ah, technology . . .

so today . . . i am home sick.

i hate being home sick. every morning when my alarm goes off, i think to myself, "i wish i didn't have to go to school today." but i never think, "i wish i was sick so i didn't have to go to school today." because being home sick creates conflict between my body and my brain.

not that this is unfamiliar territory. my body and my brain disagree all the time. my brain says eat vegetables. they are good for you! my body says ice cream, brownies, croissants! my brain says get out there and exercise! my body says but i'm already sitting here with the computer in my lap! and when i am home from school, sick, my brain says yippee! a whole unexpected day at home! think of all the things we can get done!! but my body says, sleep, crash on the couch, sleep some more . . .

it makes for a stressful day. because although i know my body is making the right choice, my brain won't leave me alone. ok, it says, i know you don't think you have the energy to do anything, but maybe you could just . . . and it's list of small things i could be doing is never ending! so while my body usually wins, and i do spend my day on the couch, it has to spend what little energy it has fighting off my brain to stay there.

the compromise they reached today was that i would sit on the couch and read some magazines. i have a stack of magazines that i haven't had time to read. and they just keep coming and coming and coming. i could just throw them away. i didn't order any of them--well, not specifically. i got them as bonuses when i ordered certain items from shopping tv. i meant to return the cards that would cancel the subscriptions and kick back a few bucks to me. but did i get it done in the allotted time? of course not! so all these magazines come to my house every month, and i feel obligated to read them. because you just never know . . . if i were to throw them out unread, i am certain that the information i might need someday to save my life would be in one of them. so yes, i read them out of fear . . .

but in all the reading i did, i discovered something very interesting. at the end of some of the articles there would be these little telephone icons. and it appeared to me that if you took a picture of that icon (which are called "tags") with your cell phone, then it would connect to a web page that would give you more information--more recipes, more health tips, etc. cool, i thought. so i tried it. i took a picture of the tag. i looked at the screen on my phone for a few minutes, but nothing happened. ok, i must have done something wrong, so i tried it again. still nothing. so i flipped through the magazine trying to find directions as to how to make this wonderful new technology work, but there was no explanation. finally i read the fine print and saw that you had to go to a web page and download a tag reader first. ooooh. ok. so i turned on my computer and went to the web page. but it said it couldn't identify my phone, which meant it didn't know which tag reader to download. after another ten minutes of clicking around the site, i realized that i needed to go to the web page from my phone. ooooh. ok. so i connected to the web page from my phone, only to find out that the operating system used on my phone is too new to have it's own tag reader. so i downloaded the generic "it will work with most phones" tag reader, went back to the magazine, took another picture, and it still didn't work. i was starting to get frustrated. apparently i cannot access this new technology with my new technology just yet.

but i love the idea of it! with so many people using their cell phones to access web content, this is perfect! instead of having to remember urls (not to mention typing them in accurately on a phone's teeny tiny keyboard,) you just point your phone at one of these tags, click a button, and it takes you right to a website. i am pretty sure there must be a way diandra can use this in her business--i just haven't figured it out yet. and according to the website, anyone can make tags of their own. maybe i can even make one for my blog. oh, the possibilities! i am a fan already . . .

. . . even though it won't work on my phone. yet.