August 24, 2013: The Dangers Of The Future

I love reminding myself that I'm living in a science-fiction future -- especially as I carry a gargantuan GURPS library in a notebook-shaped device that can also access an infinite amount of knowledge, real-time interaction, and cat pictures. However, I'm especially reminded of the possibilities of the future when it doesn't work out quite as I'd planned.

For example, I recently was attempting to figure out when I had purchased the Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures Blu-Ray set. (It was on sale again, and I was trying to determine how the price compared to what I paid for it.) However, my efforts at searching my email proved fruitless. There was no record I'd bought it . . . not in my email archives, my Amazon order history, or anywhere. Amazon had no record that I'd bought it, either. If it weren't for the set I held from my library, I would've doubted that I'd ever placed the order.

After many long minutes of fruitless searching, my inimitable wife Nikki Vrtis (who's still putting the finishing touches on secret and not-so-secret GURPS projects, even as I type) reminded me that we'd purchased the set with her Amazon account -- which, of course, I don't keep track of on my computer.

Which just goes to show, no matter how smart my computer's digital searching tools are, my wife is smarter.

-- Steven Marsh