Our assignment for this blog was to interview someone over age 55 and talk with them about their attitudes on technology and social media. I chose to interview my dad. My dad is 74 years old. He was born a few years before the start of WWII. He grew up in Las Vegas Nevada. His prompted his dad to have a phone installed. My dad has not been without one since. In the early days it was a “party line” phone, you called the operator and had them connect calls for you,

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 and when you got an incoming call you had to listen for the correct ring. When I was a kid I remember our ring was 3, it had to ring three times before we could answer, three close rings together. In the 1960’s party lines were already obsolete, but our phone exchange where we lived was one of the last one to change over to dial telephones.  My father was really happy to get a phone as a kid, but he still mostly ran over to his friends’ houses to get up with them. Now as an adult, my father has a land line phone, and a cell phone. He did not get his cell until 2001. My girlfriend at the time convinced him it would be a good thing to have. Two days after he got his first cell, he got into an accident and was injured. He used his phone to call for help and call home to let my mother know what had happened. Now he won’t leave the house without it. He started using the internet and e-mail in ’99. He really enjoys this medium of communication. His attitudes towards most social media is rather pedestrian, he does not want anything to do with it. He would still much rather call his buddies, and talk rather than log in to Facebook.  He got an account last year to vote in the American Idol stuff. He saw that he could get more votes for his favorite performers with Facebook, so he created an account. He logs in about once a week, and looks for messages, then he’s done for the week. My dad thinks that social media is making it easier for people not to connect on a personal level, doing it online leaves it at casual. As for me, I don’t believe that. I do feel that sometimes we, especially those of us that have come of age since the invention of such things spend far too much time this way. We may just be better off if we turn off, log out and go visit a friend. A thought my dad readily agrees with.

Well, Here is my first Blog for class, It is late, I hope that I don't mess that up again. I am here today to talk about me. My presence in social media as it were. First a little history. I am a very non traditional student. I restarted college in August 2009, after a career in the Navy where I worked  as an Electronics Technician. My family got our first computer in the 1970's, it was a Radio Shack TRS80. Not much of a computer by today's standards. Then we got a Coleco Adam computer. (OMG, spell check does not recognize Coleco or Colecovision. That makes me feel old). I got my first modern computer, a Pentium in 1996, I paid AOL for the privilege of connecting to the internet, and giving me an e-mail address. Later I learned about Hotmail, I got an address billbyrd@hotmail.com (It's still active an forwards to my gmail. That's where I started. I got an account at Myspace when it was hip, (probably there, I have not checked it for years) Once I had access to high speed internet i left AOL behind, and now pity those who are still wearing training wheels. I learned about Palm pilots in the late 90's and bought one even before a cell phone. I have been a cell phone user since 1997, and got my first smart phone when Palm invented the Treo. In 2006, I discovered Facebook. (My timeline only goes back to 2008 for some reason) and I have 1370 friends, many group and pages that I follow. Interesting point, I know almost all of the personally. I sing in Barbershop quartets and choruses. So I have spent real world time with most of them. I am members of several list serve type discussion groups, mostly involving Barbershop music. I started this Blogger page some time ago, but Have never done much with it. I have been on linked-in for a few years, and google+ since they started it a while back. 

I signed up for Twitter for the class, and checked my Klout score,found out right away, due to my lever of activity on Facebook I had a score of 39. Now here is is barely two weeks later, and I am up to 45. I still don't quite know how I feel about Twitter, but I will play with it, and send my thoughts out to the twitterverse for all to see. I will hold my judgement on the need for it. 

I have a tendency to get wrapped up in projects, and forget to do other things that I am supposed to be doing, so we can anticipate I may miss another deadline, but through the use of electronic reminders and prompts, I hope to avoid that fate.

Well for now, I have run out of things to talk about, Have a great weekend.