Technology And Me

First let me unequivocally state I love technology. I should say I love most technology, however, there are some forms of advances I'm not enamoured over. I have a fascination with computers and a large portion of that fascination is in what makes them tick. In fact, you are much more likely to see me with the cover off my CPU checking out the system than on the keyboard pounding out some inane blog; wait that's a bad example. So blogs not withstanding, I tend to be more of a techie than many.

One technological item that I have not fallen in love with and refuse to become immersed in is this whole IPod thing. I was looking around recently in a Walmart and I could not believe all the gadgets that have IPod docking stations. They have alarm clocks, treadmills and a host of other devices that have docking stations. I refuse to buy anything that I need to have an IPod to use. I know there are tons of people that have 30 million songs on their IPods and I congratulate them but it's not something I will warm up to anytime soon.

I recently purchased a USB turntable and now am planning a project to convert my rather large selection of albums to CDs. Let me explain what an album is to the generation x'ers out there. They are vinyl disks that have grooves broached in them and contain music. It's how music USED to be enjoyed. But they have degraded over time and will only continue to degrade further. So I'm delving into what can only become a grandiose nightmare of converting my many albums, some of which will never be available commercially again. My sweet wife is putting up with my grand idea and intentions but I'm fairly certain she will fast become weary of what will be long hours of conversions.

Here's another technological advance that I am not sure about: books on CD. On the one hand, I see the value in occupying one's time while driving great distances. On the other hand I see a whole new generation of illiterate kids coming from books on CD. Why read something when you can actually have it read for you? Also there is a little troubling scenario of a couple thousand pound missile hurdling down the highway while someone is entranced in A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson.

One little piece of technological ingenuity is not only favorable to me but a must have. As a man this will come as no surprise to many women: remote controls. I can't get enough of these devices to satisfy my primal urges of control. I have tower fan remotes, ceiling fan remotes, the usual TV, cable box, DVD player remotes and stereo as well as a window unit air conditioner that I occasionally turn on just to use the remote! Perhaps the only drawback to all these remotes is that I'm certain I have driven the stock in Duracell up.

How about cordless phones? Almost no one thinks about this technology but I can tell you that when that technology surfaced it was a big deal to many of us who were tethered for a great deal of their lives to some sort of phone. These days just wandering aimlessly with either a cordless home phone or even better driving aimlessly with a cell phone are everyday events that most don't think about or appreciate.

So these are a few things that I mulled over and tried to reasonably discuss. I'm sure you have more to add to my list. I will continue to embrace some forms of technology and shun others. Now I think I need to go turn on my air conditioner just to be sure I don't require new batteries.

In The Twinkling Of An Eye

Two days ago I was reminded of a couple facts about my life that I am neither proud of or able to readily change. Now when some people read this they will probably tell me to grow up and keep my perspective in a more logical order. They may be right but I am too set in my ways and changing some things about me, as my wife will grudgingly attest to, will be a monumental task. Here's what took place to rock my world, so to speak: my main desktop computer crashed.

The first thing most anyone would say is something like, "You did back up all your important files, right?" That would be followed by me throwing a sort of blank dead in the pupils stare with little else to be said. It is a question that literally makes me nauseous. I may be jumping the gun here as right now my CPU is resting in the hands of a computer repair establishment that will call me in 3 or 4 days with my "options". I can't wait for that call.

One of the issues that I am reminded about in this sudden turn of events is how much that box of silicon chips, transceivers, diodes, cables, etc. has become such an ingrained part of my ritual of routines. It's my escape from reality and my reminder of reality all in one box. I learn about the world from that box. It's in my little office which at times can be a sort of temporary refuge from all the disappointments and cruelties of this world.

I am typing this entry on a laptop. Laptops are great for mobile computing. They offer a taste of the desktop while being, for me at least, just a little more tedious to type on for any length of time. This may be a problem for me because I am a product of the typewriter generation and I find it more difficult to type on a small keyboard. Now I know all you "youngsters' out there that can type novels on your blackberries are sighing at this moment. That's fine as perhaps you will be throwing a little more oxygen at your skulls full of mush. This can only be beneficial.

Another thing that I am not proud of is how this event has put me in a bit of a funk. My wife puts up with my moods, how I will never know, but I want to change that about myself yet sometimes feel powerless to do. In all honesty I don't handle change well at all. It's what steeps me, in some people's eyes in being behind with the times. I would and will never describe myself as progressive. I will always be of the mindset if it ain't broke don't fix it! There are already too many people in this world with too much time on their hands who are constantly looking to change anything and everything. I am literally tired of the axiom "new and improved!" It almost is never really that new and many times is less of a product.

