My Attention Span, How I Mis...

My Attention Span, How I Mis…

By Debi Harris

I’ve learned something recently. Never have your iPad and iPhone near your laptop. I have a very short attention span which has only gotten shorter with the advent of the DVR and the pause button. While watching TV, listening to the radio or my family talk about their day, I find my mind wandering, and I have to stop and hit rewind, which only works with my TV. Wouldn’t it be great if that worked with everything (and everyone)? On second thought, maybe not. Some things aren’t worth hearing a second time.
Remember the good old days (pre-1980s) when cell phones
weren’t your constant companion? Only rich people could afford such things. I didn’t get my first cell phone until I was, well, I won’t tell you how old I was but the salesperson looked too young to be playing hooky from school. Now my granddaughters have their own, as do all their friends! Our family never carries on actual conversations anymore. Thankfully, we have unlimited texting on our phones or we’d never talk to each other. And the codes these young people use! OMG, SMH, OMW. WHAT?
According to my extensive research (Wikipedia), SMS (text) messaging was used for the first time on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old test engineer for Sema Group in the UK (now Airwide Solutions), used a personal computer to send the text message "Merry Christmas" via the Vodafone network to the phone of one Richard Jarvis. That was certainly a glib, impressive text. Now we know who to blame if we can ever find them. LOL Anyway, does anyone know where I can get a teenager’s cell phone code book?
I remember when my mom and stepfather got a ‘bag phone’. It was a phone in a gigantic suitcase about the size of a boombox (and for you youngsters who don’t know what a boombox is, imagine an iPod the size of Rhode Island) that plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter and had to be left in your vehicle lest you get a hernia trying to transport it anywhere. All it was good for was impressing your poor (without enough money to purchase Rhode Island) friends and relatives who still clung to the dial telephone. I tried explaining what a dial telephone was to my granddaughters. I never got past the ‘dial’ part. That’s where the Internet comes in handy. At least I can Google a picture of a dial telephone. Not so, Twitter. They tried explaining to me what Twitter is. This is what it sounded like to my old (thought I was going to give you my age, didn’t you?) ears, “Blah, blah, blah, Twitter, blah, blah 140 characters (?), blah, blah.” Huh? And what in the world is a hash tag? We called it a pound sign (don’t know why we called it that either now that I think about it). Would someone please explain that to me? I’m too embarrassed to ask my granddaughters. They already think I walked amongst the dinosaurs. Of course, it didn’t help that I told them I had a pet dinosaur named Dino when they accused me of being older than dirt.
Anyway, while I’m sitting here trying to think up something witty to write about, I find myself constantly glancing at my iPad to see if’s my turn to play a very addictive word game that is quite
popular among the electronically gifted (myself not included).
This very popular word game is an evil, addictive game which encourages cheating. I mean, when
 you're the queen of three- and four-letter words, (and no, not those words!), you have to cheat.
And the scoring! I do not understand how the game determines the value of each word. I can write a
very long word such as ‘OXYPHENBUTAZONE’ (a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID))
(which you know means I cheated) which is the highest known theoretically possible score for a
single play under American tournament Scrabble rules (OSPD+MWCD) at 1,778 points for joining
eight already-played tiles to form the word OXYPHENBUTAZONE across three triple-word-score
squares, while simultaneously extending seven specific already-played words to form new words.
HUH? I don’t think my game has the capacity to use four digits in scoring! I found this word and
the information in Scrabble FAQ which is credited to Dan Stock. [John Chew] (Thanks to Google)
A typical game for me consists of: My Opponent: SYZYGY (an alignment of celestial objects).
Me: BABY. See what I mean?
Such is the life of an electronic addict. (Side note to the ones I play the game with: I don’t really cheat. Ha Ha.) I am addicted to my electronic devices and that particular game which does not bode well for someone like me who is easily distrac. . .