T-13, 1.36: Connectivity

[Note: this post is an example of the benefits of ADHD. As TRY might say, “Statistically, 32.3% of you got that… and the rest of you weren’t paying attention.” *heh*]

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Well, we had been planning to make a couple of “used car visits” today (and we still may), but the most interesting car has an owner who apprently doesn’t want very much to part with it (he’s not yet gotten me the VIN so I can run a CarFax report), so we’re scaling the day back a tad. A Good Thing. Going to check the car out would have been a 150 mile round trip, anyway–although there are a few others to check between here and there.

Yep. That’s right: America’s Third World Countyâ„¢ has slim pickin’s in the used car realm. Oh, why no new car shopping? Remember: tightwad here. I’ve ALWAYS let someone else discover a car’s unique failings and suffer the “drive the car off the lot” depreciation for me. Yeh, we don’t get the new car smell (though we could buy it canned if that were important) and we always have to budget for repairs and upkeep, but it’s less of a burden overall than a new car.

(Most recent used car purchase has set me back less than expected for upkeep: counting the normal “tune it as soon as it’s in my hands” expenses, new tires–the old ones passed safety inspection but weren’t the quality I wanted–replacement of lubes with ALL synthetics, and a couple of parts replaced: still only about $225 for the past 10 months… and getting above 40mpg on a regular basis. All for a car that cost well, well under $3K. I can live with that. Heck, a new car–just about ANY new car–would have cost me more in total expenditures over the past ten months.)

So, scaled down car shopping today–not for a replacement vehicle but for an added car, BTW. An automatic transmission vehicle for “other drivers” in the family. *heh*

But all that’s in aid of the theme of this 13: connectivity. Until recently, shopping for a new car was a hunt-the-want-ads/word of mouth experience that was often excessively laborious, often painful. Now,

1. Autotrader.com and other sites make finding a ton of possibles easy.

2. CarFax makes weeding out the obvious no-gos easier (still need an onsite inspection, of course).

3. And email, faxes and mobile phones make contacts with sellers (and callbacks/contacts FROM sellers) much quicker and easier–even when voicemail filters things.

4. Finding sellers/cars in places I don’t drive to/in much is also easier, because GoogleEarth lets me SEE what the places look like as well as just giving me a map of the roads.

5. Free WiFi hotspots (like Panera Breads’ almost ubiquitous FREE hotspots in cities… well outside America’s Third World County, where the only free hotspots are places like my (bad) neighbors’ unprotected wireless network–*heh*… are great for fine-tuning “the next step” after a rejected car.

But while thinking on these connectivity bonuses, I naturally veered off on a rabbit trail thinking of connectivity in general in our society.

6. The collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis led to my Wonder Woman using our VOIP phone (with a Minneapolis number) to call relatives there and see how the event is impacting their lives (“Y’all safe, not traveling the bridge when it went?” was a primary question to get out of the way first, of course). ConnectivityX4⁺.

That led, of course, to thinking of other disasters/events that we’ve been “connected” to over the years by means apart from simply seeing them reported on TV.

7. The Big Thompson Canyon Colorado flash flood on July 4th, 1976: I was dating my Wonder Woman then when one of her roommates died in that flood.

8. My parents, grandparents and many childhood friends and aquaintances were either directly or indirectly affected/involved in the cleanup of the 1979 tornado that destroyed much of southwest (and on through downtown) Lawton, OK…

9. …while my Wonder Woman and I were safely ensconced in our starter home bungalow in KCMO, where just a few months after Lovely Daughter’s birth (look rthe year up for yourself :-)), the Hyatt Regency walkway collapsed, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200 others during a tea dance. Sure, again we weren’t directly involved, but we felt connected just from having been there before, from living within a mile of the place, etc.

10. And speaking of Lovely Daughter (please forgive me, girl :-)), on her birthday anniversary in 1993, the FBI killed a bunch of children in Waco, TX. A crime of mass murder that no one in the “feddle gummint” has been held accountable for. Naturally. We felt her “birthday connection” with her, so of course…

11. A couple of years later, when we were living relatively near the OKC bombing that was also on her birthday anniversay, she felt that strongly as well. But then, so did the rest of us, both physically–the bomb and aftereffects could be physically felt for miles and miles–and emotionally, as friends and aquaintances were affected directly by the blast and nearly as much by the rescue and cleanup. Lovely Daughter did approach her birthday anniversary on pins and needles for some years to follow…

But when that “connectivity” thread began to get a little too harsh (yeh, along about Waco), I turned to another aspect of connectivity: percieved connections to people and events far removed from me, people I have never known and never would have known anything about “brought near” by media presentation of events, such as

12. Katrina (and otrher natural disasters such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami, innumeerable earthquakes, storms, etc.).

13. 9-11.

While, largely because of widespread visual imagry, we all feel some sense of connection to events like these, I sometimes wonder just how healthy a preoccupation with remote events that we cannot directly affect or that do not directly affect us can be. Sometimes I think that the “disaster-a-day” mentality of Mass Media Podpeople (and our society’s addiction to it) cannot be a good thing. Sometimes? No, I often think that, which is one reason that I’ve scaled back (to almost nothing) my viewing of televised news. Until recent years, my newsviewing was limited to spotty and network news viewing was almost nonexistant even before Ra^thergate and other abuses highlighted the “lies, damned lies and Mass Media Podpeople lies” nature of so-called “news” reporting. But now… now, I really only “watch” whatever news MAY be on when I walk through the room and my Wonder Woman has something on the TV (and her “news” watching is almost as limited as mine).

Such are my disjointed, semi-randomized, nearly stream of consciousness thoughts on a cloudy day before heading out for some onsite car research.

Noted at the Thursday Thirteen Hub. Visit others’ T-13s while I’m out having fun in the RW today, ‘K?