I love the modern world

[andrewducker]

My laptop battery died - it was only keeping charge for about 15 minutes, but taking hours to charge up, which basically tied me to a wall socket. So I googled for a new laptop battery, found a bunch of sites offering them, picked one of the cheaper ones at random, and *bam* it turns up a week later, from _Singapore_.

I was chatting on lebeautemps journal about sugar-free cooking, and kasku recommended Smuckers sugar-free products, as they use sucralose as their sweetener (unlike lots of diabetic things which use polyols or seem to think that fructose doesn't cause an insulin reaction). Smuckers don't sell through shops in the UK, but 5 minutes of googling found some of their sugar-free apricot preserve on ebay, with the result that I am having jam on toast for the first time in about 5 years.

A few months back, Warren Ellis posted about some comic he'd been influenced by back in the 80s. Long out of print, of course, and utterly uncollected. Thirty seconds on eBay, nevertheless, dug me up a copy belonging to someone in the USA, and 5 days later it arrived through my front door, so that I could could read it once and completely fail to be blown away by it.

I'm sure that to many of the privileged people of the modern world this doesn't feel amazing at all, and that they are currently nodding their heads and muttering "Why, yes, the motor car _is_ capable of travelling faster than a horse drawn carriage." but I still feel a vague sense of awe at how a bunch of loosely connected systems (manufacturing plants in the far east, comics collectors in America, jam importers in the south of England) can be joined up by the internet to bring useful and interesting things in through my door at the touch of a button.

Comments

[lebeautemps.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I'm glad you got some jam for your toast. I'm not a diabetic personally so I don't know what works and what doesn't for that condition, I've just been having a go for the sake of pal LJwebofevil, who is a recent addition to the diabetic ranks.

Yes, I am truly thankful for the internet: it's one of those things that I would mourn on a level unto itself if we all got into a Survivors situation.

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

I am constantly amazed and impressed at technology, and I grew up in Silicon Valley, the son of an aerospace engineer.

Now my partner is a computer engineer, (as are many friends,) and I'm still amazed at what I see.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you were diabetic.

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

I still feel a vague sense of awe at how a bunch of loosely connected systems (manufacturing plants in the far east, comics collectors in America, jam importers in the south of England) can be joined up by the internet to bring useful and interesting things in through my door at the touch of a button.
I second your emotion. :)

[andrewducker]

It's more insulin resistance - what your body does before it decides to go entirely diabetic. If I eat sugary stuff then my insulin levels seem to overreact to it, and then I end up with horribly low blood sugar, feeling shakey.