Since I figured you couldn’t find me in enough places online, I decided to add another place: http://musicfan76.gather.com/

It is part of a new site called Gather.com – they bill themselves as a kind of "Myspace for adults" so you have more intelligent exchanges and less smut.  Of course, that’s part of the appeal of Myspace for a lot of people, so we’ll see where this goes.  However, a big part of it is their blogging feature, and I already have this one, so that won’t get filled in too often.

Forget connecting the furthest reaches of the world or empowering the common people; the web has proven its value by simply creating some ofthe best time wasters and mindless entertainment ever.  Here are two of my most recent favorites:

Photomosaic Zooming Click Thing (there’s no real name given for it.  I just know that I can click and click and click and click and click)

Eskiv – I love simple games like this.  They seem to easy to play but are actually nearly impossible to master. Use the arrow keys to move the circle so that it gets to the square.  Without hitting the bouncing blue dots.  Which seems really easy at first.  At first.  Then gets harder.  Then leads you playing until your fingernails get to be three inches long and you’re using them to move the foot-long unwashed hair out of your face….

Turn the monitor away from the cubicle door and click away!

If you need proof that shopping is truly considered a hobby… a pastime… perhaps even a sport… in America, check out this guide on "How To Have A Successful Day of Shopping."  Mapping out your plan at the mall.  Literally mapping it out.  That’s what they reccoemend.

If you find yourself actually doing any of the stuff on here, or heaven forbid, ALL the steps outlined in this fine guide, then please, get yourself some help.

As influential as the Internet has been in the last decade, I think you could make a good argument that cell phone technology has had a bigger impact – both good and bad – on society in the last 20 years than any other new technology.  It has changed the way we communicate, interact, and socialize.  There’s no need to make solid plans when going out and meeting friends – just use the cell!  Cell phones in theaters, in restaurants, on public transportation….

The results of a new world-wide survey of cell phone users was reported here in FastCompany magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle.   The amazing, but not really shocking if you think about it, results include:

• Percentage of Americans who said a cell phone reflects as much about someone as a car does (70% of Chinese agreed): 31%
• 63% of Americans wouldn’t lend their cell phone to someone else (90% of Japanese agreed).
• 81% of 15- to 20-year-olds sleep with their phone on.

If your cell phone is capable of carrying Vindigo, I have two words for you: GET IT!!  Especially if you spend a lot of time in a big city or traveling or will be traveling to a large city. 

Instead of carrying around scraps of paper and maps and books in our pockets all weekend in Chicago, I just had my Treo loaded with Vindigo and looked everything up on there, including walking directions, addresses, etc.  Three times I was able to tell the cab driver where something was that he had no clue about (of course, one of those was Buddy Guy’s Legends, which doesn’t say much for the cab driver).  It seriously made the weekend easier, more fun and more spontaneous.

Vindigo gets the first Pop Culture Gangster Seal of Approval!  (not that there is really such a thing or that if anything else will get it ever again, but just go with it)

Somewhere along the way I got a reputation as being a gadget geek techie, and I don’t know when or how.   For the purposes of this self-defensive post, I will define "gadget geek techie" as someone who simply has to have the latest and greatest gadget and really get excited by the technology and gadgets by themselves.  I say I’m not one of "those people."

Here’s what the argument that I am one might have going for it: I do have a couple of XM satellite radios, and a Palm Treo 650 that I pretty much live by.  I have a wireless network set up in my house, but I think everyone else does these days too.  At this point just about anyone can set one up.  I dabble in things like MySpace and this blog, but you’ll quickly realize that I don’t do a lot of fancy customization with either.

I use Vonage as my home phone service, but that happened only late last year and they’ve been around for a while. I have my own domain, but don’t know anything fancier than HTML which I think everyone knows now thanks to MySpace.  I read WIRED and keep up on new trends (such as blogging and podcasting – more on that later) but that’s because I’m in marketing.

