I defy the trends. I am what my husband calls the opposite of the unification trend. His career involves working with, writing and speaking about and reviewing the latest techno-geeky stuff which, right now, happens to be Unified Communications. Back when his work involved mostly anti-virus stuff, I refused to use AV software (still do). My theory on anti-virus protection can be summed up like this:

Don’t be an idiot.

Harsh, I know. But I’ve never had a virus. So there ya go.

Back to unification: this trend toward making every last thing you use be accessible in one single gadget or application. Yeah, I don’t like it. I have spent years failing at technological unification:

• I tried to use Outlook to do everything: email, calendar, contact list and to-do list. I love it for email, only sort of use it for my contacts and a few important calendar items and have failed more times than I can count to use it for my task list which is, arguably, what I need it most for!
• I bought a PDA several years ago - failed to use it, failed to sync it, failed to keep it charged.
• I tried to use both Mozilla and IE for my blogreader. Failed. Good ole Bloglines is the only way to go as far as I’m concerned.
• My cell phone? I like it to be a cell phone. I like it to make calls with actual buttons that don’t require a multi-lane auto accident in order to dial while driving. I don’t need voice commands or one-touch commands. I’m not planning on writing blog posts on it. I just like to make calls. While I’m out. I sure as hell don’t need email access, internet access or MP3 access on my cell phone because those features do not help me make calls when I am out on the road.
• Bluetooth is the bane of my existence. If I am too busy to hold a phone in my hand and talk on it, I am too busy to take the call. Period. And who ever thought of bluetooth-enabled CARS?! Because it is always so convenient, when you are the parent of 4 kids, to take your calls over speakerphone while you are driving down the highway! Not.
• My home phone - aka land line - it will never be replaced with my cell phone. Why? Because my cell phone, which lives in one of two places (my car or my purse), is for when I’m AWAY from my home phone. Never the two shall mix. If you call me and leave a message on my cell, you can expect me to get back to you the next time I’m out on the road because that’s when I’ll check it.

So you get the drift. I like my stuff to be separate. Compartmentalized. I don’t really want to have access to everything all at once and I know from past experience that I just won’t use it. I’ll use one main functionality and the rest will go to hell.

So all of that rambling to say that I’ve finally done gone and made myself a photoblog. I was tired of feeling both held back and selfish for wanting to post tons of pictures on my blog and feeling the need to balance my wordy posts with my photo-heavy posts. So for purely selfish reasons, I bring you:

Stepping On Legos: Behind The Lens

It has its own separate RSS feed (compartmentalization, people!!) so if you usually come to my blog by way of an RSS feedreader, you will need to add the new RSS feed to get updates on new photo entries.

I can post a million pictures that will probably bore everyone but me and I won’t feel bad about it at all! So come on over and see Addy’s 2 Year pics that I took at the Arboretum and see a very rare glimpse at my girl in smocking! Her dress was a gift from my Aunt while we were waiting to adopt Addison. I have been waiting patiently for it to fit her and then to have the perfect opportunity to take pictures in it so I was thrilled to finally be able to get some shots this weekend.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Moving, Photos & Videos, Things I Love, Venting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.