God Bless You, Steve Jobs

I don't know about you, but Steve Jobs has had a permanent impact on my life - all of it good. My first Mac was a Macintosh SE, with a 20 Mb hard drive, 800K floppy disk drive, and 1 Mb of RAM. It cost me two thousand dollars. Nineteen years later, I am on my eighth Macintosh and my third iPod. I even had a Newton (please bring the Newton back, Steve - please!).
It struck me how omnipresent my iPod has become. I won't do a simple errand without it - not even run to the store for milk. My laptop goes everywhere I go. I simply need to be able to do my work anywhere. Without all this technology, I don't think I'd be able to do my job, go to school, and be a mom to a toddler and a newborn.
Before you say "yeah, but my Windoze XP machine does all that!", I have to use a Windoze XP machine at work. Strike that - I have to use the XP machine for one or two custom applications that simply do not run on a Mac. Everything else I've pretty much migrated to my Mac. Calendars, addresses, databases, documents, spreadsheets, music, videos, photos, everything is on my Mac.
But my iPod is more than entertainment. Thanks to my iPod, I actually delivered my daughter without any medical intervention. Some might say it worked too well, since I gave birth so fast, I didn't have time to even go to the hospital, nor did I wait for anyone to show up to assist me with the birth! But that's another story. My iPod keeps me sane at work, where I have to deal with a PeeCee that crashes quite regularly. My iPod is extremely important when my son is driving me to the point where I'm about to lose it - I quickly put my iPod on and play my "emergency" playlist, designed to calm me when I'm on the verge of throttling a headstrong two year old. And finally, my iPod plays music for my son, who dances to the Curious George songs, as well as pretty much every Disney soundtrack out there. Thank you, Steve Jobs, for the iTunes Music store, which finally made purchasing music affordable again (RIAA: eat my shorts!).
And to my latest addiction: videocasts, or vodcasts. With a toddler, newborn, full time job, and part time college, I don't have time to waste in front of the television at a specified time. It was so ridiculous, we cut our cable. But now, I can purchase for a REASONABLE price, episodes of Battlestar Galactica and watch them when I have time (usually when I sneak away to do laundry and hide so the kids can't find me! Shhhh!). Or I catch up on the news vodcasts (hey ABC - you got me watching ABCNews thanks to your podcasts! CBS and NBC had better get on the stick!)
But best of all, you saved my sanity. I can rest assured that I'm not the only nutball mom - I simply open my bookmarked websites in tabs and presto! I have all my daily webpages to read - mostly blogs of my friends who are also crazy-busy. Or I can remind myself that I'm not alone by playing my Manic Mommies podcast ("for moms trying to do it all!"). It doesn't matter where I am, because it all automatically backs up to my .mac account, and I don't have to worry about a thing. The only thing I've been resisting is purchasing sudoku for my iPod. I'm afraid I'll never sleep again if I put that particular part of mental cocaine on my iPod. I'm sure in a moment of weakness I'll download it all too soon, and all hopes of sleeping more than 4 hours a night will be lost.
I'm waiting on pins and needles for the iPhone, and I already want to have your love-child.
Off to bed. Let me just grab my iPod and start my "sleep" playlist....