Steel Kaleidoscopes

Kudos to Google

Very cool concept and design by Google on its home page today to recognize the birthday of Robert Moog, who invented the Moog synthesizer.

Prog rock wouldn't have evolved without it.

Turn your sound up and record a few bars.

Blog Comments

If you're reading this, you either know me or randomly stumbled upon this post.

If you've been here before, thanks for visiting again. If you're new, welcome.

That said, the blog hosting software I am using (Typepad) recently made changes to comments for additional security. If you'd like to post a comment, you'll need to clear your cache (browsing history). 

If you don't do this and try to post a comment, the site just hangs.

As always, I appreciate your visit and comments.

Enjoy your day.

Siri

Siri has been patient with me.

The studious, seemingly proper woman inside my iPhone 4S seems pleasant enough.

She gives good directions, points me to relative online content and even engages in small talk.

But when the little person who lives in our house hijacks my phone and asks Siri silly questions, Siri gets annoyed.

Yet, she's patient.

I'm just waiting for one of her responses to be, "isn't it time you handed your phone back to your daddy."

Windows 7

So I upgrade to Windows 7, Office 10 and IE9 all at once.

No worries.

It takes a few tries to find the function keys that have moved.

But the one change I still struggle with is finding the "delete" key in Windows 7.

It was moved to the bottom of the keyboard and in its place is "page up."

So you can guess what I keep doing as I edit documents, spreadsheets and copy.

Yup. "Page up" over and over and over.

Gimme another day.

The Social Jetset

How do we keep up with it all?

With message boards and system operators (sysops) in the rear-view mirror, we contemplate strategies for Pinterest and Google+. Even Facebook and LinkedIn seem passé as the Twitterverse explodes with commentary, coupons and front-door e-commerce.

This blog, faithfully attended to since 2003, sometimes seems like popping in a cassette.

But it will always be a blank portrait to fill, a canvas for free thought, an outlet for creative writing and random thoughts.

Somehow, we find a way to keep up with it all.

One Fewer Resource Today

Wikipedia goes dark in an effort to protect the free and open Internet. This will have an impact, but if Google followed suit, there'd be chaos.

Generation Flux

Baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, Millennials and now ...

Generation Flux.

Interesting read.

The best managers are adaptable and resilient.

iPod Touch

So we got the little person who lives in our house an iPod Touch for Christmas.

She's been badgering us for the Angry Birds game, something she can't play on her Nintendo DS.

So now she has Angry Birds. And, of course, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and the soundtrack to "Enchanted."

But this also gives me a chance to slip in some of the music I enjoy, to see if it catches on when she hits shuffle.

Just curious how she'll react to the Beatles, Elton John, Madonna and Jethro Tull.

We'll soon find out.

Retro

The little person who lives in our house is always asking me about what it was like when I was in first grade.

She wants to know the name of kids in my class, what they looked like, what kind of people they were.

So I go through the names with her. Funny, but I remember quite a few of them.

Curious, once she's asleep, I find a few minutes and do a few Facebook searches. And some of those faces from first grade, faces I haven't seen since elementary school, come to life.

Kind of scary.

Bye, Bye TV

 
All electronics eventually die.

Like my beloved first-edition iPod, the 13-year-old big-screen TV finally checked out.

After discovering it would cost us more than $100 to have someone pick it up and haul it away, we decided to wheel it to the bottom of the driveway with a "free" sign and a note that said it would need repair.

Within an hour, someone hauled it away.

Onward.