Recently my eldest son joined the Army. In doing so, he has changed the way that we communicate, at least while he is in BCT (or for us older folk – Boot Camp).  You see he cannot have his cell phone.  Which is smart since they are going on manuvers, keeps it from getting stolen as well. He needs to focus on getting the very best training he can and having me call him on his cell phone would definately be a distraction.

Thus our communication has been slowed down to the speed of the Post Office.  When I was in Boot Camp, it was basically the same thing. There were times when we were allowed to make phone calls at the pay phone banks, but it was 3-4 times during our whole training cycle, if that.  I also remember that the local phone company set up a series of temporary “rooms” where you could go in and call your loved ones and pay 30-40 dollars and hour (or more) to get quiet, private calls and not have to have some dude banging on the phone booth door trying to get you off of the phone so they could get on it.

I’ve been trying to send him a letter each and every day. It doesn’t always work out, but I’ve got supplies to help me out now. I purchased a roll of ‘forever’ stamps… that’s 100 to a roll, and I have a stack of pre-addressed envelopes that I have sitting at my desk just waiting for the letters to be stuffed in them and mailed.  He told me when got to his mom’s in Colorado for his break that he had gotten 7 letters in the prior 5 days. Also that it takes about 3 days to get from San Diego to Columbia South Carolina. Which is pretty good. I thought it would take upwards of 7-10 days to make it over there. At least he’s getting the mail I’ve been sending.

It’s just so weird having what amounts to a one-way conversation, unless I get mail from him prior to sending the mail.  And so far, I’ve only received 3 letters from him. However he tells me that he’s written at least 30.  I gave him some crap about making sure to seal the envelope and to put a stamp on it. He didn’t laugh, but that’s ok… I’m not always as funny as I think I am.  But I think I hit it on the mark most of the time.

So, I’m trying to get used to this Glacial type of communication and it’s not easy.  I have a problem with coming up with new stuff to talk about when I don’t have any input.  At least his company in the Army has a facebook fan page that they post pictures on, so I get some chances to see my Son training.  In fact he said that he knows he got in front of the camera a number of times during recent training events, such as the gas chamber, which I am going to post right here: Fun stuff eh? Well I actually found the picture on facebook and then wrote to him a letter and inserted the image in the letter.  I knew that he most likely wouldn’t have seen this image until after boot, or BCT… so I wanted to share it with him.

So, I will continue to work on communicating at the ‘speed of post’ which is certainly not the speed of light.

Actually I think that letter writing is a fading thing. I know that my Mother-n-law and her brother-n-law write letters to each other, you see my mother-n-law is almost 88, and my ‘uncle-n-law’ is in his early 80′s. He has email and is fairly comfortable using his computer. My mother-n-law on the other hand isn’t that good with technology, and had given up on using a computer.  So she writes letters and that still works great! More people should write letters, it’s a great way to express yourself and get points across.  And on the other hand it will help keep the post office open and keep the cost of postage down.

With that I think I’m going to print out this post and mail it to my son in South Carolina.  Granted he’s not there, but I want to make sure he has something to read when he returns there.

Keep writing letters!!! Don’t let the practice dissapear!

When you cannot update any Apps or purchase new ones because the iOS on it is old. And there is no way to update the iOS because the iPod is “too old” “Not compatible with the new iOS”

It’s not that it won’t play music, no, it does that fine. Playing movies… yep – it does that too. Two of the most important and fundamental things that an iPod should do; it does. It just can’t play ‘Angry Birds’ or a whole assortment of other applications because it’s outdated.

That’s the one thing that microsoft kind of never made any of us deal with. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, on the contrary, it forces you to purchase a new device eventually. With the IBM clone platform, there should have been a shock and awe campaign when the digital world went from 8 bit XT computers to 16 bit 286 computers. To hell with compatibility!! We would have had so much better machines if they didn’t plan backwards compatibility into them. They were afraid of what would happen, that people wouldn’t upgrade because it would mean a whole software upgrade as well!  And people in general aren’t too keen on too many changes and too much cost.

