Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Time to Upgrade My PDA

Friends, Romans, and gentle readers who might or might not be men, the time has come for me to buy a new Personal Data Assistant (PDA). I bought my current PDA two years ago to support a trip to Milwaukee. I was taking a number of photographs and wanted a handy mechanism to capture details about each as well as blog entries that struck me while I was on the road. I'd once bought a miniature cassette recorder for the same purpose, but I realized soon that they would require transcription, a skill I lack. So I bought this PDA to help capture those thoughts and to provide me with instant access to the phone numbers and other data I might need while away from my desk, my computer, and my address book.

	When I bought my PDA, it was top of the line, and I imagine its features are still quite enviable. Its memory is 80 sheets/160 pages of writable memory. This particular model is compatible with most styluses on the market, including the erasable and the non-erasable data transfer devices. Unfortunately, I prefer permanent encryption styluses in blue ink; once data is written with these styluses, the memory is consumed and cannot be re-written. In most cases, 80 sheets should provide enough usage for any number of lists, ideas, phone numbers, and other data. This particular PDA, unlike others I've owned, does not have plugable memory cartridges that I could swap out after all memory has been filled. Notice, too, that I have installed an aftermarket, third-party searching application that will immediately take me to the unused memory. Unfortunately, the original PDA didn't include that hardware, which proves that all of those hardware guys are in cahoots.
	This picture identifies the need for the update; the wear and tear of daily use, wherein I thrust the PDA into my back pocket over and over again, has cracked the external casing. Although the external case hasn't failed to the point where the memory's contents would be lost, I don't want to risk a catastrophic memory failure, which would occur when I pulled the PDA from my pocket and its memory devices would spill out behind me, lost to the wind or the vagaries of a mud puddle I might have crossed.
	This particular entry into my PDA's log denotes its age, as it became this blog entry. Circa 1993. Back before the earth cooled, and when blogging was not the means of controlling the world. This particular PDA entry comes from the very trip when I bought this PDA, when it was shining and new. Yikes, it also refers to an incident in 1996 where I drank champagne alone at Sybaris Fantasy Suites because I'd ended a relationship after booking the $400 a night room. I'd blush, but it's two-thousand and something now, and blushing is SO TWENTIETH CENTURY.
	When I uploaded the information from the PDA to an eventual blog entry, a thought, and a reminder for a short story which I have yet to complete, the PDA entry in memory was marked as used, but unfortunately, that didn't free the memory for further use. This was a limitation of these old PDAs. Also, inclusion of the words "Insane Clown Posse" mark a limitation of an obsolete piece of technology.
	Do I remember drinking Mint Juleps at Sutton Place with Jewel Accents? No? Those must have been some effective Mint Juleps. The whole thing leads to some pleasant speculation and imagination, particularly to what someone named Jewel Accent must look like.... Aw, crikey, those are carpet styles. Jewel Accent kinda looks like the things I step on when I'm stumbling from the bed to the bathroom at three in the morning. How exciting is that?
	Yet, when I look upon the amount of memory remaining within my current PDA, I still have a lot of annotation to perform, a lot of shopping lists to jot, a number of spontaneous ideas to collect, and one or two friends whose numbers I want to keep handy.... I don't want to purchase a new PDA just yet.

Because just face it: I have PDA memories, written to disks the size of legal pads or pocket notebooks, from 1990 on. Using the PDAs that I'm used to, with the scratchouts and the incomplete sentences, I have captured memories and trains of thought that I can use for future blog entries, short stories, poems, and whatnot. Were I a slave to Bluetooth or its predecessors Mauvetooth and Aquamolar or other proprietary and since-forgotten file formats, I'd be file.sol with my personal history.

I expect, then, I'll select another similar PDA when I actually retire this one (in about 40 pages, give or take). Because although I dabble every day in the binary dits and dahs of digital communication, I still value the scratchings in the Noggle TTF that relate my current, older self to the thoughts I had last decade, last year, or only yesterday.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:04 PM