It's time for another Blog for class, Late again because I misplaced my syllabus that told me when it was due and what to write about, Seems normal for me, I need to be better about these things. This Blog is to be about a day without the Internet, and how I deal with it, and about my thoughts and reflections on the event. 

     My day without the Internet started Friday morning. My wife and I were traveling to Ocean City Maryland for the weekend. I got up, and started to get ready for my trip, my first instinct was to log on and check email, I remembered I was spending the day without the Internet, and decided not to check it. I also had an urge to check out my Facebook, and twitter accounts. I declined to do both. I had a printed copy of my directions to my hotel, and I remembered to get them from the printer. We set off, about an hour after we had planned, nothing new there. We often joke about how that keeps happening to us. I drove to OC, as we call Ocean City, and listened to the radio in my can, normally I would use Pandora, or Spotify while driving, but since I was doing without the Internet I decided that would be cheating. I got to the hotel and learned it had a free Wi-Fi connection, I would not need that today.

The first event of our convention was to begin at 5:30, so we crossed the street to the convention center. Once we got there my friend Ritchie asked if I had seen the Facebook post about Mike Rowe (the dirty jobs guy). It seems he was there at our convention. I told him I was on an Internet free day. So, he told me all about it. Cool. Mike is a member of our barbershop hobby, his High School music teacher was a famous man in our world. Mike rarely gets back for one of our conventions, and this doing away with my Internet for the day was looking a bit more difficult as I progressed.   I already missed checking in to see what was going on, and the news. During the first contest session, I kept my phone off and in my pocket. That’s not so bad. When the contest was over my family asked me to see where we could get something to eat at 11 pm, but without the Internet I was unable to do it. We drove down the street until we found a burger place, and stooped in for a late supper. The back to the hotel, and to sleep for the night.

Saturday morning I decided to again forgo Internet for the day. It was nerve wracking not being able to check in and get the latest news. Funny in years past this was how my weekends used to be. Now I am so addicted to my RSS feeds and Facebook/twitter and email, that I missed being in touch. I was lonely, at first, then I got involved with the events at the convention. My only slip was after the afternoon session, the presenter (otherwise known as the MC) said that to determine who did a better job presenting the contest to log on to twitter and cast my vote. OK, I pulled out my phone, and tweeted that Tony had done a better job. Oops, I was doing without the Internet today. Oh well, it that is my only slip I’m still good. Saturday continued and my phone stayed in my pocket. I missed the news from is continued until I arrived home, It’s about a 3 hour drive to OC, and I had a hard time with the radio, but my wife understood I was conducting an experiment, and did not complain. I put in a CD after a while and we listened to some good music. We got home, unloaded the car, and took a nap. That nap lasted until Monday morning. I got up, logged on and realized I had missed a lot of stuff. Big wreck in Indy Car racing, drivers hospitalized. In NASCAR my favorite driver had a really bad day. Wow, I didn’t used to follow a lot of that stuff, politics, and sports, and similar stuff. I really felt out of touch.

It seemed worse to me after I got back online than when I was locked out, I did not seem to care about it if I didn’t hear it at the time. Once I got back in, I really noticed that I was behind. Being connected really enhances my day. So much for being able to turn it off. I bothered me more after the fact than it did while it was happening. Interesting!

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,

Image courtesy of archshrk.com

 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.  

1988 Fiero Formula For sale

Great car, I just cannot complete it on current budget.

I can't believe how people can believe that it is ok to tax higher incomes a higher percentage.

Ok, I agree if you make a million dollars a year you should pay more in taxes than the guy that makes $10,000. But if you charge them both the same percentage rate, the rich guy is paying far more taxes. Lets grab a number, say 15%. 15% of $10,000 is equal to $1,500, while 15% of $1,000,000 is equal to $150,000. I could accept this as fair. but many of those on the left, and the ignorant masses they are educating in the government schools, think that charging the rich 90% of their income is fair. Lets use the same numbers, 15% for the poor guy, so he is still getting to use 85% of his $10,000 that comes to , $8500 left in his pocket, and $1500 to uncle Sam. OK rich guy, pays 90% of his 1,000,000 to uncle Sam. He gets to use $100,000 while paying the USA $900,000. In what universe would this be fair? not in this one. Use some common sense. Most people, human nature being what it is, would take a look at those numbers, and say let's not make 1,000,000 this year. The tax rate goes down a 200,000. so I would pay 40% there. $200,000 minus 40% is equal to $120,000 to uncle Sam, and $80,000 left in the pocket. and about an extra 100 hours in the week in which to spend with family, that I won't get if I make the 1 Million and only take home $100,000. Sounds like a better deal to me. Of course the super rich, like Madonna, Oprah, and the other Hollywood celebs that say tax the rich more, they don't pay US taxes, they emigrate to some warm banana republic where they can live a few weeks a year, and claim citizenship. Nassau Bahamas anyone?

In the 30's, through the 50's we had a lot of super rich celebs, and businessmen move to Paris, Cuba, and other exotic ports of call. They did not pay the 90% rates, they chose to leave. Tell Bill Gates and Steve Jobs that you are going to take 90% of everything, Do you think they would stay here?

While I am ranting here, lets talk about corporation and corporate taxes. Have you ever seen a business lowering it's profits to pay taxes? I don't think so, the stockholders would be up in arms. They pass those costs through to the consumer in the guise of higher prices. You say "ooh, that's evil, they can't get away with that", but ask yourself, would you buy stock in a company that paid those higher taxes out of profits? I didn't think so.\
Ireland got it right a few years ago. They lowered corporate taxes. Many businesses moved there. Lets lower our corporate tax rate to 5%, and see how it effects businesses here. I bet a lot of those that relocated out of the country would come back.

So called health care reform

1) First of all, as has been said many times, it is miss labeled. The bill passed this weekend does nothing about health care. It is supposed to be about health insurance.

2) Where does the Constitution authorize this kind of thing? Yeah sure you are going to tell me the "General welfare" clause in the preamble. Wrong, all the preamble does is tell us what the document is about. Commerce clause? Wrong again. Back a few years ago, (like 70 or 80) the supreme court made a poor choice and allowed a seemingly inappropriate law to be considered under the commerce clause even though it had nothing to do with regulating interstate commerce. Ever since then Congress has been able to eat away the power of the constitution and enact more inane laws about things the constitution specifically gave power to the states. Read the damn document!

3) This whole bill is bad for the country. Right now because of the way health care is done here in the USA, medical companies, and "Big Pharma" have incentives to innovate, and research. Once you take away the freedom to do that, by having a governmental panel decide who gets what care, the innovation is no longer incentivized.

3) To quote a former president "It's the economy stupid!" Higher taxes and more debt will not fix the economy. That's what this bill does. Not only that but we get to pay for it in new taxes for years before we see any of it's "benefits." Our beloved Government is again playing fast and loose with the numbers here. Go Figure!

OMG Idol guest performers

Was it just me, or was Ke$ha completely awfull last night. It was so bad I had to look up who she was today just to be able to name her. The other guest performer, (Who's name I simarly cannot recall), was not much better. How can the Producers put such poor performers on when they are trying to pick a new star?