Out of the way

I use email a lot in my work. I read masses of it, and I get masses of it. I am very glad for my spam filter, which helps a lot, and being able to filter out a lot of things is useful. But I still have to work through it.

Even on holidays (yay! I am on holidays!) I tend to try and burn through some of my mail. Because otherwise the first day at work I do nothing at all but try and sort it, and find the things that people thought I would respond to while I was away. The rest of a week goes into catching up after a week of holidays.

So I am on the constant lookout for a connection, when I am more or less in the mood to get rid of some of the clutter in my inbox. More and more, in places where bandwidth is free, people are prepared to open their wifi network and share it. Which is nice.

Otherwise, I spend a lot of time in internet cafés. I am an Opera user, I work at Opera, and I am used to Opera. And then I get into a place that only has Internet Explorer. It drives me mad. So I am now happy to install Opera anywhere they will let me - if I am going to be working for about 10 minutes it is worth the effort in terms of ending up more productive. (If I walk into a place and they have it already I am inclined to give them something nice as a thank you).

But webmail isn't the ideal way to work - it's just an emergency answer to dealing with something I need to do. Connecting my laptop is much faster - and when I am burning my own spare time that matters too. So I carry it with me.

It's also how I keep up with friends around the world, since I can't afford big phone bills and have become less and less keen on using the telephone anyway. (I think it is partially because it literally makes my head burn to be on the phone for much time, and partially because I am a little hard of hearing, and talking on the phone just isn't much fun).

So I lug around this big expensive fragile heavy lump, and the charger and the adapters I need. I am grateful for its warranty - Apple tend to be reasonably good about fixing things under warranty. Although without being able to leave it behind, any more than I can leave my passport for a long time, the ability to get it fixed can be somewhat theoretical. Apple are not good at saying "well, here is the problem, we will forward that to the next place you are going so they can just start doing things, or order parts, ...".

And occasionally I like to write a blog entry, or to read the news, or follow the cricket. All of which, at the price of carrying this machine and plugging it in all over the place, is easier than I could have imagined. Now, if only I could convince people to stop writing mail that isn't interesting, and simplify the task of managing what I have to get done each day, ...