There's a new show called "Life on Mars". Police officer gets hit by a car, goes into a coma and lives life as a cop in the 1970s (it's occurs while he's unconcisious in the coma). It's a very interesting show that brings up concepts of love, time travel, and does anything we do matter in the grand scheme existence.

The TV show has the song "Life on Mars" by David Bowie from which the show got its name. This song is similar to the movie "A Clockwork Orange" in that both depict a state of mind in the future. This profetic song tells the tale of a girl who uses movies to escape a bad homelife. It further describes how she grows up, has basically become another cog in the machine of society and the movies that once took her away are now cliche reruns much like her life. Yet she still goes to the movies in hopes that the story gets better and that good change comes around. Even the first person perspective from "the writer" realizes that he's written the same thing over and over and over again but will write it once again.

For some reason this song touches a nerve with people, myself included. I've felt detatched from most of the people in my life, and at some point things feel as though they've been scripted for the situation. Not in a good "wow that's amazing" way but more like the "generic predictable, i know what they're going to say next" kind of way. When I listen to this song I can practically feel the pain of the sheer predictablity and banality of what life offers. At some time in our lives we all want to be something special, to be the superstar, to be rich, to be the one everybody loves and worships but the reality is to quote a movie or tv show I've seen: "most people live lives of quiet desparation" and most of us never have the opportunity to break from the path that is in front of us.

This bit of text was written in 2003 after I had purchased the Treo90. It was a good little PDA, in my opinion one of Palm's best. And as stated, it made reading part of my daily routine to work.

...

How the Palm OS has changed my life.

I won't tell that I've figured out how to remotely control the world to do my bidding or that I've discovered a Bluetooth uplink to an alien culture via my Treo90, but what the Palm OS has done for me is actually unspectacular and ordinary.

I've started reading again.

I've never been one for picking up a good book or a newspaper, I'm probably the least organized person I know and my life really isn't so complicated that I actually need an organizer of any type. But everyday I have two 20 minute commutes (to and from work) and listening to the same crappy music on the radio is enough to make one jump from a moving bus! So started looking in to the various forms of PDA's what they could do for me. I found that I could play games, connect to the internet (via my cell phone), and allow me to read the news & ebooks.

Everyday I plug in my Treo, hotsync, and thanks to software such as Avantgo I get a health dose of news (at least 20-30 minutes worth) from around the world, everyday. I get to stay informed as to what goes on outside of my little world - Science, Business, Tech, Politics, Entertainment, you name it - it's at my fingertips. Sure, I've also found that I can potentially manage my office computer network,but I'm sticking with what works best for me right now. Some news, an ebook from time to time and a rousing game of Monopoly, fill up time that for me would be spent looking at the strange woman with a beehive hair-do or trying to figure out where that funky smell was coming from or why the guy two seats in front of me is talking to nobody. And for now, that's enough for me. I'll figure out how to run the rest of the world via my PDA another day.

This bit of text was written in 2003 after I had purchased the Treo90. It was a good little PDA, in my opinion one of Palm's best. And as stated, it made reading part of my daily routine to work.

...

How the Palm OS has changed my life.

I won't tell that I've figured out how to remotely control the world to do my bidding or that I've discovered a Bluetooth uplink to an alien culture via my Treo90, but what the Palm OS has done for me is actually unspectacular and ordinary.

I've started reading again.

I've never been one for picking up a good book or a newspaper, I'm probably the least organized person I know and my life really isn't so complicated that I actually need an organizer of any type. But everyday I have two 20 minute commutes (to and from work) and listening to the same crappy music on the radio is enough to make one jump from a moving bus! So started looking in to the various forms of PDA's what they could do for me. I found that I could play games, connect to the internet (via my cell phone), and allow me to read the news & ebooks.

Everyday I plug in my Treo, hotsync, and thanks to software such as Avantgo I get a health dose of news (at least 20-30 minutes worth) from around the world, everyday. I get to stay informed as to what goes on outside of my little world - Science, Business, Tech, Politics, Entertainment, you name it - it's at my fingertips. Sure, I've also found that I can potentially manage my office computer network,but I'm sticking with what works best for me right now. Some news, an ebook from time to time and a rousing game of Monopoly, fill up time that for me would be spent looking at the strange woman with a beehive hair-do or trying to figure out where that funky smell was coming from or why the guy two seats in front of me is talking to nobody. And for now, that's enough for me. I'll figure out how to run the rest of the world via my PDA another day.