Addictions are real. Whether it's the caffeine in your Starbucks or Diet Coke, the nicotine in your Marlboros or your recreational drug of choice, certain substances can be habit-forming. But it's becoming faddish to label those things we do every day, even multiple times a day, as addictions, rather than simply part of life's landscape. And with the Internet becoming more and more embedded into each facet of how we communicate, learn and do business, it's inevitable that the word "addiction" is being misused. You could say people are addicted to saying others are addicted.

There are some necessities in life that nobody can be without for too long - air, water, food, and sleep, for instance. Also, most would like to have something resembling shelter or companionship. But needing oxygen every minute of every day doesn't make me an addict to oxygen, does it? Thinking I need to eat at least once or twice a day doesn't make me sign up to "Eater's Anonymous". Using my car every day doesn't make me addicted to my car, and wearing pants doesn't make me a pants addict.

So why then the silliness around addictions in tech?

Over time, as I find new services and tools or gadgets, they become part of my life. I've been told I'm addicted to my BlackBerry or I'm addicted to reading RSS feeds, or addicted to FriendFeed. Others have said they're addicted to Twitter or Facebook.

But think about the difference between what happens when a true addict is separated from their drug of choice versus what happens when I'm away from what it is I find to be my best tools to learn and communicate. A drug addict can have a violent physical reaction. Vomiting. Headaches. Shakes. Fever. A nicotine addict might try to quit over and over again and never make it, even when they know they could get cancer.

While I'm certainly annoyed by outages, or curious what I'm missing when away from RSS, TechMeme or FriendFeed for a serious amount of time, I'll live, and I certainly won't get physically ill. I can go to a baseball game without a laptop. If Twitter or FriendFeed went down for days, I'd grumble, and then move on to something else. And if, God Forbid, we lost all Internet, eventually we could rediscover the Nintendo Wii, the television, the telephone or actual human contact.

There is no question that technology is part of our lives today. I often tell my wife to plan on having wireless Internet on trips just like you plan on eating on trips because the Web has become such an intertwined part of everything we do. That some services and sites have risen to the top for me doesn't mean I've acquired an addiction, but instead, a preference. Now, I'd prefer people stop calling their newfound digital lifestyle an addiction. It's silly.

See Also:
LouisGray.com: Measuring One's Technology Addictions
Deep Jive Interests: What “Techno Addiction” Really Means
YuviSense: Addicted to Twitter, and lovin it
ValleyWag: Drudge and Kos readers are addicted
ValleyWag: Now we're even more addicted to the Internet
Engadget: Compulsive e-mailing, texting could be classified as bona fide illness

Not too long ago, you might recall I had the unfortunate opportunity to crush my MacBook Pro laptop while at Spring Training in Arizona, effectively just about doubling our trip's costs. In a mere 30 seconds I went from being jubilant as to the A's success on the field to dismayed at seeing my Web and productivity lifeline with cracks and dead spots on its LCD, and its metal all bent out of shape. On Friday, after spending a few days backing up the machine's data (all 140+ GB of it), I turned in the laptop to the Apple Store, in hopes they can save me about $800 to $1,000 by fixing it and avoiding my needing a new MacBook Pro so early in the product's life.

With my MacBook Pro in the shop, I've gone back in time a full Mac generation. I dug around in our closet and found my PowerBook G4. While it looks a lot like the MacBook Pro, it's about half as good. It has 40% the hard disk space (80 GB vs. 200 GB), 50% the RAM (1 GB vs. 2 GB), and the processor's clock speed is only 60% as fast. (1.25 GHz vs. 2 GHz), not to mention it being of the non-Intel PowerPC variety. I even had to delete a full 30+ GB of iTunes music just so I could copy the big drive's data to the small one.

While the good news is that I moved over all my important data, and am fully synched on e-mail and Web bookmarks and the like, going back a full generation has taken away a lot of niceties I'd taken for granted, like VMWare Fusion and running real Outlook (not Webmail), like getting 3 hours of battery life, not 40 minutes, and MagSafe, instead of a 3rd party power adapter I had picked up after getting increasingly annoyed at Apple's offering.