It’s too bad really.  I couldn’t imagine what we would have now in the computer industry if we had ditched the old design ( that we still to this day follow ) Rather jumping full in on a new memory map and means to use the framework to it’s fullest potential.

Going back to the focus of this post in the beginning… When is the iPod too old? Well, as unfair as it seems, it’s too old when Apple chooses not to waste it’s time on an older machine. Get off your duff and go buy a new one!  It’s really less than you paid the first time around.  The Design has been improved somewhat by Apple… And it’s just swell for the economy!

Woo Hoo!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, since I got sick and went to the hospital, or shortly there after…. I’ve got something to write about now, sadly….

Now it’s not that I didn’t know that Steve Jobs was sick, or that he was so ill that he stepped down from running apple. It’s just a shock to me because Steve Jobs was part of my childhood years, my formative pre-teen and teen years.  No, I didn’t know him personally, I knew him from his computer; the Apple. It was his computer that started me off into the industry that I have come to have a love/hate relationship with.  It is an industry that has given me the opportunity to make a living, and hopefully make some small difference through the work that I do and have done over the years.

In High School, my computer science teacher told us that with computers, and the work you do with them, would extend your impact and reach well beyond your life span…. At the time, I didn’t think that was really true, and in most instances I still think it isn’t true. What is true is that your reach and impact is much, much greater than it would have been and the potential of your life work, or influence, lasting beyond your life span is much much greater.

Then there are people like Steve Jobs… his impact has been huge. His running of Apple, and Pixar… plus all the other things he has done will continue to have an influence on society, your life, our future…  In Steve’s case, my teacher was right… but there are few out there like Jobs.

I was talking to my wife about Steve’s death. She asked me if I was shocked or troubled by it. I am sad that someone has died, he was good at what he did. But in really thinking about who had the most impact on my young life when I was introduced to computers (around 12 years old), I really would have to say that the man who was Steve’s partner in the beginning had the greatest impact. Steve Wozniak. He did the design of the Apple I and II, wrote Integer Basic and FP Basic…. Jobs was the sales guy… the front man.  It’s easy to give him all the credit, but Woz was the man.

I have never wrote this before, and now that one of the founders is dead I should, so here we go “Thank you Steve and Steve for all the great work you have done, releasing the magic of computers into my world when I was young”.

Recently, about 10 days ago I spent 6 days in the hospital.  It started out with me getting a test, an echo-cardiogram…. it checks to see how well my heart is pumping, you see about 8 years ago I wound up getting Congestive Heart Failure. It was associated with getting pneumonia; the virus that gave me pneumonia also attacked my heart.  So I was getting a checkup visit and they said my ejection fraction, that amount of blood that your heart pumps out of the left ventricle (it doesn’t pump 100% of it…) was down to 12%. Well, the cardiologist pulled me aside and said that I need to get myself to the hospital. So, I drove home, got some clothes, discussed it with my wife and we left. Now I’ve spent some time in the hospital before (8 years ago for like 8 days) so I know how damned boring it can be, even with a TV in the room. So I packed my laptop and my iPad 2.  I figured I’d use my laptop if there were free wireless, and have my iPad as a backup (I’ve got some movies on it) in case there was no wireless network access.

Well, to my surprise, there was a free wireless network, but with some restrictions. They had blocked all of the social networking sites, and any site that streamed any kind of media.  Well, that killed pretty much 90% of what would keep me entertained.  And while I was there the county experienced the largest blackout in the history of electrical services…. that was fun.  The windows were closed, couldn’t open them.  The air conditioning was out, not even a fan was operational. There was some emergency lighting and funny enough… the router that was providing the free internet access, well restricted free internet access, was still up and running…. I was able to get out on my laptop and google information about what was going on. That kept me entertained for about 5 minutes… Then I had to turn off my laptop because I had limited battery.

I did take advantage of having my iPad there, I watched some of the lord of the rings, and read some of the book as well (kindle for iPad rocks!) and eventually decided to try and get some sleep.

I’m not sure if bringing all of that equipment was smart, but it did do what it was intended to do. And after getting to the hospital on a Tuesday, I checked out the following Saturday… and hauled all of my computer crap home.

Will I bring that much stuff if I have to go to the hospital again? Maybe.