Computer

I like my computer again.

Those of you who know me know that over the last few months, I have been MASSIVELY frustrated with my Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop computer. And I do mean MASSIVELY frustrated.

It's not a bad computer. In its former life, it served Brandon faithfully for his first few years in college. When he upgraded to some ridiculously modern Mac, I bought the old laptop, thus eliminating the conflict between Cathy and I, who were having to share one desktop between the two of us.

When I first started using it, things were great. It was fast, wireless, and ALL MINE! No sharing, no begging. Cathy and I were both happy with the arrangement. Really, it ran well for a couple years.

But, over the last few months, two problems have cropped up that have driven me NUTS. First, the wireless card has become flaky. I'd be on the internet one minute, and off the next. Sometimes it would reconnect by itself, but other times (many times) I had to reboot. And rebooting this computer is about a 15 minute process...

The other problem cropped up when I "upgraded" my antivirus software from Norton 2006 to Norton 360. In short, Norton 360 is the worst software I've ever used. It completely slowed my machine down to a standstill, worse than any virus I ever had! Its biggest problem was that it would decide, on its own, to run a virus scan in the background, WHILE I WAS USING THE COMPUTER. Not at midnight, not after detecting 30 minutes of non-use... And to make it worse, there is no way to change the settings to prevent these background scans. After reading literally hundreds of negative reviews of N360 on the internet, I decided I had had enough.

So, Sunday, I made two changes. First, I ran a wire under the house from the router in the bedroom to "my seat" on the couch, where I keep my laptop. Is my laptop wireless now? No, its wired. Is it faster and more reliable connecting to the internet? YEAH BABY! One down, one to go.

The second big change involved completely uninstalling Norton 360 (even though it is paid for through next year), and installing the highly-rated, free anti-virus program "Avast!". Avast is much much much easier on system resources than Norton 360 ever thought about being.

The overall result of these two changes is that my old Dell is faster and more reliable than it has been in many months. The internet is fast, always connected, and rebooting doesn't take 15 minutes (and actually isn't required very often now). Needless to say, I'm a pretty happy camper!

So, no excuses now for not blogging!!!

Technology

Have you ever stopped and thought about what an incredible time we live in? It really is amazing how quickly technology is advancing.

About eight or nine years ago, Zach and I went up to Virginia to visit my parents. During the trip, Zach and I joined my Dad on a trip into Washington DC to do the museums. At the Museum of American History, we went through an exhibit that showed the history of the computer. As we walked through the exhibit, we saw room-sized pieces of the first modern electronic computer, called Eniac. In the next room, they had some huge IBM mainframe computers from the 1960's (they were bigger than a car!)

I remember my Dad commenting that when he started working for the Naval Research & Development center (he retired after 40 years there), those were the computers he remembers using. I was pretty amazed...some of the older PCs looked familiar to me, but the stuff my Dad remembered seemed ancient: big, clunky, awkward machines with vacuum tubes and wires going everywhere...

It occurred to me then, and again today at work, how quickly technology is changing before our eyes. I'm only 41 years old (only?), but its still pretty cool to think about how much things have changed since I was a kid.

Here are some examples you may be able to relate to, if you are 40 or older. (You 25-and-unders, just sympathize with me here...):

• Telephones: When I was a kid, our house had two wall-mounted rotary-dial phones. It used to take forever to dial a simple 7-digit number! Those were eventually replaced with wall-mounted pushbutton phones (with the same curly cords), and then by wireless phones. Those first "cordless" phones were HUGE by today's standards...if you're ever watching Seinfeld, look for the cordless phone he uses, it looks "ginormous"! Of course, today the tiny cell phone has taken over, and phones are now associated with people, not with locations. In the olden days, we would call and ask "Who is this?" Now we call and ask, "Where are you?"
  
  
• Music: I got into music when I was about 12, and joined the Columbia Record Club. I'll never forget the day my 7 "free" 12" vinyl LP records arrived...woo hoo! (No, I never did 8-track tapes.) I had amassed a pretty large record collection when everything started changing to cassette tapes. Cassettes were cool - you could play them in your car or on a portable "boom box"! I re-recorded most of my records onto cassettes, and then CD's came out. Aaargh! They were a big improvement: no more records skipping, no more cassette "hiss" noise. But I pretty much had to re-buy all my albums, but on CD. Now, of course, music has gone digital. If we buy a CD, we rip it onto our iPods immediately, but more often than not we download straight from iTunes... My 80GB iPod contains every song on every CD I ever bought, and still is only about 1/3 full! Absolutely amazing progression in about 25 years.
  