Also, as I had intended to leave my old G4 in hibernation for "a rainy day", like this I guess, I never got the keyboard fully perfect after my beagle had opted to walk on it one fine evening, as a result, some of the letters I use most frequently, like "e", "r" and "y", require pressing multiple times, or with more emphasis, like I really mean it. Of course, hitting the keys harder also means they occasionally come up a few times in a row and need overuse of the delete button. That is getting rrrrrrrreeealll tiresome about now.

I have to admit I'm a bit lucky to have kept this old laptop where I could get it instead of being dead in the water when I took my MacBook Pro and treated it like common kitchen rubbish for the trash compactor. I'm also glad I could be up and running the next day. But with that said, I'm eager to get a call from Apple in the next few days saying my MacBook Pro is as good as new, and I can get back to being current again.

Now 23 weeks into our twin pregnancy, it's clear our son and daughter are already doomed. Although they don't even have names picked out, they are already unknowingly marching down the path to geekdom. Still a good few months before they debut, the pair are destined to be branded like the common race car, made corporate shills, through the donning of apparel featuring the logo of some of my favorite technology companies - and they could wear those of your favorites, if you feel generous.


Our Kids Want to Wear Logos. Here's a Starting Pack.
So far, we've managed to procure a pair of onesies featuring the Google, Apple and FriendFeed logos, as well as FriendFeed bibs and Google beanies, and we aren't done by any means. For while seemingly every mother wants her kids adorned in bunny rabbits, flowers and puppies, we'll have nothing to do with it. Similarly, we will push off any Disney and cartoon characters as long as we are able.

So here's the deal. I hereby promise that if you want to see one or both of our children sporting your company logo, whether it be on a onesie, a baby blanket, branded bottles, or any other baby gear, we agree to be sellouts, so long as you are in the technology space. We will not turn down any offers from hardware vendors, software vendors or Web sites. Want our children to mock me with their Windows Vista or MySpace t-shirts? Fine. We promise to dress them up and add their photos to our Flickr account for the world to see.

But rather than have our kids mocked for their poor judgment from the get-go, we already have some favorites in mind. I would love to go weeks without seeing the same logo twice. I want baby clothes from Digg, TechMeme, TiVo, Technorati, Ballhype, Facebook, ReadBurner, and Yahoo!. I'd love to see my kids bearing logos from TechCrunch, Twitter, Mashable, GigaOM and LinkedIn.

If you've got a favorite brand you want promoted, we're here for you. Send me an e-mail or call (my cell phone is on the right of the blog), and I'm more than happy to send contact information which puts my kids in the role of corporate babble-person.

Baseball is a sport with firm roots in tradition. Statistical leaders can be compared across decades and generations, as the rules are pretty much the same as they were more than 100 years ago. There are still three strikes to an out, three outs to an inning, and nine innings to a regulation game. But as the game becomes more of a global sport, not just a North American phenomenon, some traditions are fading into memory, like the once-acceptable spitball, and leaving one's fielders' gloves on the grass instead of taking them back to the dugout.

One such tradition that's passed its time was that the major league baseball season would start every year in Cincinnati, a nod to the Reds' position as the first professional squad, debuting in 1876. Amazingly, this year's season isn't starting in Ohio, or anywhere on the continent at all. Instead, our Oakland Athletics are set to do battle with the reigning World Champion Boston Red Sox in Tokyo, Japan, for a two-game series played when most of the team's fans will be completely asleep.

You see... tonight's game starts not at the familiar times of 1:05, 4:05, or 7:05 p.m., but instead, at 3:05 a.m. Pacific Time and 6:05 a.m. Eastern Time, giving New Englanders some entertainment to go with their morning Dunkin' Donuts. And for those of us on the West Coast, we have the unenviable position of needing to stay up late, wake up early, or just skip Opening Day altogether. Tradition indeed...

While I could simply find the game on TiVo and record it, the true baseball fan in me says that's not right, and that I should be seeing the game live. So, with only six hours separating the off-season with the regular season, we're stocking up on Diet Coke, and preparing for a Tuesday full of fatigue. Hopefully, the A's can make this new tradition one to remember well.