Electronics That Are Life Altering
Over the last 15 years a huge amount of effort and resources have been invested in developing electronics that make our life better. The advent of the PC, the Internet, PDA's, Pagers and then Cellular Phones have proven to be very helpful in keeping up with the business of being an elected official. Even this blog is a creature of technology that has created, along with e-mail, an excellent way to communicate with some of the people who live in the 49th Ward..
Over the last few years, I have found nothing more enjoyable that the ability to increase my opportunity to get more information about the world we live in. To some people, information means news, and to me it does mean news, but it also means weather, CSPAN, News shows such as 60 minutes or Meet the Press. But it also means Law and Order, West Wing and my personal favorite baseball.
So how has technology helped me with this? What new technology has made this possible? Two things that are incredibly valuable tools, TiVO and XM Radio. If you don't know what they are let me briefly explain. TiVO is an exceptionally user friendly machine that records things you want to watch on television. Unlike a VCR it can tell you what is on TV, when it is on, and if you tell it to do so, it will record the show every time it comes on or it will record only the new episodes. XM radio is a satellite radio service that provides well over 100 stations that you can hear from coast to coast along with programming that may no be available in your area.
TiVO likes to advertise the quote from a user that says "TiVO changed my life!" It sounds vastly overstated before you buy TiVO, but once you have it watch television is never the same again. You favorite show is always on when you are ready to watch it and it will wait for you if you want to go do something in the middle. It also allows you to skip through commercials.
The second thing I am enjoying far more than I expected is XM satellite radio. No matter what you like on the radio its available in your car now. Comedy channels, Music of every type and kind you can imagine, many of the shows from public radio, new from several different sources, traffic and weather non-stop for Chicago, and a huge amount of talk radio from the right and Air America and others from the left. All of this is informative and entertaining, making driving somewhere much more pleasant, particularly once you leave the Chicago radio market because all of the XM stations go with you anywhere in the continental U.S. These are all great things. But to a baseball junkie there is nothing better than the fact that every major league game is on XM now. Baseball, from noon to midnight almost every day with the broadcast team from the home city calling the game. It makes you appreciate how well our local guys do when you can hear the broadcast teams from around the nation.
Some of the new technology is annoying. Some we just take for granted. These two inventions have made my political life and my personal life far more enjoyable in ways that I never imagined was possible 10 years ago.
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