not sure at this point that i will be able to find a satisfactory replacement watchband. might have to get a whole new watch.

in another place at another time, another person made a statement about email being his memory bank and i was going to explain over there how i do the same thing but blogger was being a butt about cookies and logins and suchforth.

anyway, memory banks. firstly, there is just so much to remember these days. okay, boo hoo, i know - life's really rough in the modern world, but c'mon. i mean, i am not comparing my life to that of a child in a third world country. i am saying that here in this life that i am living, to participate in the world of which i am a part, a large memory bank is required. it's simpler to use available electronic means than to employ a series of mnemonics. for example, i don't know how to spell "mnemonics" but i know it starts with "mn" and ends in "ic" so i just now typed "mneonics" into google and i was pretty damn close, eh? who needs to remember spellings, when you can just type something close into google and get a "did you mean"?

i carry pen & paper with me all the time at work because someone's always stopping me in the halls and telling me something they need my help with, need me to follow up on, need me to birddog for them. i can't remember it all. i am lucky if i can even remember that someone stopped me and asked me for something, and bonus lucky if i can remember who it was, and double bonus lucky if i can remember what they wanted, too.

i know people who are too proud to carry pen & paper because they think it's a sign of weakness. they are just sure they can remember everything but inevitably they are wrong. i don't see any shame in writing stuff down, or asking someone to send me an email if they want me to do something. they are motivated to remember what they want long enough to get back to their desk and email me. i have no motivation to remember their crisis.

email's so much easier to search, of course. results are returned with alacrity and accuracy. a human brain cannot really compete with that. and, why should it? we've got the tools, why not use them?

of course, we don't always have those tools in every situation, so sometimes we do rely on the ol' grey matter. if you're lucky, you have additional grey matters of which to make use. you are probably sharing lots of peoples's brainspace and letting them share yours.

i share a memory bank with my old man. and, i don't mean we have "shared memories" although of course we do. i mean, we share memory space. i remember birthdays, some folks's names, where we keep the spare set of sheets. he remembers schedules, some other folks's names, how to make smoothies. we share space. very efficient.