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Future is here and it’s kind of weird but not too shocking

Once upon a time, I said that I only needed a computer that would act as a word processor and nothing more. Later, I developed a need for the Internet. Then came a requirement for working on spreadsheets. Photo editing eventually became a need because I started using a digital camera. Later my phone acted as a camera and a music platform as well. And then I found myself needing a Power Point, or in my case, the OpenOffice Presentation. Pretty soon, I was on Facebook and Twitter. After awhile, I was a regular computer geek.

Maybe I wasn’t a regular computer geek. Perhaps I was an irregular computer geek. Well, let’s say I was an irregular computer geek and a dyed-in-the-wool geek.

The future is here but I'm not shocked.
The future is here but I’m not shocked.

Some 25 years ago I didn’t even imagine I would be using a computer, much less did I think I would be using the damned thing every blamed day. I am five posts away from having 2,400 blog posts. What the hell is this blog thing? That’s like a diary isn’t it? I figured a few of my friends would look at it and we’d have some laughs. I have visitors from 27 different countries. Why would someone from Ukraine or Iraq or Ireland or even Morgantown, W.Va. Feel the need to read my musings?

I listen to music and read the newspaper on my laptop. I take photographs, do calculations, check the compass and even find my way on a map using my telephone. Imagine that? I don’t need a telephone man (or woman) to wire my house or connect a line to my home. I don’t even have wires going to my phone. I always take it with me when I go somewhere. I don’t have one ringer sound. I have as many sounds as I can afford or within my imagination. I am not charged for long-distance calls. I can send as many text messages as I want. I have 400 minutes of phone. Crap on a stick! I don’t even need a fourth of that.

I can remember my family’s first TV set, vaguely. My parents had black and white TV all their lives, even though they could have afforded color in the later years of their lives. I also remember the first telephone my folks had, at least once I joined them. Apparently they had one before I was born and then went without one for several years. Our phone was on a “party-line.” I can remember Mrs. Irons, who lived in the house across the front part of our field from us and also on our party-line, talking to her sister. Sometime they would be talking about canning vegetables or gossiping. I wasn’t supposed to be listening in. Most of the time, nothing the women said was worth eavesdropping.

When I first read the sociological gem “Future Shock,” I wondered about the type of society that could freak out over too much change happening too quickly. I have lived that type of change and, yes, it’s pretty amazing. Maybe it is the convenience that technology provides which provides a “future shock absorber.” Then maybe it’s not. Excuse me now, while I go put my TV dinner in the microwave for a couple of minutes.

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Shut the **** up! We’re trying to live in here.

Noise is a very quirky creature. I like a little white noise with which to sleep and block out the things that could bother me. But when decibel levels rise above my comfort zone then I can become quite irritated.

Loud trucks on the highway, the cars that drive around the neighborhood going “boom-ba-boom-ba-boom” and all such racket make me long for the spaces where “seldom is heard a discouraging word.” For that matter, I like those places where seldom is heard anything.

I remember those mornings of my youth. I would wake to the mill whistle in our town. One more blast from that steam whistle would blow a bit later just to make sure everyone was up. You could walk to school and perhaps all that could be heard was the faint sound of a chain saw or the whistling of a bird. That was probably 50 years ago. Holy s**t, that seems like such a long time. But that was what a kid heard growing up in a small sawmill town in the East Texas pineywoods.

The funny thing is that I can still go to that town and step outside and hear nothing. No noise whatsoever. It makes me wonder why I have spent my life over the past 25 years living in metropolitan areas. The answer is easy enough. Work. But believe me, I have once again become longing for the peace and quiet of the country and now I have science on my side.

This piece in The New York Times talks of studies indicating high blood pressure and stress can spike from the noise of an ascending jet, and those physiological states can continue for a period afterward. Maybe even scarier was a report by the World Health Organization saying noise is responsible for the loss of “ … one million healthy life years annually as a consequence of noise-related disability and disease.”

One article and one study, of course, is no bellwether of doomsday by noise. It just gives one thought that maybe it wouldn’t hurt to find a little quiet somewhere and perhaps even reciprocate by shutting the **** up.

 

 

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Will it rain? Will it not? Do you really care?

Mr. TV Meteorologist said summer may be nearing its end here. That’s a pretty bold statement although I have seen Septembers with fall-like temperatures down here on the Texas Gulf Coast. I’ve also seen hot-ass Septembers here. I remember mid-September 2005. Hurricane Rita came calling. Folks went without electricity from a week’s time to a month. No A/C except in your car. Hot sucka!

The same TV weather god says a low pressure mass in the Gulf may give us a good bit of rain starting at the end of the weekend. The National Weather Service keeps going back and forth on the percentages. I hope the weather guy is right. I think we need a good soaking.

I hope you don’t have plans this weekend that get flooded. If you do, make the best of it. Get some movies. Get your favorite food and adult beverages. Or just sit out on the porch and watch the rain. It a good form of meditation. Enjoy!

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Yeeee Haaaa! Howard Dean supposedly dipping a toe in the pool for a presidential run

Yes. Howard Dean. It’s like Jerry Brown being elected governor of California. It’s one of those things that makes liberals and conservatives alike shake their heads to see if the whole things is real.

Don’t get me wrong. I admire both Dean and Brown as politicians. Both seem a little out there. I imagine people think the same of me. But Dean as a presidential candidate? He is a bit more liberal than I am. With the current political split in the population, I don’t think anyone too far from the center is viable for a real shot at the Oval Office. That means that carpet/tea-bagger from Canada who masquerades as a Hispanic Texas U.S. senator as well as Dr. Dean.

And Hillary? Jeez. I just don’t know. She has paid her dues as a U.S. senator, I’ll give her that. I also would really like to see a woman, a great woman, elected president. I’m not sure she is that person. But provided she runs, she has the front-runner status. If she was the last man standing after the party primary process, then, I don’t know. I might have to hold my nose and vote. I imagine a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum might do that.