Techy Day

A cute account of how a blogger and her commenter fell in love and are getting married.

Turns out that the way to a blog-woman’s heart is through the comments.

In a January post, Ms. Althouse listed lessons from Clint Eastwood’s film “Gran Torino.”No. 5: “A young man should perceive when a girl likes him and he needs to ask her out to dinner and a movie before somebody else does.”

In front of the eyes and fingertips of thousands, Mr. Meade made his move.

Mr. Meade: “OK. Want to have dinner with me and see it again?”

Ms. Althouse: “Yes, but you’ll have to come to Madison.”


I'm not a fan of the iPhone, nor any complicated phone. Consider them deadweights with tiny buttons or worse, touch-screens. I especially dislike touch-screens. Fingerprints on the screen, the horror. I'll be wiping all day long. Which is why I'm rather amused by this:

At 4 in the morning, I was in bed, fighting rage. I couldn’t stop thinking about that device’s tarty little face and those yapping “apps” you can download for it. The whole iPhone enterprise seemed to require so much attention, organization, explanation, praise, electricity. I know — I know: in the morning, Apple’s latest miracle machine would fill my palm with meaning and magic. So why couldn’t I contain my annoyance? I had no new-thing excitement. It dawned on me: I hated my iPhone.

But it is interesting to see how some software developers are raking it in precisely because people are so entertained by the various gimmicks and tricks you can stuff into Apple's sleek, money-churning brick.


I spend many of my waking hours online. I can't do without the internet because I need to blog, upload photos on Flickr, browse blogs, watch TV online, check what new books and films are out there... I have a Facebook account although I gave up on Twitter after a day or two (wasn't quite my thing). Even though I have a thing for film photography, it was something I came across online and I spend many hours in cyberspace cultivating that hobby. I don't know, technology rules my world in so many ways it would exhaust me to think of everything. But I can totally relate to this:

I watched my mother, who died a few years ago at 92, lose interest in the next new thing. She’d been born with radio. TV — particularly color TV — was more than she’d ever expected to see in her lifetime, and I couldn’t get her past that. She couldn’t see the point in cable beyond basic, because all she needed were three TV stations. Couldn’t see the point of the DVD player my brother got her, since the three TV stations had movies. Didn’t need a CD player since the radio had music. Each time I’d try, she’d resist and I’d get angry.

I thought it was her stubbornness that made me mad, but in retrospect, maybe I was mad she was getting old.

Now that I’ve started the process myself, I understand better. I was born when TV stations ran test patterns from midnight to 6 a.m. E-mail, the cellphone, 400 cable channels — it’s more than I ever expected to see in my lifetime. It’s more than enough. As my mother used to say, how much information does one person need?