  
• Writing: I learned to type on my mother's 1950's vintage Royal typewriter. This thing had a black cast-iron frame, shiny round black keys that were really hard to push down, and a carriage return lever that would go "ding!" when you "hit return". You really had to peck the keys, or your letters would turn out faint grey (and you'd get a bad grade!) In the 1980's, Mom bought a IBM Selectric II typewriter. This thing was touch-sensitive: just barely touch the key, and the typewriter would do the hard work of typing the letter on the paper. And it had a "correction" button that would print a white patch over the last letter you typed, so you could type the correct letter over the top of that! This was all replaced by word processor programs on the personal computer, of course. Volkswriter, Word Perfect, then Microsoft Word. I still recall trying to explain to my Mom that the words I was typing were "in the computer", and that I wouldn't PRINT them until I had everything fixed just right "in the computer". She was used to composing her thoughts directly to paper...it was a real mind-blowing change for her. And of course now, we don't even need to create a "document" at all - we publish directly to the internet, like with this blog. Awesome.
  
  
• Computers: Probably the biggest progress has been made with the personal computer (PC). I can say that in my lifetime, I have personally experienced the birth of the PC! In high-school (1980-84), we used Atari 800 computers, which had amazing graphics for back in the day. This was about the time the first IBM PC came out, the first computer to really "take off" on a big scale. I went off to Virginia Tech as a freshman engineering student in 1984, with my new IBM "PC portable". This "portable" was really heavy, and about the size of a suitcase, so we nicknamed it the "luggable". It had two 5.25" floppy disk drives, a monochrome screen, and no hard drive (!). All your programs were on floppies, and all the documents you created were on floppies. (For you Mac types, my roomate had an original Apple Macintosh...we played a lot of this which was considered an awesome game in 1986.) I started at Michelin in 1988, and witnessed a lot of technology advances: hard drives (mid 80s), Microsoft Windows 3.1 (1990, first time we used a mouse!), first laptops (early 1990s). In 1993, Cathy and I signed up with America Online, which we would connect to with a 28kbps modem (SLOW!!!). AOL at the time was sort of like the internet, but not all self-contained. We eventually got a 56k modem, bagged AOL for Concentric(an ISP), and connected to the internet for the first time (late 90's). It was cool, but still slow. Today, we take wireless broadband internet for granted, but sometimes I forget how incredible it is compared to before! I'm sitting comfortably on my couch, with a wireless laptop, publishing to the internet, where this post will be available for anyone in the world to read. Wow!
  

Just as I was amazed at the wide range of technological improvements my Dad had seen in his lifetime, it occurred to me that I will likely see much more progress than he ever did. And you young folks will live (God willing) to see even more change than I ever will.

Will all these changes make our world a better place? More convenient, yes, more comfortable, yes, but probably not "better". Human nature has not changed -- we are still sinners living in a fallen world. Each of us still must choose whether we will do good or evil, but whatever we choose, technology is enabling us to do more of it, faster, and more easily than ever before.

Well, my brain hurts from just thinking about it, so I'm off to the refrigerator for a little non-technological time.

Thank goodness ice-cream sandwiches are still the same!

Patience

I've never really been a patient person.

Just ask my sons Brandon and Zach about my parenting style, they'll tell you! Ha! I'm significantly more patient now than I was 25, it's true, but I still have a long way to go.

Why all this talk about patience, you ask? Well, ten minutes ago I came really close to throwing my laptop on the floor and stomping the screen. No, not figuratively, literally.

You see, my laptop is pretty old, and has one of those wireless cards you stick in the side of it. Normally it works well, but every so often it has spells where it just doesn't want to work. It will connect to the internet for say, five minutes, and then disconnect, and not let you reconnect. Very annoying if you are wanting to do something NOW, like make a blog post. This is exactly what happened to me ten minutes ago.

I finally had to reboot the computer in order for it to recognize the wireless card again. Problem is, this computer takes about ten minutes to start up, load the bloated "Norton Antivirus", and get to the point where the hourglass goes away and you can actually do something. When it finally came up, I knew exactly what I was going to blog about -- what a (*#&$@ hunk of junk this laptop is! Sure, I realized I should probably not blog to vent my frustrations, but I had reached my limit. I was gonna tell everyone just what was what, how unjust it was that I should have such a crummy PC, etc.

Just before going to blogger.com to start my rant, I decided to read Part 2 of Brandon's latest post about his Mac laptop. Which I did.

And something happened.

Brandon's post is really a God thing. You see, Brandon recently went through a big ordeal with his Mac laptop, and was real close to writing a blog post blasting the seller for all the hassle he had to go through. But after some thought (and prayer no doubt), Brandon did the adult thing, the mature thing, the Christlike thing. He showed restraint, and instead wrote about the situation in a way that did not tear anyone down. Did not name names. Did not trash a reputation, though it might actually deserve it.

After reading Brandon's post and letting it sink in, the urge to write a whiny blog post about how slow my laptop is just sorta left me, if you know what I'm saying. In fact, I am thankful for this laptop, because 95% of the time it works really well, and has been a blessing. Plus, I hate hearing other people whine about insignificant stuff, when so many people are fighting cancer, starving, homeless, etc. So shame on me!

It's cool to know that all those lectures and speeches I gave Brandon must have sank in. It's even cooler to be able to learn learn lessons about proper behavior from your children.

Can I come out of my room now?