A Sign I Needed Years Ago

When I first started coming online nearly a decade ago, I quickly became addicted to IRC (chat), literally spending many a month juggling work, college, net, and homework, barely sleeping, and often chatting and doing homework at the same time. And on my days off from work and/or college, you could either find me sleeping or chatting! I was addicted, and bad, up to the past about 2-3 years as I weaned myself off of chat - and got pushed out either by kick or just by the way people were. The last year or so has been merely an addiction to blogging, but it's been a great addiction as I finally have a forum - and an audience - for my rants, thoughts, and laughs. I was sifting through my gmail on the emails I've stashed for a time when I could actually get to them, and one of them had this picture attached to it. Boy I needed this a long time ago, and I know people who still need it! haha!


But the thought is there: if we added up all the time we spend online in a given year, how much time would it be? Let's do some math...

24 hours = 1 day
24 x 365 = 8760 hours a year
24 x 30 = 720 hours a month (avg)

Now let's assume you spend an average of an hour a day during the week and 2 hours a day each during the weekend.

(1 x 5) + (2 x 2) = 9 hours a week
9 x 4 = 36 hours a month (assuming 28 days instead of 30 for simplicity)

So you see, every month you're tossing away a day and a half at the computer!

36 x 12 = 432 hours a year
432 / 8760 = 0.049 (you spend nearly 5% of your year on the computer!)

Yuck! But what do we accomplish? Let's just take my normal 'net usage for example. In the average week, this is what I do online.
1. Check softpedia, freecabs.de, and a couple other websites for new pda programs
2. Check manybooks and munseys for new free ebooks
3. Use thefreedictionary.com to settle a bet or get my facts straight about someone/something
4. Check my email (usually three to four times a day as my gmail is also my job contact email)
5. When the desktop has a connection, check my 2 yahoo, 4 hotmail, and 2 aim/aol email accounts
6. Occasionally load up messenger to see if anyone's on (usually bout twice a week and for not that often, it's quiet nowadays)
7. Update my weather program on the pda
8. Update my clock via online servers on the pda
9. Check enquirer.com and kake.com for news back home (both cincinnati home and wichita home), occasionally checking other news sites

Now I know blogging isn't in there. I know... but let me explain. I write whenever, either offline or online. It doesn't count to spend all that time writing when I'm usually not online when I'm writing. And I just use gmail to email it to the blog (as is obvious on occasion when word wrap doesn't want to work) while I'm checking my email. So checking email pretty much covers it.

How about you? And do you think I forgot something? I might have! And how much time do YOU think you're spending online? And who dares me to tally up for a week? LOL