I need juice. Constantly.
Well, not me. Rather, my devices. All of those magical toys that keep me informed, keep me Tweeting, keep me listening to podcasts and watching YouTube and catapulting Angry Birds.
They’re thirsty, demanding little electronic vampires. They need constant attention.
They endlessly chirp to be powered up and topped off. It’s taking over my life. And charging is just the half the battle—all of this stuff needs to stay on the same electronic calendar, the same electronic page.
Wires, wires everywhere, and so much stuff to sync.
The proliferation of electronic ephemera is such that charging and syncing has lately become a weekend calendar item for me, right up there with washing socks and trimming the azaleas.
A typical Saturday morning: the laptop is always plugged in and backed up, so it’s the base station. The iPhone (besides needing a recharge every single night), gets an app update, charge and sync. Then the iPad. Then my watch. My watch!
The modern world is power hungry.
I have a Magic Mouse that burns through a set of rechargeable batteries at least once a week. My Bluetooth headphones drain whatever device they’re connected to in half a day. The iPad’s battery life always surprises me but eventually it too runs out of gas.
Battery meters make me anxious.
I thought about this a lot after that freak rush-hour snowstorm that hit D.C. at the end of January. You know, the one where Pepco took more than two days to restore power at my house (which to their credit wasn’t nearly as long as it took last winter).
Those two nights of roughing it by candlelight were certainly romantic, but the chattering teeth were a bit inconvenient. Modern life with no power sucks, especially in winter.
To ensure that my current-craving devices could continue entertaining me in the cold and the dark, I hauled them into the office each day for charging, trailing a rat’s nest of power cords and sync cables. I was worried about about usage. Who knew when Pepco would get the lights back on?
I guess I have power issues. My camera always seems to die when I’m about to take the most amazing photo ever. My phone croaks when I’m shooting video at the best show of Jay-Z’s entire career. The iPad gives up the ghost in the middle of a live Charlie Sheen rant on TMZ.
Did you know you could drive a Nissan Leaf or a Chevy Volt from here to Virginia Beach? You can now that recharging stations have been added to rest areas along the way.
Which is a good idea, I guess. Gas is going crazy. Plus, the Leaf has those great Lance Armstrong commercials.
But I’m not sure I can take one more wire.
My energy is tapped.
[image: billselak]
