once again technology fails me
Originally, today’s post was titled “Is Newer Better?” and had some really deep ponderings about the use of new media in the church today and about modern Christian movements being filed under the broad categories of “Emergent” and “Postmodern”. Only just as I was finishing the post the insane touch-pad on this Dell Latitude went bizerk on me, took me back three pages in my browser, and lost everything I had written. Sigh.
Tomorrow, if nothing larger comes up and if the touch-pad cooperates, I’ll re-write the post and show you the extremely disturbing quote I found of one of the Emergent church’s premier authors/preachers. For now, though, I’m putting down the newer (this laptop) and heading for the older (payer time and bed).
Spending Father’s Day with familiar faces.
I used to think it would be cool to have a favorite restaurant or hang-out that I frequented so often that I knew everyone and they knew me. Where all I had to do was walk through the door and an ice cold Dr. Pepper and my favorite dish would automatically be brought to my table. I guess the notion came from watching too many late night shows. You know, like old Cheers re-runs when everyone shouts “Norm!” when he walks in, or all those movies where the home-town customer walks into the greasy-spoon and the waitress asks “the usual?”. But I’m pretty sure now that having such a hang-out wouldn’t be nearly as cool as I once invisioned it. So what if they know my name? So what if they know my favorite drink or dish? They would never really know ME.
I woke up this morning to my daughter asleep and sprawled-out across the end of my bed. As I stretched she woke up, jumped out of bed and ran to fetch my Father’s Day present which her grandma had taken her to buy yesterday. It was a cool craftsman tool in a little gift bag with an absolutely adorable Strawberry Shortcake Father’s Day card. Talk about a great way to start out the day!
The day kept getting better as I fellowshipped with my family in my Adult Bible Fellowship at church. This place is far better than any often-visited restaurant. These people know me. These people care about the real me. It’s so cool to sit in a room with people who know and trust you enough to tell you just what it is that is going on in their lives. And I’m not talking about whining oh-woe-is-me, either. I’m talking about saying it like it is. The joys, the sorrows, the fears, the excitements of daily life. “Not what dish on the menu will it be today, Anthony?” I’m talking deep — like medical problems, family problems, job offers, job losses, grief from a loss, excitement over a new birth or a first step. Cheers! doesn’t have anything on this!
After church, my daughter and I spent the rest of the day with my best friend and his family. We grilled and ate together, the kids played in the sprinkler while we talked, watched Hitch, ate watermellon, and shot some hoops. On my way home I thought back to my musings from last night. Yes, my life has been broken up a lot the last two years. Yes, I would have given just about anything to have had Lisa back with us celebrating Father’s Day. Yes, I’m still at a loss for what to tell the Head-Hunter tomorrow. But I’m happy to have a place where everybody knows my name.
Musings on the many fragmented aspects of my life on the eve of Father’s Day.
It had been a while since I had that feeling. The feeling of deep-rooted agonizing sadness and loss. It hit me this afternoon as Dad and I drove past the hospital on our way home from hauling off limbs downed by this week’s storms. Suddenly it hit me that tomorrow I’d be ‘celebrating’ Fathers Day with my daughter but her mother wouldn’t be there. I’m sure I went though this last year, too, but that was such a short time after the funeral that I was pretty much in a daze back then. And so, as the day went on I started pondering the many fragmented aspects of my life.
I sit here in my recliner in front of the pool table. Yet another fragment — there’s no one to play a game of pool with me. On my left sits a book: Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache in 24 Hours which I’ll be power-reading to gather the info I’m going to need to build an online interface to the History Museum’s archives database which is sitting on a memory stick on my left. A lot of things have changed since the last time I did web development. I know exactly what I need to come up with, but am a bit at a loss for getting there from here.
