This ancient technology is everywhere. A drive through, a parking lot, apartment entrance, sounds like someone is in a giant, empty can trying to get out. The echo-y “mwa mmnat frenzten?” voice that comes back at us is completely unintelligible but we continue to provide customer voice contact through these lousy speakers in a box. F’cryin’ out loud, even an iPhone is an amazing audio recorder or attach a cable from your iPhone to your TV set and get Netflix in pretty good HD; I mean we have the technology. So why are these crummy speakers-on-a-pole at the entrance of every parking lot or drive through? Did small speaker technology stop in 1940?
A couple hours ago I had an encounter with one of these talk-back systems and realized I often do the same thing with my “Cross Training room”, the garage. There is a weight bench, odd weights, bike resistance trainer, several bikes, resistance cables, along with several tons of old stuff that nobody ever needs or uses anymore. This old stuff takes up 90% of the space, leaving me with a tiny workout area that I can hardly maneuver through without hurting myself. It’s been like that for YEARS! My workout room is an ancient, unraveling, curiosity from some steam punk era that rivals the uselessness of the pole-mounted speakers.
So Today Is the Day! Armed with HelloKitty pink sticky notes the stuff is slowly getting labelled as FreeCycle material. Really all it takes is letting go of attachments to stuff we don’t need or situations that are unhealthy. I will have a training area for me, and others if they need it, that has no extra TV sets and monitors, unused track lights, boxes of tiles, hospital walkers, and a million other things that have no logical connection to anything else. Finally the space can become an actual workout area that looks like it used to be a garage. That’s the new trend, you know; a place that looks like it used to be something else. I’m so excited that (after a few pickup truck loads) the garage will no longer be a dysfunctional mumbling drive-in speaker, but my version of a health improvement center. Sometimes it’s just necessary to do the next thing and get off the dime.
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