November 2, 2009 - The CAA meeting - Amazing Video - The Tyranny of E-Mail
I believe their meetings start something like this.
"Hi, my name is Boomer and I’m an addict." Audience responds; "Hi Boomer"
"I wouldn’t admit to being an addict - I thought I had it under control - I could quit anytime - some days I didn’t take my first hit until nearly noon although most days I would get juiced up right after breakfast.
Then, early last week, I had to give up my computer - it wasn’t an easy decision - at first I thought I could do it myself but I soon realized the odds were that I would screw it up big time so I took my baby to the computer store to have them install the new Windows 7.
However, after I paid up and signed all the responsibility release forms they tell me their resident Geek was off with the swine flue or some kind of ailment plus they’ve had a flood of orders and they work on a first-come-first-serve basis - so I would be computerless for several days.
So anxious was I to rid myself of the frustrating, crash prone, megabyte bundle of misery that Bill Gates labeled Vista, I agreed to wait and so began three days of cyber celibacy that proved I’m hooked - I have to have my internet hit on a regular basis or I become an irritable old geezer with a Scrooge-like attitude and outlook - I’m talking about his before-the-ghosts persona.
As soon as I returned home from the store, a buddy called asking me to email a picture I took of his daughter - I can’t - I don’t have a computer. Next morning - how much money came in overnight from Google Adsense and affiliate links - I have no flippin’ idea - I don’t have a computer. Phone call from another buddy - didn’t you get my email? - no - I don’t have a damn computer. CiC working her cross word puzzle - three down - the star of the movie Gaslight - can you Google - No I can’t Google - I don’t have a friggin’ computer.
I was totally out of sync - even extra picture taking didn’t ease my discomfort - when I arrived home I was unable to see and edit my pictures - because I didn’t have a @!###%&* computer.
Reading helped a tad as did movie matinees but the majority of time I was wondering what was happening in my web world. - not being able to rid myself of the feeling I was missing out on something.
Anyway, my baby is back home - blazing away on all of its Intel cylinders - cleaned of long forgotten and useless files and programs - fueled by a speedy new system that so far is living up to its favorable reviews - my world is back on its regular orbit.
Yes, I’m hooked, for better or worse, to the web and its instrument of torment - the computer - even though I haven‘t a techie clue as to how it does what it does - its like my car - I know how to start it up but I haven’t the foggiest as to how the engine works yet it expands my horizons by taking me to new and familiar places.
Yes folks, I’m an web world enthusiast - a fumbling, two finger typing computer addict - so this meeting is over - anyone for coffee and doughnuts?"
Many thanks to retired buddy Bill Jessome for altering me to this amazing video even though it shakes my video shooting confidence to see stuff like this - I can only wish I had such talent - The Bear - a film by Jean Jacques Annaud
Getting back to computers and such - there was an interesting interview in MacLean’s Magazine with John Freeman, the American editor of the British literary magazine Granta, and his book The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox
Noting the latest e-mail stats - 650 million messages every ten minutes - 37 trillion a year in total - Freeman says the whole e-mail thing is out of control and - "it’s going to make us all incredibly tetchy and angry and more prone to talk rather than listen and to misunderstand each other."
Freeman suggests that we have devoted out lives to e-mail and we don’t even realize it’s a problem - " One of my favourite New Yorker cartoons—it was about a month ago—there’s a guy just going to bed and his wife is sleeping next to him, and the door to his bedroom is open and his boss is sitting there. He says, "Can you just do this one more thing before you turn down for the night?" Because e-mail has gone portable, and because we have a hard time shutting it off, it has exploded all the boundaries that we worked very hard to create."
Freeman points out that although we may not realize it - as we are willing participants in this e-mail world - that we are building up our stress levels by spending so much time eye-fixed on a bright screen.
" I think there’s something very major in the way that we now spend seven, eight, nine hours a day looking at a screen and reading on a screen. When light is beamed into your eyes all day long it creates a weariness. And there have been some studies about the drop-off in eyesight, but more importantly I think the distance between you and a text is crucial to respect it, and that goes for letters too. When you look at a letter and it’s written on a paper or printed out, at least it’s an object. It forces you to slow down to read it……..It’s funny, a friend of mine who’s a novelist, went to Singapore for a book tour and he said, "God, you would not believe the future of the Internet; it’s there in Singapore." He described being on the subways and public transit and seeing people, everybody, instead of holding a newspaper or a book, everybody was holding a hand-held device or a screen."