Which is much the same as my predicament with my job. Monday morning the head-hunter in K.C. will be calling back to get my answer for his question “Do you want to move to Kansas City and make 125% your current salary but loose most of your benefits?” I know I need a change-of-pace. My job has been extremely stressful these last few months, and that stress on top of dealing with the grief of loosing my wife and helping my daughter cope with her grief and raising her as a single parent has really been wearing my body down. A few days ago I went and got a hair cut only to have the stylist tell me that I’ve got a nickle-sized bald patch on the back of my head. Apparently now the hair on my scalp has decided it doesn’t want to grown any more than the hair on my face. So I know I need to get a new job and a lower-stress environment. And a big raise to help pay off some bills that are stressing me out would be nice, too. But to pack-up and move to a new city with its enormously higher crime rate, mind numbingly confusing maze of streets and over/under passes, while leaving behind our beautiful home, all of our wonderful friends, the private school Aliyah is so excited about going to kindergarten at this fall, and the church that has helped me grow so much. So I have just over 24 hours to decide whether I want to pursue this or not and to decide if the higher salary and new enironment are going to be able to offset all the stuff we’ll have to leave behind in order to start-over.
On a brighter, note, though. I did get one thing done today. Dad came down this morning with his big pickup and helped me haul off two massive loads of tree limbs to the city’s limb-drop-off site where they make chipped mulch out of all the limbs. And I did get to go see the excellent movie Madagascar with my dauther this evening, so I guess not all was lost of this day.
MPG mania
A couple of weeks ago Wendy Kaufman reported on NPR’s Morning Edition that
“Demand for traditional SUVs has fallen dramatically over the past year. As gas prices have risen, many consumers have turned to smaller cars, or SUV hybrids.”
She’s got that right. With prices around the world as high as $6.50 / gallon, and an average cost of $2.13 / gallon here in the U.S., it is no wonder that people are finally paying attention.
Still, it is too bad that you have to hurt a person’s pocket book before they do something environmentally-friendly. I’ve long believed that the fed should put a gigantic tax on gas — raising our prices to the world average price — and use that tax revenue to further develop renewable energy technology and infrastructure here in the U.S. I really believe that is the only way we are ever going to catch up with places like Iceland.
Today I’ll be filling up tank number 7 on my Ford Escape Hybrid SUV. I’ve had it for 2 months now and have been quite pleased with its performance so far. There is nothing quite like sitting at a stop light surrounded by cars billowing-out noxious fumes while I sit there with my gas engine OFF and a grin on my face. Unfortunately, though, there are very few people in the midwest that have had that experience. So far I’ve only seen about 4 other hybrids around town. Oh well, let OPEC keep cutting off chunks of their wallet and they’ll eventually come around.
Sources:
Nine years later, the technology catches up with the vision.
Back in 1996, I was hired for my first full-time job by a non-profit organization called the Ozarks Regional Information Network (ORION). ORION was one of the pioneers of the Community Information Network movement in the United States. They were formed by several area organizations with the vision “to insure equitable access to local public information to anyone regardless of social, economic or personal factors“. I watched ORION move from having an emphasis on the word “access” (because when ORION started no one in Springfield had Internet access) to an emphasis on the word “information”. CINs evolved as ISPs became common place in America and started pushing the envelope with new Internet technologies. Moderated chat rooms became virtual townhall forumns for public interaction with their government officials, database-driven templated sites were created to house community services directories, and government Geographic Information System data was released to the masses through online mapping applications.
Two weeks ago I had a tonsillectomy to relieve chronic sore throat problems. As I moaned, groaned, and recouperated after the surgery, I found that I finally had some time to goof-off on the Internet. Now I’m almost always online, but I rarely have time to really just play around and see what new, cool stuff is out there. So I started experimenting with new extensions for firefox, del.icio.us bookmarks, and several other social networking applications.
One thing that kept popping into my head as I experimented with these sites was “man, just think of what we could have done if we had this technology back in the ORION days!”. Alas, ORION is no more. Some of it’s services were re-absorbed into the Springfield-Greene County Library District’s site, but many others just disappeared as ISPs became common place and the organization’s funding withered. At the time, people were more interested in emailing distant friends or making big bucks in the dot-com boom than they were in networking within their community.
Things have changed. It is amazing to see how much the Internet has changed since those early days. Finally people are grasping the concept we were trying to push back then: information is powerful, and a community is the best source of information.
