Yesterday I gave my parents a real-time video tour of the house and grounds via the magic of ‘high-speed’ internet and wifi. I must be a seriously negative creep because instead of marveling that we could do such a thing, I most have thunk on how aggravating and infuriating it is to deal with thousand-dollar technology that works as well as the two-dollar technology of 1968, at least as I recall it. Except the whole realtime video thing. And the two-dollar thing.

This of course fills me with well-warranted self-loathing, especially when I reflect on the fact that the easiest thing to cobble up on moving in to the new place was a Silvertone Victrola cabinet containing one (1) five-year-old iBook with an Airport card and one (1) set of high-quality powered spruce-cone computer speakers. I have been using this nightmare hybrid to stream in roughly equal proportion music from my 20-odd gb stash, near-real-time radio from local NPR gabfest KUOW, the same from old-home-place dusty classics champeen WFIU, and assorted other public radio streams including local cooler-than-thou woo-woo yipniks KEXP and also-old-home-place and shaggy enough to get me to relax faves WFHB.

Still, it’s the classical radio in front of the fire to which I’ve turned the most. Technology sucks.