Freeman warns that this is just the beginning of the tyranny of e-mail;
"In so many novels, you read scenes—perhaps less so now but certainly in the 19th century—where people were alone with their thoughts. How would that be portrayed now? You couldn’t actually portray it because the character would probably have an iPod plugged into his ear, and he’d be checking his BlackBerry every eight minutes. If you saw it written down you’d think, "Jesus Christ, this person’s crazy!" But if you spend a lot of time in an office and you do use these devices, that’s what our thoughts are like…….
One of the directions of the book, I hope, was to try to focus on what the purpose of communication was so that we could decide what the parameters we’d allow it within our lives. Communication isn’t just about sharing information for business and for the purpose of doing your day-to-day tasks at the office, it’s also about sharing something, and if you don’t have a life outside the office—which e-mail makes harder and harder—you won’t have anything to share."
Thanks to retired buddies Kathy and Craig Olson for the following:
I was out walking with my 4-year-old granddaughter. She picked up something off of the ground and started to put it in her mouth.
I took the item away from her and I asked her not to do that.
'Why?' my Granddaughter asked. 'Because it's been on the ground; you don't know where it's been, it's dirty, and probably has germs,' I replied.
At this point, my Granddaughter looked at me with total admiration and asked, 'Grandma, how do you know all this stuff? You are so smart.'
I was thinking quickly. 'All Grandmas know this stuff. It's on the Grandma Test. You have to know it, or they don't let you be a Grandma.'
We walked along in silence for 2 or 3 minutes, but she was evidently pondering this new information. 'Oh.....I get it!' she beamed, 'So if you
don't pass the test, you have to be the Grandpa'.
'Exactly,' I replied with a big smile on my face.
-
Now let’s working on building a creative retirement - (Go to URL)
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November 20, 2009 - Boy Toys - Another Video Must See - The Land that Made Me-Me
Even though my aging brain loses traction whenever I involve myself in any kind of techie stuff, like any guy worthy of guy status, I yearn for all the new gizmos and gadgets – show me a new technological whatever and I’m like a half-starved, popped-eyed puppy staring at a plate of Purina, drooling with hope and wonder even though I know full well that’s there not a hope in hell of me bringing home what the wife calls another – "boy toy".
I have spent many a cuddliness night after sneaking a new BT into the house.
But there is one recent acquisition that has actually earned me a bank vault of brownie points – our street-naming, traffic-alerting, restaurant- recommending GPS.
This satellite-savvy, dashboard tour guide with it’s aristocratic English lady robotic voice, has eliminated all of the usual driver-passenger map-driven arguments that usually result in miles of non verbal communication – except for the occasional "If you had only stop to ask someone" or "You didn’t give me enough time to turn right" comments - but I have set myself up for a big hurt.
My sister-in-law, Sharon, sent me an Email the other day about some poor wonker, who, while attending a football game, had his car broken into and the thieves swiped his GPS that he had left mounted on his dashboard.
When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked and just about everything worth anything had been stolen. The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house. The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they knew what time the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to clean out the house. It would appear that they had broug -ht a truck to empty the house of its contents.
After reading Sharon’s Email, I checked my GPS (I never leave it in my car ) and sure enough I had entered my residence in one word and in capital letters – HOME – I should have labelled it – IDIOT.
Moral to this story - don't put your home address in your GPS - put a nearby address (like a store or gas station) so you can still find your way home if you need to, but no one else would know where you live if your GPS were stolen.
My sincere thanks to Nellie Brodie for sending me this amazing video – it’s eight minutes long but worth every minute – this woman was a contestant on " Ukraine 's Got Talent" last month. She is standing behind a table which is covered with sand. The table is lit from beneath.
There is an overhead camera above the table, and that video is being projected onto the large screen behind her so that the audience can watch
what she is doing.
She is telling the story of one of the aerial bombings of Kiev during World War II. You will see one of the famous monuments that stands in Kiev today commemorating those bombings.
Guess who won the competition?
Here is a collection of amazing pictures and I thought a backyard skunk was a problem -
Thanks to retired buddy Lisa Kalegaric for sending me the following>
We went to breakfast at a restaurant where the 'seniors' special' was two eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast for $2.99. 'Sounds good', my wife said. 'But I don't want the eggs.' 'Then, I'll have to charge you $3.49 because you're ordering a la carte', the waitress warned her. 'You mean I'd have to pay for not taking the eggs?' my wife asked incredulously. 'YES!!' stated the waitress. 'I'll take the special then', my wife said. 'How do you want your eggs?' the waitress asked.
