Went a week without a computer. Ever tried it?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This is now the second time in about eight months where I had to leave my laptop in the shop for ONE. WHOLE. FUCKING. WEEK.

The first time around was done by some comp nerd in a car whose number I got from someone, can’t remember the name of the outfit. That person/business is no longer around, which might explain the fact I had to take the laptop in again recently.

The second time around - another comp nerd in another car, but from a company I actually got from the yellow pages this time - a business name that I’d actually seen around for a couple years now. He replaced the moving hard drive with a non-moving one (yeah yeah I’m sure you’ve already surmised I don’t know my comp shit all that well by the way I’m explaining it) and upped the storage from 223 GB to 550 GB.

So hopefully I don’t have to go through this goofy non-cyber hiatus for quite some time again.
Please.
Thank-you.

And then trying to catch up to my sites when I got my comp back today - sites like Fark, here, and others, especially with all the shit going down over the past week - a lot of threads, here, I won’t be able to catch up to, as well as threads that I would’ve liked to have contributed to, but by the time I got to them, they were already so thoroughly discussed, argued and debated that any further input from me would have been redundant. Such examples, the first time around, were threads about the feasibility of eating rotten food, Beatles dissing, cryonics, and a tennis discussion.

This time around, the immigration ban thread - it was at page 5 a week ago - now at 15.

Has anyone here willfully/non-willfully gone without comp activity for any extended period of time? Or are all of us enslaved to our screens? Me, in the non-comp interim, tried to leg-wrestle, unsuccessfully, again, with Colin Wilson’s the fucking Outsider, and some other reading shit, and PBS Newshour, but other than that - a little antsy, here and there, I spose, with shitloads more ganga consumption. And of course there had to be ultra-mega-rare snowfalls to keep this gardener from working, to keep me at home, more, without a fucking computer!

2

Any internet addict has at least two computing devices. Check on eBay for a refurbished one.

3

Sure. I’ve never owned a laptop and only relatively recently have I acquired a smart phone and tablet. So whenever I’ve gone on vacation for a week or two it has been sans computer. Doesn’t usually bother me much. You’d think it would, as much time as I spend online…but…nope. I survive just find. Scarcely more than a twitch or two after the first day ;).

4

I have no problem with that either. Then again, when I’ve been out of town, it’s been for only a few days. If I’d been out of town for two weeks, hard to say how I would’ve fared - guess it depends on how the vacation, itself, was coming along.

Have you gone a week without cyber activity at home?

5

I’ve never been without my computer or some way to access the internet but I don’t have a tv and haven’t had one since May of last year. I don’t miss tv at all and I hate that I spend as much time as I do online. I would love to be without my laptop or iphone or tablet for a week but I don’t have the self control to just turn them off and not touch them again for a week.

6

Last summer, I spent a week in Dire Dawa, Djibouti and Hargeisa, where the wi-fi was very spotty, most days just on for a few minutes at a time a couple of times a day. Barely enough connection time to look at my e-mail inbox.

The year before, I was on a Black Sea ferry for three days and three nights, with no connection to anything. Nobody even had cellphone. It was surreal – no ringtones, people sitting around actually talking face to face. In Russian, mostly.

7

Yep - and two weeks without a computer was nowhere near as blissful as a month without a phone.

I get your no-tv heaven, FloatyGimpy. I ditched mine a decade ago. Yelly screamy thing it was.

8

I rarely even open my laptop any more. I’ve got my phone and two tablets, and 99.9% of the time I just use my phone. (Like right now)

9

Yep, couple times a year when I go on trips I’m without computer from 3 to 8 days. Not an issue. I like being on line but it’s not essential to me.

I’ve been known to ignore the computer 1-2 days at home just because I’ve got something else going on and I’m real busy.

Don’t even have a smartphone. The tablet I usually use for playing games and have the wifi/internet off on it. Ditto the Kindle which is usually for reading, almost never connected on line.

10

My vacations are usually 2-3 weeks long. No computer. No phone. No tablet. Never missed any of 'em. Except for the one time when my wallet was stolen upon my arrival in Madrid. No money or credit cards, and no way to contact anyone. At least I still had my passport and printout of my plane reservations. I had no choice but to turn around and return home (took 4 days of sleeping in airports with little or no food).

11

I try to spend 4-5 days without connectivity if I can. I’m a hermit at heart and try to get in a few solo vacations a year where I’m alone, without internet or TV. I have my phone with me, but it’s silenced and I only respond to wife and kids. I like to be alone with my thoughts for a few days. I took a short clip of the beach at one of my lonesome redoubts. I spent 5 days there IIRC. I think it’s important to have a little silence and relief from the rest of the world sometimes.

12

We went on a 9-day cruise last October and while I did take a laptop, we didn’t purchase the internet access. I took it to download our photos each day, and a few times, I played some of the games I’d installed, but that was it. If I hadn’t had it, I’d have found something else to occupy my idle time.

13

The closest I’ve come lately was last year when I went on a week and a half vacation in Western Europe with only my iPhone 4 which is Wi-Fi only. So basically all it was good for was Facebook and taking mediocre pictures.

Even when I go out West like I normally do in my summer vacation, I bring my laptop so I can play games, read the Dope at hotels, and look at the pictures I’ve taken on a better monitor.

ETA: and everyone else with me for four of those days was in the same boat, on the 100 mile run through the Cotswolds: the Orlando shooting happened in the middle of it and a person at a watering stop told me but none of my fellow runners had heard of it either because I guess phone service wasn’t so great in the hills.

14

I am normally an internet junkie. But last summer a couple of my buddies and I went on a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. No active electronics at all (we had our cell phones with us, but turned off and in waterproof baggies the whole time).

None of us missed it at all, but that was probably because of all of the natural wonders we were experiencing. And the instant the trip was finished the cell phones came out and we were checking our email.

15

I managed to survive an entire 33 years without a computer. And without a cell phone. I don’t know how I did it.

16

We now take our iPad with us on vacation. My wife can’t survive without the news, it seems. I’m perfectly content not to see a paper, watch TV or access the intertoobs, and in fact would be happy to never see any of it again.

17

Probably not since the short time between college graduation and starting my job in early 1986. Or maybe during long vacations in 1992 and/or 1996. Since the internet era began, I would even stop at a Kinko’s or internet cafe to go online if I was away too long.

18

Yes, yes, I very much admire all of you non electronic zombies, and recognize your obvious intellectual and moral superiority, not to mention completely grant the assumption that any internet time is wasted and inferior to any interaction with real life humans. :slight_smile:

19

No, I won’t be without an internet connection for more than a few hours at a time. I’ve got plenty of equipment, losing my desktop Mac wouldn’t come close to keeping me off the internet.

20

Am I really the first smartass to wander in and comment, “Yes, I did every week before about 1989.” :wink:

In all seriousness, though, in the last few years I’ve managed a couple of times without my computer for a few days, simply because I was going away and couldn’t be bothered taking my laptop with me. I’m planning a trip away to the lake soon and am considering not taking the laptop to help with the unwinding from the modern world thing. Just over a week in the woods with no TV, no internet, more than four actual stars visible in the night sky, bliss!

What really astounds people is that I don’t have (and really don’t particularly care to get) a smartphone. I have what they graciously call a feature phone. It has features! :smiley: