Contemplation of Major Life Changes: Before anyone gets concerned, I am not thinking of moving, don’t want to quit my career (which I love), and I am not on a diet. Nope, my change is my photoblog. It is that time of year when I think that I need a total rewrite. I have some great concept ideas, but I don’t have the flash skills to do it, and I really don’t want to spend the time to learn it. Don’t get me wrong, I love to learn, but there are so many other skills that I need much more. I have looked at a couple of great engines, a couple specifically designed for the photoblogger, but they either look like they require too much programming or they are aren’t any longer in development (dead programs). Argh!

(Gripe: People who cannot articulate a solution should not be working at a help desk. I actually got excited today when I talked to someone who was in America. I am glad that India is a great source for help desk people, but lets let them help the people in India and let people in America help struggling Americans. Now this is the idle rants of a snobish American who thinks that he is better than anyone, it is someone who is crying out for people who speak my language.)

The Dependency on Technology: A couple of days ago my e-mail kind of went down. I say kind of because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I typically get about 50-75 messages a day, some are junk, some are personal, some are reports, and the rest are things that are necessary for me to do my job. Well last Thursday I got just a trickle, maybe 10 messages in the day. I thought it odd but then someone I work with sent a test message that didn't come. So now 5 days later I am stuck with messages lost in space. People that I have sent to have said that they haven't received things either. I called the help desk (somewhere in New Delhi) and they have said that they will have it fixed in 20 minutes. I wouldn't bet my last dollar on that, but at least they seem to have a handle on the problem.

The Times They are a Changin:

1988:
Mary - "Honey, what are you doing on the computer?"
Rick - "Uh, sending a file to my dad through the BBS."

1990:
Mary - "Honey, what are you doing on the computer?"
Rick - "Uh, sending a file to my dad with Backmail."

1992:
Mary - "Honey, what are you doing on the computer?"
Rick - "Uh, writing some e-mail to my dad. Hey, did you know that you can now do your banking on the Internet?"
Mary - "Evil, the Internet is all evil."

2002:
Rick - "Honey, whatcha doin?"
Mary - "Transfering from one of our accounts into another"

2004:
Rick - "Honey, whatcha doin?"
Mary - "I just bought a bunch of stuff on eBay and I am tracking when the packages are coming."

2006:
Rick - "Honey, whatcha doin?"
Tori - "I just found this great Russian web site that has millions of MP3s, me and mom are downloading some."

True story

Flashmobbing: I want to try this, it is just another reason to have an iPod. This flashmob was in London, but I am sure that I can find one somewhere. Can you imagine going to a dance where everyone is dancing but there is no sound? In my case it would be slow dancing because I would be listening to jazz, but I think that this would be a hoot to watch.

New Digital Work Toy - GotVoice: There have been variations of this service out there for years, but I signed up for GotVoice today and have to say that I am immediately impressed. The version that I am trying is the free one, looking at some of the premium services to see if it is something that has benefit. The idea is that this service goes out and listens to my voice mailbox (cellular in my case) and then sends me notifications that I have a new voice mail. Some may quickly say "Hey, my cell phone is with me 24/7 and has message notification, this doesn't interest me." True, at least most of the time. I tend to move from one cell area to another and the handoff doesn't always forward my message notification smoothly. Also, when I am in meetings I turn the cellphone off so as not to be rude to others. But, I do check my e-mail at all times and it is nice to know if there are messages that I have to go retrieve. Granted, I have only used it for a day, but I like what I see today. More later.

Stereotyping!: No, I don't mean that I am typing with both hands at the same time (although I am), what I am talking about is that age old practice of encouraging a set of behaviors because I want my kids to turn out the way that I want. You see, this is the joy of being a parent, I get to decide how I want to model my kids. Its like this huge social experiment, and I take it serious. I watch my bahavior to make sure that the youngins don't pick up the bad ones. So far I think I have that one pretty much whipped. I still have to work on the seat belt thing, but everything else is pretty good (I am a pretty good guy all in all). I suppose that one day Peyton will come walking in the house puffing on a Partagas and I will realize that I have failed, but for now we are safe.

Today I will practice that age honored stereotypical practice of taking my young son into the forest to slay dragons. In this case they are little dragons with bushy tails and jump from tree to tree. The locals call them squirrels, which is an old ancient Indian word for "Ferocious Dragon". We will use the favorite weapon of the brave knight/dragon slayer - the 22. Some might argue that we should use a sword, but have you ever tried to climb a tree with a sword? The weapon of choice was once my grandfathers, so this will be an especially cool event, the fourth generation to use the gun (although I suspect that my dad never did anything more than store it, not being a big gun person).

Some of you are undoubtedly saying "Hey, Digital Dude! You have more than one son, what about him?" Well fear not faithful friends, next weekend I shall take my eldest yonder unto the wilds of Seekhaven to slay the wild and dreaded stag. Sinclair will be using the new (and awesome) Marlin 336 that my wife got me a few weeks ago. We shall celebrate that test of manhood that took me 40 years to accomplish. Be sure you will get plenty of pictures of that event as well.

As for the rest of the afternoon, we are going figure skating. So much for my macho stereotyping!

Sweet Memories: I spent a few precious hours with my sister this week, something that I don't get to do enough. We stayed up too late, and laughed ourselves silly telling stories.