Life without Internet: A Memoir

            For the first time since I moved out on my own, both my Internet and cellphone data caps maxed out about two weeks ago. The people who possess beauty that is unlimited data don’t understand the pain of dealing with data plans.

           

           On a monthly basis, I have to monitor what I watch, how often I watch it and find a way to distribute usage over a span of 30 days. This is a challenge when the average Netflix video can consume almost half a gigabit of data, depending on the quality. (1080p HD video can use almost 1 GB of data in less than an hour.)

My other problem is my lack of entertainment outside of Internet videos. I have no cable. I canceled my Netflix a few weeks ago because of the large chunks of data it ate. My DVD collection is limited, and I don’t have the money to build it up. It’s also winter, so I don’t have the liberty of engaging in outdoors activities like I did six months ago.

            

            These are all first-world problems – I understand. People in other countries deal with starvation, disease and poverty while I complain that I can’t keep up with the Kardashians or what homophobic slur Phil Robertson is slinging around this week. However, this is America, and it is my constitutional right to complain about not having 24-hour access to LOLcats.

            

            This isn’t the first time I’ve exceeded my Internet data plan. It’s not as bad since I have an extra 2 GBs of available data on my phone, so in theory, I always have some form of Internet. But on one Friday night, both my Internet and phone data plans reached their limits. What’s worse was the fact I had a three-day weekend ahead with no work, no girlfriend and no plans other than avoiding the cold. It didn’t take long before I realized the horror that now sat before me like a spider sitting in a web that blocks the only entrance into the bathroom on taco and wings night.

           

            On a side note: I wasn’t completely deprived of sanity the entire weekend since my downstairs neighbors invited me over a few times, and they provided me with NFL football, “Inglorious Basterds” and “Star Wars.” These charitable acts likely spared me from ending it all.

The moments where I wasn’t in their presence was when I realized something: I am attached to the Internet to an almost unhealthy level.

            

            The revelations began Saturday morning, when the first thing I did was clicked on my phone’s Facebook app – only to discover that I couldn’t access Facebook from my phone until Jan. 7 (when my data cycle restarts). I usually couldn’t care less about Facebook. I don’t have many friends to begin with, so my news feed is limited. Most of the posts that appear in my feed are junk to some extent. Rarely do I get likes because people just don’t understand me. (That’s what I tell myself, anyway.)

But somehow, I felt deprived of something. That something was connection to the outside world. Since moving away from home and many of my friends and family, Facebook is how I stay informed about what’s going on in the booming metropolis that is Mountain Top. I admit that I don’t message or chat with people often, but it’s just knowing what they’re doing or thinking that somehow provides me with the gratification that I care about their lives to a small extent. I almost felt alone in the world by waking up and not seeing these tidbits of information.

            

            I then proceeded to grab breakfast. I prepared a meal and sat down at the table. Before I so much as took a bite, I clicked on the Cracked.com app. I tend to read Cracked articles while I eat breakfast because what better way is there to start a routinely miserable day than with a few chuckles. It wasn’t until the blank screen came up that I realized I wouldn’t get my morning story of “The Five Places Hamsters Ended Up Where They Shouldn’t Have Been.” Likewise, I normally check Twitter to read less-informative news. I had no reading material other than the newspaper, but I can’t scroll on a newspaper, and I risk severe injury or death from possible paper cuts. So why should I read a newspaper for stories as redundant as city council meetings or a study suggesting that constant stimulation via smart phones can lead to brain cancer? I sadly finished my meal without the benefit of being an informed citizen.

            

           Without getting into too much detail, one of the most daunting tasks I found due to my lack of Internet was using the bathroom. I didn’t think it was possible to frig up something I was trained to do since infancy, but I winged it.

The issue wasn’t using the bathroom so much as the boredom that accompanies it. Instinct dictates me to grab my phone and check my social media apps while I finish “business.” Without the Internet, I sat there and couldn’t think of what I should be doing with this time.