I am digressing as I almost always do but my main point in writing this is to try and remind everyone to back up everything that is important because in the twinkling of an eye it can be lost. I am about to end this entry as it has taken me twice as long as normal because of this God forsaken small keyboard! I'll keep you all posted as to my computer's prognosis. Prayers are welcome.

Where Has All The Time Gone?

This is probably an overused axiom but I’m going to once again state it; where has the time gone?”

The time I’m referring to is the progression of my daughter who I affectionately refer to as my little girl and always will, by the way. It seems like yesterday that she was spitting up down my back as I sauntered through a Lowes Home Improvement center completely oblivious of this fact. In fact I remember her first impression on this world…..as they opened the curtain to the nursery there was my little girl on her side, butt facing us all and having what I have to believe is the most very satisfying first bowel movement outside the womb. I can only think the little one is saying, “Man I’ve had to do that for nine months!”

I remember her first bike. It was a pink Schwinn Tigress I believe it was called. It had the training wheels and the whole nine yards and I remember the thrill of seeing her ride this bike.

You see, children are just a series of thrills to behold throughout their early years. The first step, the first word (intelligible), the first solid food, the first school, their first bed and the list goes on and on. The funny thing is my daughter is now 22 going on 23 and she still finds ways to thrill me. Now she is faced with adult pressures and adult stresses and she seems to come through pretty well, finances not withstanding. She is faced with her own health care and figuring out if she gets vision on her health care. President Obama will be helping her with that soon enough.

I remember a year ago helping her find her first apartment. It was quite an ordeal and not without debates but all in all it went pretty well and she just had her first lease renewal came her first rent increase….not such a thrill for her but indeed a lesson in life.

Children are a kind of walking legacy to their parents. All the toil and long nights and early mornings and all the battle wounds to cure along with all the science projects (don’t get me started on the submarine!) and all the term papers and all the tutoring and poking and prodding to try and make her do her best. It comes to fruition before you even know it has passed. And then you say to yourself; where has the time gone?

Now it’s Grandchildren to sort of fill the childless void although your children never REALLY leave home as we are finding out. I’m not sure what the chapters in the next 20 or 30 years will hold but there is indeed one thing I do know….in 30 years I will be saying; where has the time gone?

ACL What?

I am raising a beef with this entity that is government supported and does nothing in most cases but cause havoc where none should exist. I am referring to the ACLU. I have a new name for this group. A= Americans (debatable but I’ll give them that) C= Causing
L= Litigation U= Unnecessarily.

I’m sorry but this group takes civil liberties so far that it distorts all sense of proportion, perspective or common sense. It is one thing to promote civil rights and champion anyone who’s civil rights have been violated but they are taking any case where 1 or 2 people are offended because a prayer of thanksgiving is said before a dinner? I’m sorry but this “non-profit” organization has become too powerful and intrusive and needs to step back and look at what’s really important.

The lawsuits they have entered into in the past are way over the top which end up costing taxpayers millions of dollars in litigation, and these so-called reforms are almost always for 1 or 2 “offended” people. They are more concerned about the medical and mental health treatment of felons and convicts then they seem to be about the victims of their various crimes. They definitely fall under the liberal and self-proclaimed progressive factions of our country and because of that I think they should be self-funded and not get tax payer support.

I guess as long as they have that government nipple to bleed that all the ACLU lawyers will stay right in line to engage in all the frivolous and ridiculous litigation they can get their claws on regardless of the issues or outcome. I wish I had that kind of job security.

So as you can see by this brief entry they got my dander up once again. They have no concern about the repercussions or eventual outcomes of their litigation merely to keep lining their pockets at our expense. Perhaps some day they will do something that actual is beneficial to the majority and not just take care of the 1 or 2 “offended” people!

Prayer...What Exactly Is It?

