against obsolescence in the new year.