'Raw and in the shell", my wife replied. She took the two eggs home and baked a cake.
DON'T MESS WITH SENIORS!!! We've been around the block more than once!
For those of you making a buck on eBay, I came across an interesting site that’s a big help in learning what people are buying and gives you a heads-up before you head out to auctions and estate sales.
Visit Auction Hot List – (opens new window) - it’s free and the information can be extremely informative by alerting you to hidden niches plus items that folks are willing to pay big bucks for.
Bill Myers, an online entrepreneur who issues a newsletter I subscribe to, used this site to build a 'most wanted' list of vintage watches with the most bids at eBay.
By using that list as a guide, he went to his local Goodwill
store, and found a man's watch offered for $10 that was selling for more than $200 on his 'most wanted' list.
This kind of information can also be useful when creating how-to
products.
Ok, I goofed – I erased the name of the retiree who sent in the following – I apologize.
Long ago and far away, in a land that time forgot,
Before the days of Dylan, or the dawn of Camelot.
There lived a race of innocents, and they were you and me,
For Ike was in the White House in that land where we were born,
Where navels were for oranges, and Peyton Place was porn.
We learned to gut a muffler, we washed our hair at dawn,
We spread our crinolines to dry in circles on the lawn.
We longed for love and romance, and waited for our Prince,
And Eddie Fisher married Liz, and no one's seen him since.
We danced to 'Little Darlin,' and sang to 'Stagger Lee'
And cried for Buddy Holly in the Land That Made Me, Me.
Only girls wore earrings then, and 3 was one too many,
and only boys wore flat-top cuts, except for Jean McKinney ..
And only in our wildest dreams did we expect to see
A boy named George with Lipstick, in the Land That Made Me, Me.
We fell for Frankie Avalon, Annette was oh, so nice,
And when they made a movie, they never made it twice .
We didn't have a Star Trek Five, or Psycho Two and Three,
Or Rocky-Rambo Twenty in the Land That Made Me, Me.
Miss Kitty had a heart of gold, and Chester had a limp,
And Reagan was a Democrat whose co-star was a chimp.
We had a Mr. Wizard, but not a Mr. T,
And Oprah couldn't talk yet, in the Land That Made Me, Me.
We had our share of heroes, we never thought they'd go,
At least not Bobby Darin, or Marilyn Monroe.
For youth was still eternal, and life was yet to be,
And Elvis was forever in the Land That Made Me, Me.
We'd never seen the rock band that was Grateful to be Dead,
And Airplanes weren't named Jefferson , and Zeppelins were not Led.
And Beatles lived in gardens then, and Monkees lived in trees,
Madonna was Mary in the Land That Made Me, Me.
We'd never heard of microwaves, or telephones in cars,
And babies might be bottle-fed, but they were not grown in jars.
And pumping iron got wrinkles out, and 'gay' meant fancy-free,
And dorms were never co-ed in the Land That Made Me, Me.
We hadn't seen enough of jets to talk about the lag,
And microchips were what was left at the bottom of the bag
And hardware was a box of nails, and bytes came from a flea,
And rocket ships were fiction in the Land That Made Me, Me.
Buicks came with portholes, and side shows came with freaks,
And bathing suits came big enough to cover both your cheeks.
And Coke came just in bottles, and skirts below the knee,
And Castro came to power near the Land That Made Me, Me.
We had no Crest with Fluoride, we had no Hill Street Blues,
We had no patterned pantyhose or Lipton herbal tea
Or prime-time ads for those dysfunctions in the Land That Made Me, Me.
There were no golden arches, no Perrier to chill,
And fish were not called Wanda , and cats were not called Bill.
And middle-aged was 35 and old was forty-three,
And ancient were our parents in the Land That Made Me, Me.
But all things have a season, or so we've heard them say,
And now instead of Maybelline we swear by Retin-A.
They send us invitations to join AARP,
We've come a long way, baby, from the Land That Made Me, Me.
So now we face a brave new world in slightly larger jeans,
And wonder why they're using smaller print in magazines.
And we tell our children's children of the way it used to be,
Long ago and far away in the Land That Made Me, Me.
Have a great week and lets get started on building a positive, productive and profitable retirement - (Go to URL)
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