The other evening as my tech head teenage son, Luke, drove me home after work, he announced that he’s off Facebook.

I’ve been “Facebook” sober for ten days,” he said proudly.

“Why now?”  I asked.

He mentioned that he’d seen some Youtube videos recently that pointed out that while you’re spending all your time on Facebook you’re missing out on a lot of real activities. It also is a lot of “me, me, me,” he added. “And that got me thinking.”

So my 18 year old is Facebook sober, and I’m wondering if that isn’t part of a trend as teens begin to realize that Facebook friends are really no friends at all, and that there is a really cool life out there unfiltered by Facebook, their computer or smart phone.

By the way, I’m on Facebook, but I rarely post, most of my “friends” are family, and I rigously “nuke” anyone who posts something stupid like, for example, the friend who posted a syrupy love note to her dear husband.  Okay, she loves her husband. I get that. But the thing is, her husband doesn’t have a Facebook account, so who, really, was the post for?  I don’t like showboats in sports and this seemed like a Facebook version of it.  Also, the cynical Mike had to wonder what was the motivation behind the posting.  An overcompensation for something I truly don’t want to know?

In any case, I won’t see any more of her posts. I not only hid her news feed, I nuked her from my friend list and I feel so much better for it.

I have never read a better submarine book.  right up there with RUN SILENT RUN DEEP by Ed Beach. your detailed description of life aboard a diesel boat was uncanny.  you description of the headache caused by high CO2 caused me to have a headache from the memories.  I qualified on a diesel boat in 1959.  You brought back some old, rusty memories.  MANY THANKS!

Last week he had his annual checkup and we ended up purchasing a new hearing aid. It wasn’t cheap – $3,200. And no help from our medical insurance. Gulp. But the changes in technology during the past few years have been so dramatic, we couldn’t “not” upgrade his hearing aid. It is always easy to read the manufacturers claims and get excited by them, but nothing demonstrated the enhancements more clearly to me than during dinner when I noticed that my son was glancing in my direction.

“What?” I said, covering my mouth, wondering if I had a piece of carrot sticking between my front teeth.

He smiled.  “I can hear you,” he said.

“What do you mean you can hear me?”

I can hear you chewing your lettuce.”

“No way?”

He nodded. “Way.”

“You’ve never heard that before, have you?”

I didn’t think it was possible, but his smile became even brighter. “This is the first time,” he said.  “And hey, would you mind eating a little more quietly?”

“Don’t push it, bud,” I said.

My youngest son is one of the toughest people I know. He operates in a world where he’s constantly on guard, trying to make sure he hasn’t missed out on some essential information because he simply didn’t hear it. Throw in the ongoing stress of trying to stay afloat in today’s teen culture, and I honestly don’t know how he does it.  And he’s not just surviving, he’s thriving. I’m not sure how much better this hearing aid is over his older one, but when you’re missing out on 50% of the conversations going on around you, even a 5% improvement is huge. And if it comes along with hearing your old man chewing on lettuce, that’s just a bonus.

And then he mentions something that makes me smile.

Squirrels are bad guys, he says. They seem to like the fluid used to help lubricate data cables. How they can smell the fluid through plastic insulation is beyond me, but they apparently can, and because of that particular attraction, they like to snack on cables like they’re red vines, causing occasional outages in services like MSN, Hotmail, and other offerings from this large, Redmond-based software company.

I immediately flashback on an article I read years ago featuring computer pioneer, Grace Hopper. In the article she tells how computer “bugs” got their name. Early computers were big, room-sized machines that had their fair share of mechanical switches. As they were running a new machine through its paces, it suddenly stopped. After a few hours of looking, they discovered the problem. A moth had flown in through an open window and been smashed between two relays, breaking the connection.

The first bug.

And the name stuck.

But being the weird guy that I am, I start thinking that too bad it wasn’t a squirrel killed in the pursuit of progress instead of a bug. I would much rather be complaining about those damn “squirrels” in the codebase instead of bugs, wouldn’t you?

What’s amazing to me about this number is the fact that “Stinky Dog” is a story that sat on my harddrive for about 15 years. I wrote it back when my kids were younger and I was doing the daily commute (part of it via ferry) between Point No Point and Redmond. During my time on the ferry, I’d write. In fact, it was usually the only time I had to write.

When I finished one story, I’d start another and over the years, the stories began to add up.

After my picture book, “Elizabeth’s Song,” was published by Beyond Words, I ran these stories by the publisher, and I even shoved them under the nose of my agent, but no one was interested.

So “Stinky Dog” resided, in the “attic” folder of my computer. Until last summer when I had some time off and I decided to give e-publishing a go.

