Before I started this assignment I was dead-set on abstaining from the internet on a Saturday or Sunday because my job requires me to communicate via email and to generate reports using FLTMPS, an online database for active duty Navy personnel. However, it worked out better for me to give it a go from 11:00 pm June 25-11:00 pm June 26 (please remember I live in the future on Guam). Tell me if I cheated:
2:00 pm, 25 June 2009: I printed the data for the reports I needed to finish on Friday.
3:30 pm, 25 June 2009: I set my work Outlook account's out of office assistant to automatically respond to my incoming messages with the following response: "I will not have access to my email 26 June 2009. If you need to reach me immediately please call my cell phone..."
4:00 pm, 25 June 2009: Before I left work I closed my Outlook so that I would not see any incoming messages the following day.
8:00 pm, 25 June 2009: My 50" Philips plasma tv stopped working! Luckily my abstinence hadn't yet begun so I was still allowed to do some research to find the problem or a repair shop on the island (by the way, no luck...no one repairs Philips tvs on Guam!)
10:50 pm, 25 June 2009: I checked my email one last time and logged off OWL after working ahead for my chem class.
8:30 am, 26 June 2009: I received a call at my office from my husband telling me that Michael Jackson had died...he said, "Just go to cnn.com or Yahoo!" I had to remind him of the assignment.
8:45 am, 26 June 2009: I told my co-worker who immediately went online to confirm.
The remaining hours at work passed quickly as I chose to work away from my desk.
When I got home it was much more difficult. My tv is broken! I couldn't get online (I was only 6 hours from the finish line) and I was feeling incredibly out of the loop. I convinced my husband to go out to dinner thinking that would eliminate some time. Unfortunately there is one main road on the island and there was an accident. I wasn't willing to sit for two hours in the car not moving. I turned around and went back to the base. Fortunately the NEX was still open and we wasted almost an hour looking at their tvs in case we have to replace ours.
I was not longer interested in going out to dinner and I'd gotten to watch a little tv at the store...I was fine with going home. While I heated some leftovers for dinner the husband got online to work on homework and check email and facebook. I was so jealous. He was giving me updates on our friends around the globe. After dinner I still had 4 more hours to complete my full 24 hours. Without the tv or internet I was going a little crazy. I decided to go for a jog. That helped and then required a post-run shower, for which I was grateful because it used up time.
With two hours remaining I worked on chemistry problems that I'd copied from my online homework site earlier in the week to work at my leisure. At precisely 11:00 pm I logged on, happy, relieved and excited to find that one of my friends from England was on Skype.
I didn't realize how internet-centric my life had become until this assignment. It's sort of disturbing. This assignment would have been so easy for me 8 years ago...
