--- Took down the cartoons because they were screwing with my layout.
Follow the links if you're behind the times. --- Missed blogging
yesterday. Had stuff to write about, but never got around to it. Pffft.
I got wrapped up in fixing pictures from the 50th party the other
night. Man, there was something really funky going on with my pics. Two
possibilities. A. My flash is really obnoxious. or B. The lighting in
the room was really goofy and hence led the flash to be really
obnoxious. I don't know which it was, but I spent the majority of
yesterday afternoon fiddling with photo editing software so that I
didn't look like Cujo's ghost in the photos. It's a bad idea all around
to look like Cujo's ghost. Leads to all sorts of interesting comments I
would rather dodge, thank you very much.
--- It's laundry day around here, so if the blog seems a bit
disjointed, know that it's because I'm running up and down the stairs
to switch out loads. --- The husband is also busy doing his best saint
impersonation. I'm thinking when the Vatican canonizes him he should be
St. Michael, patron saint of the HP Pavilion at Bob and Peg's house.
They've got pull with the archdiocese---they should be able to push for
sainthood.
My Mom and Dad are pretty cool people. They're hip. When all of their
kids started talking about how cool email and the internet was, they
decided to get with the program and my sister hooked them up with one
of her old computers, and they've worked their way forward with the
technology from that point. This is pretty progressive for people their
age, I found out the other night at the party. A lot of their friends
are not online, nor do they ever intend on learning how to use a
computer. My Godmother is one such example and is pretty admant about
taking this stance. Her son even bought her a fancy computer and she
refuses to take it out of the box. She thinks it's ridiculous and why
should she, at her age, have to learn how to use a new technology.
Which is fine with me, but I keep trying to pull her into the new age
by telling her I would talk to her more if she got online. She doesn't
seem all that impressed with that incentive. But Mom and Dad are
online. They enjoy the internet. They enjoy being able to shoot
pictures off to people and to share jokes via email. Our family is very
connected via the internet, and I suspect it the level of connectedness
would be much less if it weren't for email and our family website. The
internet has done wonders for us, in other words. And the situation is
no less for our folks. But it takes a lot of work keeping them
connected, because they have no experience with what you need to do to
keep a computer up and running. This task generally falls to the
husband. The routine generally goes like this: my father calls, I
answer, I chat with him for a few moments, dad asks his computer
related question, I can't answer it, and the husband takes over. Or at
least that's how the phone calls used
to go: now Dad just skips right over the "talk with your daughter"
stage and moves directly on to the "talk to the person who knows what
they're doing" stage. There have been days when the husband and my
father have chatted many times and I have had no clue about it.

Today's computer related conquest: hooking up a cable modem and
setting up a wireless router and connection for their new laptop. The
husband and my sister have been on and off the phone since nine this
morning getting this set up for them. Now, this is a huge leap forward
technologically. This puts them ahead of us. And it's kind of
making me growly. I've wanted to go wireless forever. I want to be able
to sit in the living room or outside when the weather is cooperating
and surf to my heart's content, but noooooooo. We can't afford it. It's
only recently gotten to be a cheapo item. I think the husband said this
was costing the parents about a hundred bucks after rebates. WOW! It
was $250 the last time we looked at this option. But my parents---my parents!---are
going wireless! Dad will be able to surf on one computer while my
mother plays solitaire on the other---and they'll be able to be at
opposite ends of the house while they do this! GRRRRRRRRRRR. This is
not fair. We're supposed to set the bar---everyone else is supposed to follow us,
not my seventy-something parents! This goes contrary to everything I
know about the way technology is supposed to work: the young ones are
the ones to get stuff first, not the grandparents! Next thing you know,
my mother will be hanging out at Borders, surfing the internet on her
brand new laptop and sending me email whilst slurping a latte, while
I'm chained to my desk in the office! Where is the justice in the
world? Huh? --- Oh, my. How sad. Captain Kangaroo has passed on.
--- Ok, that puts an end to blogging today. Can't possibly keep writing
about inconsequential shit when the Captain has died. This is worse
than when Mr. Rogers died. I was much more fond of the Captain when I
was a kid than I was of Mr. Rogers. I liked Mr. Rogers, don't get me
wrong, but even back then he struck me as a little too nerdy. The
Captain, however, was just a nice guy. A little odd. But he was nice.
And he had Bill Cosby's "Picture Pages," on every day. How can you not
like a guy like that?

Posted by: Kathy at 01:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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