I suppose part of the impulse to look into e-publishing came from the chip on my shoulder. A “no” to me is like a red cape to a bull. And I’ve certainly got my share of “no’s” over the the years from publishing professionals. Some were no doubt warranted, but I always felt that they had less to do with what I wrote and more to do with who I was. I’ll admit I felt that they often looked at me like I was poor white trash. So when I’d get a rejection, rather than whimper about it, or feel like it was deserved, I’d think: “Oh yeah? Well, I’ll show you.”

I guess I have.

I also want to thank the guy who barely broke in the great Calvin Klein cotton flannel shirt I wore yesterday. My son says the color brings out the blue in my eyes. I can use any help I can get. The shirt ran me all of 50 cents.

I make a decent salary as a project manager and instructional designer for an e-Learning company, and I can certainly afford to buy “new” clothes. But why? I mean, the used clothes I’ve already mentioned, and the others that I wear, are perfectly fine, reasonably stylish for a man of my age, and best of all, they’re cheaper than a cup of coffee nowadays.  I’m tempted to refer to the guys who got rid of the clothes that I’m now enjoying as suckers or something worse, but, of course, that wouldn’t be nice. So I’ll just say thank you.

Speaking of coffee, I don’t buy it anymore. I have plenty of opportunities to stop in at coffee shops during my commute, but there’s free coffee at work. I’m probably saving $5 a day drinking free Joe as opposed to buying a couple of cups of the over priced acidic stuff they sell at Starbucks.

I also cut my own hair. More about that later.

Check out the full article here.

It can’t be done.

I think the same is true with technology. Technology has become so
ubiquitous, there isn’t one “essential” technology for most of us, unless, of
course, you’re lying in a hospital bed with a mechanical heart pumping away in
your chest, or you find yourself hooked up to a dialysis machine three days each week, or you’re forced to take an oxygen bottle everywhere you go because you’re lungs are slowly dying.

Fortunately, I’m not so reliant on any particular technology that I would die if it suddenly went poof.  In fact, the technologies that came to mind when I first considered this question were anything but life enabling, though I shudder to think how medieval life would be without them. The internal combustion engine is one example.  The refrigerator is another. And let’s not overlook indoor plumbing. I’m sure glad I don’t have to use an outdoor privy when it’s 20 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.

When it comes to the newer technologies, I certainly enjoy playing a kid in the candy store. I love my Kindle, and I’ve had a long standing love affair with personal computers. I still remember the Internet back when it was called the ARPANET and I can’t imagine doing what I do every day without being able to send email to business contacts and friends, or sleuth answers with the help of Google.  I also have a smart phone, watch TV on Hulu.com, store data on the Cloud, and take advantage of a countless number of software and hardware gadgets.

But if someone forced me to name a technology that I just couldn’t live without, I’d probably blurt out word processing software.   Trying to imagine a time before word processors is a bit like trying to imagine life before fire.  It’s impossible. The idea of permanently fixing text onto a page—either with pen or typewriter—now seems about as advanced as chiseling letters into stone and not that much more portable.  Word processors make writing as fluid as sculpturing with clay. Instead of using an eraser when I want  to change a sentence or make a correction, I can just press the delete key. For common typos, I don’t even need to do that because my word processor has grown so smart it now fixes them automatically. Because words now reside in cyberspace, I can send them anywhere with the click of my mouse: post them on a blog, or email them to a friend for a quick critique.

The synergy between word processing software (and other kinds of text editors) and the Internet means that what I write is now available instantaneously to anyone with web access anywhere on the planet. Of course, word processors don’t make anyone a better writer.  In many cases, word processing and the Internet are simply enabling garbage at the speed of light.  But I can’t imagine having the patience to write a half dozen novels and countless other stories without my pick for the one gadget I can’t live without, the Charlie Brown of technologies, word processing software.

It’s a crazy time in the book business and no one knows where it is going to all end up, though the increasing popularity of ebooks and Amazon’s announcement last spring that for the first time they’d sold more ebooks than physical books is a sign of things to come, according to many experts.

I finally broke down and bought a Kindle a few months ago and though the experience of reading a book on an electronic device, as opposed to a “bound paper” device is different, it isn’t bad.  I certainly love the sensory delights of old books, and can think of nothing better to do than spend an afternoon browsing through a used book store, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate some of the advantages that come with ebooks.

I’d probably read more books on my Kindle, but I’m kind of a skinflint — I still consume most of my books courtesy of our local library, the Little Boston branch of the Kitsap County Library system.  I read them once, and then return them. If I happen to really like a book, I may buy it, but because I’m trying to reduce the “stuff” in my life, I’ve been resisting that impulse with some success.

The best thing about ebooks is that they are cheaper than printed books — in some cases, a lot cheaper. By flattening the distribution channels and reducing the costs of production, I would hope that it would mean more are going to be “books” are sold, more people will be reading, and more money will trickle down to authors. That would be nice. . .