This is a topic that seems to scare many people and I’m not certain why. In my way of thinking there are three types of people in this world, the people that pray, aren’t ashamed to talk about it and do it regularly. That’s type one. Type two would be the people that give prayer lip service, who say they will pray for you or for this or for that and leave it alone and never really actually pray, although I suppose the lip service is a form of prayer. Then there’s type three. They don’t talk about prayer, don’t pray and unless they are faced with an incredible personal crisis and have nowhere else to turn. (To whom I’m not certain)

I am type one. I’m not ashamed to tell anyone I pray for many things and do it regularly. I am, in fact, comforted to be able to pray. I don’t pray for a million dollars, although if you’re listening wouldn’t refuse it, but I do pray for most all areas of my life and for all my friends and family on a colossal list of different issues. I don’t do this with any expectations of always getting what I want because what I want and what God wants could be quite a different matter. I do it because I consider the action a way of expressing myself no matter what the consequences. Where in this life can you do that?

So what’s the big deal here you may ask? There is a reader or two I know of that have already either stopped reading or are rolling their eyes as they read. (Which is hard to do I’ll grant you) If you consider yourself a follower of most any faith I think it’s critical that you are comfortable actually talking to your higher power of choice. I am Christian so I talk with Christ, God the father and any Saint that might be listening in. Do they hear me? In my opinion, absolutely they do. Will they act on my prayers? In my opinion, in their own way and according to God’s will. Might that coincide with my will? It might……it very well might not.

Prayer is a difficult concept to actually nail down. Even Webster doesn’t have a clear definition. I think it is different things to different people. It is dismaying to see the act of prayer being snubbed out by so many government entities as they need it more than ever and by the way while I’m thinking about it, there is definitive statement in the constitution regarding separation of church and state. Look it up! Our nation’s roots are really steeped in Christianity and that is simply fact.

So whether or not you humbly ask for guidance or for strength or wisdom you are praying. Isn’t that scary? Many of you who don’t consider yourselves religious are really praying all the time! So if you are a religious objector or non-believer know that I will be praying for your redemption. How does that grab you?!

Dog Days

We are now in the “dog days” of summer. I got curious, as I tend to get, to find out the origins of this phrase as it is used quite regularly by many people. So here it is:

The term "Dog Days" was used by the Greeks as well as the ancient Romans (who called these days caniculares dies (days of the dogs)) after Sirius (the "Dog Star", in Latin Canicula), the brightest star in the heavens besides the Sun. The dog days of summer are also called canicular days.

The Dog Days originally were the days when Sirius, the Dog Star, rose just before or at the same time as sunrise (heliacal rising), which is no longer true, owing to precession of the equinoxes. The ancients [who?] sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that the star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather.

Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies" according to Brady’s Clavis Calendarium.

So there you have it; those zany Greeks. It had a far more impressive origin than I even had imagined. Here in North Carolina we are smack dab in the middle of the canicular days. It was over 100 degrees yesterday and made the century mark today as well. For those of us who work outside from time to time you didn’t need to tell us it was hot. I probably have a more difficult time as I am in and out of it numerous times in a day.

That’s enough self-pity for everyone to endure. This was simply a little investigation into that term “dog days” and I thought you might find it interesting and if you didn’t boy did you just throw away a few minutes of your time. Happy dog days to you all!

Death By Natural Causes?

I'm not sure why I get preoccupied with the strangest concepts at times and this next one is no exception. It is to make a short story long: death.

When you begin to get a little older you start actually reading the obituaries more often. It's possibly a law similar to the law about moving to Florida as soon as the steering wheel on your car gets below eye level. That being said as time has moved on as it painfully wants to do, I've noticed one thing about obituaries that has been an outflow of our health care. We are the beneficiaries, especially in this country of medical advances galore. The drugs continue to multiply to treat a growing list of syndromes and diseases. While this is impressive in of itself, the fortunate or unfortunate fact is, depending upon your perspective, people are living longer. Many diseases that not many years ago were a death sentence are now not only survivable but curable!

I know what your starting to think. What in the world is his point and when will he get to it? I'm glad you asked. Here it is ; I challenge you to read the obituaries and find someone who actually has passed away due to natural causes. Our medical community in all it's triumphs has succeeded to make almost any death un-natural. Not long ago I read where a 94 year old man died from a heart attack. Would not this be considered death by natural causes? I sincerely hope I live to be 94 but I think I'll make a provision in my living will that if I have a heart attack at 94 years old I want it to be called death by natural causes!

I might be splitting hairs as I tend to like to do, in fact I can split a hair three ways sometimes, but in my way of thinking, unless it's a homicide or a car accident or a child , that in most cases death is a natural occurrence and should be considered as such. As a side note, the Christian part of me knows that death is not only a natural event but a necessary event in moving to our next state of everlasting life.

