It’s the first few minutes of 2012, and I saw that I haven’t posted this on my blog, although I started writing it in mid October. I’ll put some finishing touches up on this and post it post-haste!

Well today my eldest son got on a jet to take him from Denver Colorado to Columbia, South Carolina to Army boot camp.  This is something that he’s been looking forward to and planning since last December. I wish him the best of luck and hope that his dreams become his reality!

I have two other children that are still ‘in the coop’. A 16 year old girl (who is now 17!) and a 13 year old boy. Sooner than you know it, they will be out of the house too… starting their lives, getting apartments and going to school.  It happens to everyone at some time, but that time seems to blow by so darned fast. I still remember holding My oldest son right after he was born, and then all the activities and such that we participated in through the years.

I have been writing Josh every day (well almost every day, let’s say fairly regularly….) and have found at times it’s a very hard thing to do since I rarely get any mail back from him, and the occasional phone call is always way too short, I don’t always remember what I wanted to tell him, or ask him… it’s a bit frustrating to say the least. This year he is spending his whole break in Colorado, he got a quote from his travel agency for something like 800 bucks for a round trip ticket out here, but I found a flight for more like less than 300 bucks round trip. He had his mind set about the whole thing, so we are missing him being out here this year. I hope that in future years he will want to spend time out here with us every once in a while.

When he was born, I never thought I would be a father, or even a good father… Well I think I turned out to be a pretty damned good father! And I hope that as the years roll on by he will still feel comfortable talking with me about things, and asking questions about the whole big thing called life. I don’t know if I remember what the scale of intelligence or percieved intelligence is for parents by their kids…  I know that when they are young, you are the smartest being on the planet! Somewhere in the teen years you all of a sudden become this droolling self defacating (I know, I should have said depricating, but if I’m droolin.. there ain’t nothing left but lack of bowel control too) idiot who thinks they know what kids are going through, because you never were a kid, and things are different and so on…  I want to get to that place where my Son will think I know something of value again. I’m sure he says he does (but the truth may be different).

So I started this rambling post in Mid October of 2011, and am finishing it 19 to 20 minutes into the new year of 2012! The final thing I do want to say is – I’m proud of you Josh! and I love you, and miss you more than you will ever know. Thanks for making me the father that I am.

Happy New Year, may 2012 be more than you expected, less than you dread and overall a warm and comforting year!

Dad.

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”.