Women mock how men can spend minutes or hours on end in the bathroom, but what they don’t realize is how this precious time serves as a moment of personal reflection and philosophical advancement. In the old days, our bathroom time was occupied by reading the newspaper or writing essays about quantum mechanics. Now, we better utilize that time by checking Twitter, posting on Facebook and watching YouTube videos. Without Internet access, I felt the time I was spending in the bathroom wasn’t productive. I had no other choice but to pout until my work was finished and carry on – knowing I wasted a solid thirty seconds of my day.

            

            The one benefit I can say came out of not having Internet access is how it forced me to seek work. For example, I went and mopped my kitchen and bathroom floors (something I haven’t done in weeks), cooked crab bisque and monkey bread, cleaned the sinks, bathtub and bedroom, changed my car battery (It died, so there wasn’t much of an alternative) and copied a few dozen CDs to my expanding iTunes library. I also wrote this post, while copying CDs and reading a book. I’m multitasking beyond checking Facebook while eating or urinating.

It’s rather impressive, actually. On most nights, I’ll lie on my couch, watch YouTube videos and ultimately go to bed after I’ve watched anything interesting. I don’t feel I improved myself in any way. In fact, I’m likely de-evolving to the mental capacity of a walnut.

            

Being without the Internet for a few days made me realize how it has integrated into almost every function of everyday living.

It’s frightening. There were points where my thumb sat hovering over the screen ready to push an app that I knew for a fact it wasn’t operational at the time.

The mundane has become unacceptable. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. I see my family and friends’ faces buried in their phones all the time.

It doesn’t matter which occasion, either. It could be a holiday gathering, dinner, Mass or sitting in front of a TV. If there’s any boredom present, then it’s right to the phone or tablet. This sounds bad, but there’s nothing wrong with a little stimulation. Finding a healthy balance between Internet gazing and having a social/outdoor/work life is the key, however.

The best time to engage in Internet use is in solitude. During time spent with family, friends, significant others and coworkers, putting the phone down won’t lead to an aneurism.

Learn from my ways. I have witnessed the World Without Internet. It’s a frightening place, but once you’ve explored it, things aren’t as bad as them seem at first glance. So stop reading this post, if you haven’t already. You’re wasting time. I’ll be the first to admit that.

Get away from the screen and try something different. You’ll feel better and more productive than you can imagine.

               

Is "superstorm" just super confusing?

     For many students waking up in Penn State this morning, they, much like myself, realized Superstorm Sandy was a flop in our area.  We got a lot of rain and some bad wind.  Power went out on parts of campus, but for the most part, little harm was done.

     The biggest storm of the past 24 hours, at least for me, was inside the Collegian office.  At about 8 p.m. Monday, all hell broke loose in our office.  The reason:  Sandy was no longer a hurricane.  This was great news in the sense that people on the East Coast could breathe a little easier.  For the Collegian, and likely for any other newspaper reporting on Sandy, it meant we had to go back and make changes.  

     Every story about Sandy had “hurricane” in it.  This was no longer factual.  The problem was we did not know what to call it.  Typically, if a hurricane downgrades, it becomes what’s known as a tropical storm, which according to the Associated Press stylebook is “a warm-core tropical cyclone in which the maximum sustained surface winds range from 39 to 73 mph inclusive.”  This wasn’t the case for Sandy.  Instead, everyone started using the term “superstorm.”  

     I’ve been watching weather since childhood.  I spent two years studying meteorology at Penn State.  I cannot tell you what a superstorm is.  I have never heard of it.  It wasn’t used during Hurricane Agnes, Hurricane Andrew, Hurricane Katrina or any other major hurricane I’ve heard of or seen in my lifetime.  

    Yet, the Associated Press, CNN, The Weather Channel and others now reported on “Superstorm Sandy.”  