Death is a taboo topic most of the time but this spin is really in how it's described. All of us want to live as long as it is possible while still enjoying a decent quality of life but let's face the ultimate fact is that our bodies will shut down. We will move on to our next life where our bodies will be no longer needed. Where doctors won't be needed or medicine or coroners or any of the rest of it. So our deaths on this planet will, in most cases, not just be of natural causes but they should be hailed as finally reaching our most natural state of existence....eternal life!!

Regrets

Ralph W. Sockman once said “Let us not bankrupt our todays by paying interest on the regrets of yesterday and by borrowing in advance the troubles of tomorrow.” Life is really too short to hold onto regrets and yet we do. I suppose some of us regret a love lost. Perhaps others the choices we’ve made on a myriad of issues. I don’t have many regrets but I have a few and perhaps they might surprise you.

I think there may be more than a few people out there that regret their career paths chosen. This is not to say that I am not happy doing what I do but as time has moved forward and I have grown in areas I really did not know existed within me I do have a regret. This regret may surprise some of you but it is from the heart so I will share it with you all, none the less. I regret not advancing my spiritual life in such a way that I might affect those that need spiritual guidance. I think that I would have made a pretty effective Priest. I was unaware of this only a few years ago but a sort of epiphany has struck me that if I had studied and pursued that life I could have done a good job. I think I’m a pretty good listener and I think I can, at times, guide people to make right decisions based on truth. I am by no means perfect as no man since Christ has been but I do think I have an ability to lead that would have served me well in ministry. So perhaps that’s a bit of a shock to some of you but to all who really know me well I think it makes sense.

I have another regret that is somewhat private and personal but I feel a need to express it. I want to state emphatically that I am deeply in love with Linda and if there is anything in this world I will never regret it was meeting and later marrying this wonderful woman. My regret really goes back to my previous wife and it is something I can do nothing about or change but it is something that stays with me. I would expect that only a very small minority of people have ever had their spouse die at a young age and be in the same house when it happened but not in the same room. My previous wife, Karen, passed away over 10 years ago now after suffering a year long bout with a serious illness. Here’s the regret: I never got to tell her I loved her or goodbye when she passed. She was in a room right next to me and I discovered her passing which happened quite quickly. So there’s a rather personal regret that I cannot change.

I regret not being able to provide a more financially stable and healthy environment. We are happy and we live comfortably but we are by no means wealthy in a materialistic sense and I regret not doing more. Then again there are many people I know that have many times the money in the bank and are either bankrupt in a relationship or bankrupt spiritually so I what I should be doing is counting my blessings.

I guess this was another self-therapy lesson for me. Regrets really are a waste of good energy. Instead of looking at something that perhaps you’ve missed out on you should instead look at all you have to be thankful for. Glass half full type of mentality which I generally possess. So as Alexander Graham Bell once said, “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” Here’s to looking at the open doors more often.

Ahh summer!!

My lovely wife and I visited our farmer's market this past Saturday and it was in full vigor with all the most delicious and freshest of fruits and vegetables. I love this time of year. I don't care what kind of a hothouse or what foreign country that tries to imitate fresh summer vegetables it can't be done the way God takes care of it.

I challenge you to taste a better tomato than a freshly picked summer tomato and watermelon is absolutely incredible this time of year. I, like many of you, have tried numerous times during the off-seasons to find fresh produce that can replicate what summer produces. There is a taste that is captured during the spring/summer growing season that can not be reproduced artificially. I wonder why that is?

Here's a little observation dealing with our farmer's market. We have a very large, very impressive farmer's market here in Raleigh. We visited it at about 8:30 AM on a Saturday and the place was packed with people and it was getting more packed by the minute. Generally speaking, the people of this area are extremely friendly. That is until there becomes a sort of competition for fresh fruits and vegetables. At that point, it would appear all bets are off! You will see a kind and considerate woman plow over an elderly person for the perfect melon and no apologies will be forthcoming even after CPR is successfully administered. The farmer's market is no place for the weak of mind or body it would appear. The parking lot is also fraught with dangerous drivers and pedestrians just chomping at the bit to take someone out rather than let them get the juiciest peaches.

So there is a price to be paid when it comes to obtaining fresh produce in our city. When you visit, be offensive minded and have your best game face on because only the fittest get the really freshest product. So not only will you be sufficiently satisfied with your sweet tomato sandwich experience but also in knowing you took out a few other competitors to be able to enjoy it.