Valentine's Day Post

Here it is, the Valentine's Day post.

I woke up with the Outkast song "Happy Valentine's Day" in my head, as I do every year, and since it is Tuesday, a desire to make a connection between Valentine's Day and the usual subject of my blog, technology integration.

But do you know how hard it is to make a connection between technology and Valentine's Day?

Sure, there are those online dating sites. After all, one in five relationships now begins online, according to research commissioned by Match.com. But I have no expertise in that field. My wife, Sarah, and I met in 1997, only a year or two after online dating was invented, and years before anyone would have dreamed it would be as popular as it apparently is today, so I can't really relate to any of that.

That was back in the days before Words With Friends. When we played Scrabble. With actual friends.

There are some interesting facts about love and technology. For example, the tweets and posts about Valentine's Day are overwhelmingly written by women. This is interesting, but as Sarah said, "not at all surprising."

According to an LA Times article, 9% of those posts by men were about disliking the holiday. So I guess I am in the minority as a man posting online about Valentine's Day.

What else? Well, Google marked the holiday with the posting of a new doodle. Big deal. Google celebrates practically every day with a doodle these days. Didn't they have a doodle for Arbor Day? For every full moon? Maybe even one for the third Tuesday of every month?

There are tons of Valentine's Apps, and even more Valentine's Day sales... but money can't buy love, according to the Beatles.

Maybe I'm forcing a square peg into a round hole here. Maybe there isn't a connection between Valentine's Day and technology, at least not one I'm going to buy into. This should probably be a day to unplug the computers, power down the tablets and Smart phones, stop checking email and social networking sites, and tune out from texting.

That's it! There's my connection. Unplug from the technology today. And if I could just think of a strong closing sentence, I could take my own advice, but I'm still here typing, thinking of an ending.

Or I could just