Life without the Internet

I actually changed my life style. I started to make one or two days without the Internet. My payment is a daily basis charge, so if I live a day without the Internet, I could save some money. Since the economy could go worth, saving is better for personal level down-sizing.

After I started to limit the time using the Internet, I found out several things.

• My productivity increased. This is due to the less "eye candies" I can look for while I use the PC for my study and other things. When I get bored, I could browse the Web to find something interesting. This actually waste my time. By keeping myself away from the Web, I can concentrate on what I do, including programming. Finishing 4 chapters from a programming textbook for one day was what I did recently. That was quite amazing.
  
• My motivation increased. Same reason as above. I started to concentrate on something, so it was easy to handle myself away from slacking around on the Web.
  
• Able to schedule my time better. Since I have to decide what to do on the Web when I log in, I can manage what to do while I connect to the Internet.
• I realized the importance of the Internet. The Internet has so much information available. Without it, I will have hard time to get the information or data I need. Online encyclopedia and dictionaries are part of what I need in my life. Limiting the use actually made me to understand the life under this kind of emergency. This "self-level emergency Internet shutdown simulation" made me to realize what information and data I need.
• The necessity of creating a contact list for the TI victims. About the emergency I noticed above, I think it is nice if the TIs create personal communication lists. Not all TIs share phone numbers or address. But what would happen when the TIs lost connection with the Internet? How do we communicate? I am not talking about making up a bulk contact list that just invite everyone to sign and make their private information available for everyone else. This is something covered by the risk management.
• I can live a life without the Internet. I was wondering if I am an Internet addict or not. When I am online, I sometimes browse the Web to read articles for several hours. I thought that might be a part of my life. After I started to make days to skip using the Internet, I found out the Internet is just one of the lifelines people need. If you don't have electoricity, you can still make one's food from the BBQ grill outside of your home and sleep early and wake up ealry to have a healthy life. Some people prefer the BBQ even they have a nice shiny kitchen in the house. Some people prefer reading books even though they can read EBooks online. That's a type of one's choice. I think the recognition of the choices is something we can make ourselves away from addictions. Preference of a choice is not an addiction. However, if the person became dependant on the choice, that's what I would call as an addiction.

I haven't post something for a week. So, I wrote this down. These days, I'm playing with VC#. I fell in love with C when I was in junior high, and now I am completely addict to C#. Yes, this is an addiction as I cannot spend sometime off to do something else but rather working with the VS because playing with it is just like a hobby to me. A confession from a workaholic..