The fact that I am hosting a blog, and here on Micro.blog of all places, is a slight indication that I am a nerd and a technology enthusiast. I mean this is not absolute but in my case, let’s say. At some point at over the weekend I was thinking about, how did all these start.
Yeah, I have always been attracted and curious about technology, more so since high-school. Always been some low-level tinkerer and very curious. But never got into software programming or any of what I consider high-level tinkering. For me, it was simple stuff. Probably because of the environment I grew up in. I mean I grew up in Puerto Rico and it wasn’t until maybe the late 90’s when I got my hands on a computer for the first time. Windows 95, I remember, and probably the only tinkering I did was installing unreleased software, like Windows XP at the time and installing a CD-Burner.
I had my first cellphone when I was in senior year of high-school and it was under a 90 mins per month plan for the first six months then 60 minutes per month after that in a two-year contract, yikes. It was more of a tracking device so my parents could get a hold of me when I was out and about at my girlfriend’s house or at the “Arcade”.
So yeah from that point on I became very interested in mobile devices but just for the fun of and the technology. I’ve had many cellphones, the most memorable two were my first and last, a Nokia, the one you could swap the front face cover and the Motorola Razor. Then, 2007, the iPhone was released to the world, to me though, it flew under the radar. I knew very little about it or simply didn’t care about this kind of technology. 2008, I moved to the United States, still had what would be considered today, a dumb phone. It was some kind of slide-up phone, at the time I was still fully making calls and rarely any texting. I always hated texting on these phones.
Another thing I feel like I need to mention. When I first moved to the States, it was a huge cultural shock for me. I was in a place I’ve never been or knew anything about. I needed to adjust to the language and the different lifestyle. So in many ways, I had lost who I was and my interests. So I wasn’t concerned so much about, what was the latest and greatest in technology and whatnot, I was just trying to get by and adjust.
One day, I remember, this must have been 2009-10, my wife comes around and say she’s excited about this phone, a smartphone. I remember her saying something on the lines of, “it’s so cool, it’s a new thing called Android, looks super cute”. To which then I show some interest and looked into it a bit. It was the HTC Droid Eris with Android 2.1, yikes! And with this phone, is when everything started! The worse thing was about learning about “rooting” and ROMs. Do you know how many times I screwed up my phone and then the satisfaction of “fixing it”? I think after that I became more attracted to this technology. Still, I had no desire or knew much about the iPhone, I was having too much fun with Android. After the Eris I think I had a Samsung, cannot remember which and then a Motorola DROID X. That was probably the best Android phone of that generation. It wasn’t still quite there yet, I remember I still had to Root the phone and install custom ROMs to make it more battery efficient and even got a bigger battery for it. That surprisingly didn’t add much bulkiness to the phone at all. It was solid and I could go almost two day on one charge.
Then I was so into rooting, customizing my phone and tinkering with it in many ways that became too much, it was like an addiction. At this point I was more aware of the iPhone. My bothers in-law had the 3GS and they always talked about how amazing the phone was and later, the iPhone 4 had just came out to Verizon. My mother in-law had one and I had chances to play with it and I liked it a lot. I even started customizing my Android’s Home Screen to make it look more like an iPhone.
One day I had it, I got sick of having to tinker with things so they would work for me the way I wanted and that’s when I decided to call Verizon and get an iPhone 4. And in a different direction, everything went down hill from there. After that my wife got the iPhone 4S which I remember I also got in white and it became this thing where I had to get the latest iPhone every single year. Up until recently, I feel like I am more patient, maybe because these last few generations of iPhones have gotten so good that upgrading every single year might not be necessary.
Thinking back, we have come a long way since the iPhone 4, and I use the 4 as a point of reference because it was my first iPhone, right.
So yeah, this thing I got for phones and its technology, I totally blame my wife. 😜