     Back in the Collegian office, copy desk and others were trying to make heads or tails of what a superstorm was and if it was the correct technical term for journalism.  Some said yes, others said no.  Tempers rose as we attempted to define a superstorm – a term we never heard – with little to no meteorological knowledge we possessed.  

     Our AP stylebooks had no passage on “superstorms.”  We had to know what was right.  It was the difference between us being accurate and the Collegian running a correction spanning several stories in Wednesday’s issue.  Eventually, the Collegian settled on superstorm and called it a night.  I, on the other hand, am having a hard time shaking away the superstorm debate.  

     Through the morning, I spent time searching “superstorm” on the top meteorological sources in the country, which includes the National Weather Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Hurricane Hurricane Center.  What I found was none of them could provide me with a concrete definition of a “superstorm,” but all of them suggested we’ve had at least two major superstorms in the past 12 years.  

     One was “Superstorm 1991,” which is more infamously recognized as “The Perfect Storm.”  The latter was popularized in a movie of the same name starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg.  The Perfect Storm consisted of a nor’easter (a storm moving along the East Coast with winds coming from the northeast) and Hurricane Grace, coincidentally also about the time of Halloween.  The end result was an estimated $208,200,000 in damage, with half of that in Massachusetts alone, according to the National Climatic Data Center.  

     Less than two years later in March, “Superstorm 1993,” aka “The Great Blizzard” and “The Storm of the Century” struck.  This storm caused storm surges and dumped as much as 60 inches of snow in the Appalachian region, according to NOAA.  Superstorm ’93 had a larger toll on the United States than its predecessor, causing 79 deaths, more than 600 injuries and two billion dollars in damage, according to NOAA.   

     So will Sandy go down in history with these other two?  It is comfortable to say yes.  As of 1:45 p.m. Tuesday, the death toll ranges between 30 to 40 casualties.  The cost of damage from Sandy is unknown, but many are estimating it to exceed the cost of Superstorm ’93.  I’m not going to argue if Sandy was a “superstorm” or not in comparison to the storms in 1991 and 1993.  I will argue, however, that labeling Sandy a “superstorm” prematurely led only to confusion.  

     Even though NOAA, NWS and NHC recognize the term “superstorm,” it does not appear to be a technical meteorological term for a specific weather phenomenon.  The term “superstorm,” more or less, is a name either created or highly endorsed by the media.  Cyclones are characterized as tropical depressions, tropical storms or hurricanes.  Each is defined by factors like wind and barometric pressure.  

     In addition, cyclones are labeled with a predetermined list of names each hurricane season.   This is done for a reason – so people know what to call a cyclone.  Meteorologists made it easier for us to label storms, yet the media makes it complex again by coining cutesy names to these storms.  

     I won't completely blame the media since I'm not entirely sure where the term "superstorm" originated.  The fact the media went on to promote the term and provide little explanation as to what constitutes a "superstorm" is what upsets me.  Another phrase I heard for Sandy was "post-tropical cyclone."  While this phrase is still complex, it sounds much more legitimate than "superstorm," reminding me of all the "super" objects in a "Fairly Odd Parents" episode.  

     As the remnants of Sandy crawl across the northeast and Midwest U.S. into Canada, the storm has downgraded.  I guess it’s no longer “super.”  I’m not sure if it ever was “super.”  Was Sandy a bad storm?  Absolutely.  But does any storm deserve to be labeled “super”?  In some heavily affected areas like New Jersey, New York and Maryland, it seems appropriate.  The rest of the country not affected by Sandy will likely see it as “another storm.”  

     As for me, I’ll keep it simple and refer to Sandy as “hurricane” or “cyclone.”  Hurricane may not be accurate, but “superstorm,” to my knowledge, isn’t as well.  I’ll go with whatever confuses me and the rest of the population the least.  Throwing "super" in front of a storm name does not make it more severe.  The damage, death tolls and injuries are what make cyclones the most super weather on the planet.