Here’s what would be arguing against it:

• I didn’t get my first cell phone until 2001
• That first cell phone was a good ‘ol Motorla Star-Tac and I sometimes wish I had that phone again… it still had the best audio quality out of any phone I’ve had
• The second cell phone I got – at the end of my two year contract with Verizon – had color screen, and that was it… no camera or anything
• I got the Treo 650 at the end of another two year contract last year and got it to replace a cell phone and a four year old Sony Clie that was dying on me.
• Speaking of which… I also got my Clie in 2001, hardly an early adopter of PDA technology.  I bought mine and a few months later they started coming out with the $99 packs for graduation and father’s day….
• I had an ancient Macintosh Performa up until October of 2004, and it served me well for all those years.  When I got a new computer, it was because I had to, and the computer I got was an off-the-shelf HP computer package from Best Buy, not a high-end super system.  I didn’t even get a flat-screen LCD panel (a decision I’m regretting and thinking about getting a replacement – only because I’d like the extra room on my desk, not because I have monitor envy).
• The only thing I’ve done to the HP computer is install the wireless card.  Kinda geeky, but not nearly as tough as some people would think
• Yes, I bought a laptop.  No, I don’t use it all the time.  No, I haven’t modified it since it came out of the box.  No, it isn’t a top-of-the line.  Its an Avertec middle-of-the road sufficient-for-me-when-I-need-it laptop.
• Perhaps most shocking of all to everyone who knows me – both as this supposed gadget geek and music-lover is that I DO NOT OWN AN IPOD!  Nope, I don’t.  Wouldn’t mind owning one and might get one eventually, and would gladly accept one as a gift (hint hint), but otherwise, I’m not in a rush to get one.

So that’s my story – I know about technology and have this here blog (that is barely a year old) and my own domain, and have a nifty cell phone, but that’s about it.   However, I do stay up to date as to what the major trends are in technology, so I guess the best you could call me is an early mainstream adopter.  I’m not a cutting-edge or early adopter, but I do get into things just as they start to go mainstream.  Which is unfortunate for me, since nearly every bit of technology I’ve bought has gotten cheaper within 6 months of me buying it.  So watch this blog as your own personal guide when to buy your next gadget… if I buy it, wait a few months and get it for half-price!

I was at a seminar on communicating on Friday, and at the beginning, the speaker asked that all cell phones be put on vibrate, as speakers normally do. 

About an hour later, what happened?  A cell phone starts to ring.  Of course, it was in the woman’s purse that was under her jacket on the back of her chair.

Question: what the hell is wrong with you people?  Someone specifically asks that you perform this very simple task of putting a cell phone on vibrate and you don’t even have the common decency – the common sense – to do it? 

The process of putting a cell phone on "silent" or "vibrate" isn’t usually tough – hold a button down, flip a switch…  and it takes about a second to do it.

As someone who has given presentations to various groups of people before, a cell phone can prove particularly distracting when you’re trying to make a point.  It is rude enough to have it happen period, but to have it happen after someone ASKS you to put it on vibrate is just inexcusable.  If I was a conductor of a symphony and a cell phone went off in the middle of a performance, I think I would chuck my baton in the person’s eye and stab it forcefully.

People who don’t put their cell phones on vibrate when they have been reminded to do so should be punished.  I propose that after two offenses (since people can make mistakes, and I’ve thought I had my phone on vibrate, but didn’t), they should be locked in a room with a 1,000 ringing cell phones all playing "The Mexican Hat Dance" all slightly off from each other. 

If, for some godforsaken reason, you don’t know HOW to turn your phone to silent/vibrate mode, please learn how.  There’s probably this little book called a "manual" or "owner’s guide" that came with your phone.  Look it up.  Google it.  Or take it to the retail outlet of your cell phone provider and ask them to show you how to do it.  PLEASE, for the sake of common decency, PLEASE do it.

If you ever need an example of sarcasm, here you go.  Family Circus stopped being funny – hell, it stopped being meaningful or worthwhile – a very, very long time ago.  Check out the review titled " Proustian introspection with Munch’s visual conundrums"