Wishing I Was More of a Techno-Nerd

Since I last posted, I learned how to download pictures from my new (to me) DXG camera.  That was how I was able to share the pictures and YouTube footage I shot at the "Kill the Bill!" rally at the Statehouse on Tuesday.  Until yesterday, I hadn't paid attention to the fact that this camera features the ability to record audio files.  Between the lens and the shutter, there is a small microphone, and close to it is a speaker about the size of the nail on my pinkie.

Currently, I'm a little more than halfway through a taped letter (as in magnetic recording tape) to a friend in St. Louis, a tape I've been promising to mail him since before Christmas.  As I've been spending my breaks and lunches with my Memorex portable cassette recorder in my hand, I've also been wondering about the possibilities that the audio feature of my camera open up to me.

One thought has crossed my mind, the possibility of occasionally posting spoken-word entries to this blog.   I have made very short-lived attempts at keeping taped diaries in the past, never lasting more than a few days.  I was most prolific when I was carrying a microcassette recorder with me most of the time, a machine that has since conked out on me, but which I will replace this spring.

But for the moment, I am stymied as to how to proceed.  I made small sound files last night, of about 30 seconds' duration max, consisting of little more than "Testing one, two, three."  I was able to load them to the laptop, but how to get them from the hard drive to the blog is still a mystery to me.

And maybe it's supreme arrogance on my part to think my life is so worth chronicling that I should endeavor to record it in yet another way.  I already have a voluminous diary, and I think that paper will ultimately keep longer than computer files.  I have this blog, which I've kept for four years (including its time on LiveJournal).  So do I need to turn on the microphone and open a vein?

I pondered this for awhile at work yesterday and today.  The surface of my work table here at home is too cluttered (beyond just the usual genius-at-work scattering of papers), but I did manage to clear away some of the detritus that has clogged my L-shaped desk at work.

Quite an odd assortment of inspirational figures.  I'm the only one who could hang up Abraham Lincoln, Jack Kerouac, Elvis, and Fritz the Nite Owl all in one space.  The picture of Susie is a school picture from second or third grade.  And, even though I make snide comments about my hometown of Marietta, Ohio whenever I can, a post card of the banks of the Ohio River, with Front and Greene Sts. in the foreground, hangs where I can see it many times daily.

Some more of the decorations adorning my pod wall.  Susie's "mug shot" was from when she was in Bugsy Malone, Jr. at the Davis Center for the Performing Arts.  I didn't have the money to buy a framed print of this New Yorker cover, so I hung up the original magazine cover.  The cast of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit hangs above a picture that a third-grade Susie drew ("I ♥ Chess") of a chessboard and its pieces.

The only way I can guarantee not losing a memorandum or procedure list is to tack it to the wall, where my eyes will eventually light upon it.  This means there is usually very little cloth exposed.  Sergeant George Baker  published a comic called "The Sad Sack" in Yank, The Army Weekly during World War II.  One strip showed the hero of the strip at a paper-laden bulletin board.  He keeps burrowing deeper and deeper into the items tacked there until finally, by candlelight, he sees a yellowed order: "All men will fall out promptly at midnight to cross the Delaware River.  By order of General George Washington, 1776."

The closest the Industrial Commission came to this was when an elderly woman in my department retired.  She had been there since about 1942, and she was hired quickly because most men were in the service by then.  She retired a year or two after I came, and when people cleaned out her desk, they found several uncashed paychecks.  (Compare that to me: If my paycheck is $50 short, I notice it immediately and I'm on the phone to payroll at warp speed.)  I am not sure of this woman's precise age.  There are unconfirmed rumors that she waited tables at the Last Supper, while others claim she is Millard Fillmore's illegitimate daughter.