21st Centurty Digital Boy

The difference from when I was a kid to myself as an adult, entertainment wise is astounding. When I was a kid, all I needed was my bike and a sunny day to be happy. I and my buddy Jeff would ride our bikes all around Gilbert just finding trouble to get into. And even when my bike got stolen, we were able to find something to do. I raised a pig for the state fair to sell to get money for another bike. Once that venture was through, it was back on my new Mongoose riding around building ramps, and jumping over things. Now I won’t lie and say we didn’t own a Nintendo, and then a Super Nintendo, then a Playstation, but those weren’t things that I really cared about until later in life. As I got older and out of high school, I started running out of time to do things like spend the whole day outside riding around on my bike. With college classes, 40 hours of work, and a girlfriend to boot, time became an inside thing rather than an outside thing.

I guess starting about sophomore year I was introduced to NEW and EXCITING things like AIM and Napster. So if I wasn’t out with my friends I was inside talking to them and downloading (not knowing it was illegal) music. The interest I gained from using the dial up internet my Dad had, led me to other interests I could pursue on the internet. My friend introduced me to e-fedding. E-fedding is an online way to run a wrestling federation. You create a wrestler and through writing roleplays against other people you win matches. So if you are able to write a better storyline against your opponent that week then you win. I started off with my own wrestler, and then it turned into me wanting to make my own federation. From there I learned how to write HTML code and use Photoshop to doctor images for the websites I was designing. As the internet progressed, my skills had to progress along with it and I started learning about RSS and PHP. Halfway through the eight to ten years I was e-fedding social media networks like Xanga and Myspace started up. So I started getting into those also along with the new addition of Xbox Live (Halo 2 online was my life for awhile). There was a lot of internet being put into my days when I wasn’t involved with offline interests.

So by summer 2006, I was connected to the web with high speed and there was no looking back. Then one day in August, http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwhile at the Phoenix MEPS station, my internet interests took a sudden hit. I enlisted in the US Navy. Since I went to boot camp on September 11th 2006 (Patriotic I know), my interests have taken a backseat to my livelihood. Throughout my schooling (the first 18 months of my Navy career) I never had my own internet. So imagine being so engrossed in the internet and having the carpet ripped out from underneath you. There is only so much you can do in an hour at Starbucks, and really, why would I want to sit at Starbucks for the internet anyways. So I didn’t really do much internet time and substituted my time at my favorite local bar. My own personal “Cheers” helped me to pass the time with my friends and start to ween myself off the internet from where I had been earlier. So there I was about to go to my first ship, newly married, and finally moving off of the base.

When me and my wife got our first place, as you can imagine, internet was one of the things we both knew we needed to have. This wasn’t just for personal interests, because as you all know; internet helps out in many more ways than just passing the time. So finally I had my own fast internet again. And I started using it, as if it never had disappeared. I was back on Xbox Live, back to e-fedding, and starting to play WoW for the first time. Over the past 3 years, internet became a big part of my days again. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I can’t be satisfied off the internet, but I enjoy being able to look up any information I need with a few clicks. So having my own fast internet is something I don’t see changing for a long time.

The reason I decided to write this though is the problems I have when I’m underway. When my ship leaves the pier, we, by all intensive purposes, have no internet. I went underway for all of June up to Alaska for some Navy business. In that time, we were given access to the internet from 6-10 every night (if you weren’t on watch, or sleeping for your night watch). If you were lucky enough to be awake and not on watch, then you got to use the internet. By internet, I mean the kind of internet your grandma still uses because she hasn’t upgraded from dialup yet. For one month underway, the only sites I visited were facebook (just to look since posting something always ‘broke’ the internet), the mobile espn site, and the mobile wow insider. Every once in awhile I’d try to check out my buddy’s blog (thebigbearbutt.com) but only if I was lucky would it actually load.

So basically, all that got me thinking. I’m living in the year 2011. We aren’t quite on track with the flying cars, meals in pill form (although seeing some of the thinks my hardcore workout friends eat I might disagree), or the cure to cancer and HIV. But the central theme to achieving a lot of those lofty goals people set forth in old movies like Minority Report, Total Recall, and Fifth Element involve constant access to the internet and the peripheral equipment associated with it. Having it ripped away from you for long periods of time is kind of boring. I simply had my laptop with some video files on it to keep myself busy for a month. It definitely made me think about how much I enjoy using the internet. The seven month deployment right before this last month underway didn’t help the fact either that I had a month of internet before I left for another month. So yeah, this was just a blog to make you think about it. Sit and think about the last time you didn’t touch the internet for one month. If you have never done it, just imagine it. It’s pretty crazy; it’s a part of our daily routine we often forget about. I just find it interesting how far we’ve advanced in technology through the years. I didn’t even mention the fact that I didn’t have a smart phone for basically 9 months either. But that’s another blog for another time.