PhoneBoy Says

He's off in the distance. Need a proper camera with a zoom lens to get a good shot.

Taken with my Nokia N73 yesterday at the zoo.

This post from one of Ken Camp's lesser known blogs (Edit: that's his son. Ken Camp Sr.posted it on Vox) got me thinking about what happened between his generation and mine that caused this radical shift from being utterly carefree with kids versus wanting to know whom they are with, what they are doing, is there a parent present, and how they are getting back and forth.

Us Gen-Xers are probably one of the last generations that can relate to many of the statements that were in Ken's posting. When I was six, I walked by myself up the street to catch a school bus on an extremely busy road. I frequently stayed out until the street lights came on--and sometimes even later than that. When I was seven, I took a city bus to school--even having to change buses, and I had to cross a very busy street to get to the bus in the morning! This was the late 1970s. Even well into the 1980s, I was riding my bike to and from school, and just about anywhere else in between.

Then something happened. I don't think it was one event, but it was several events that, over time, brought us all closer:

• Cable TV. Cable TV started back in the 1970s--heck where I lived, that was pretty much your only choice if you wanted to watch TV. But it didn't really start growing much until the 1980s when we started seeing more than 13 channels. CNN. MTV. ESPN. This gave us a different world view than we were getting from our local TV stations, which really didn't even cover our local area. They either covered San Jose-north, or Salinas-south. Santa Cruz was hardly a blip.
• Bulletin Board Systems. One thing that was starting to become popular in the 1980s were Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes). Think dialing a phone number to reach what amounts to a specific web site today, except no fancy graphics. Now, granted, personal computers weren't in every home. Only the rich or someone lucky enough to beg, borrow, or steal one from someone else had a personal computer, let alone a modem. But what BBSes did was provide a connection to a wider area of people within your local calling area. But even BBSes evolved to permit communication beyond local calling areas. Think FidoNet and UUCP.
• The Internet. Now granted the Internet started much earlier than the 1980s. However, in the early 1990s, a lot of non-academics started discovering and using the Internet. Then, of course, Netscape hit the scene. Then Yahoo. Those two events did more to shrink the world than anything I experienced previously.

Back before all this stuff came about, we were a bit more isolated. You had no idea how many weirdos were out there. And for the most part, the weirdos didn't know either. Much like all of these advancements has brought average people closer together, it has also brought the weirdos closer together, too. Now they congregate just like, say, people who like Pink Floyd might do. And, of course, where the weirdos congregate, they share stories, swap tips, and make the collective group of weirdos much smarter. And that makes them that much more dangerous to our kids.

I would argue that, statistically speaking, things that weirdos might do to your kids is probably not that much higher than it was when, say, my dad was a kid. What has changed, though is that we have heard a constant barrage of these stories for the past 20 years or so. And while I can't say with any certainty what the rationale is, I believe that my parents and my parents parents just didn't know the risks of what they were allowing us to do. Or maybe they did, but they took solace in the though that it couldn't happen to my kids. It probably won't, but everytime it happens somewhere else in the country, you will be sure to find out about it.

The end result of this is now we won't let our kids walk the 1000 feet or so it is between our front door and the school bus stop just up the street, at least by themselves--a walk my parents would have had no problem letting me do when I was my son's age. Nor will we let them go off somewhere and play outside without an adult watching. It's a changed world for sure, or at least our awareness of it has changed since the 1980s. And, as they saying goes, you can never go back.

It seems appropriate that a song by Pink Floyd captures the experience of airline travel in their song "Point Me At The Sky" which I'm sure had nothing to do with their motivations for writing the song.

For if you are stout you will have to breathe out
While the people around you breathe in

People pressing on my sides
It's something that I hate
And so is sitting down to eat
With only little capsules on my plate

I had posted the lyrics to this song earlier, but I realized what I had was incorrect. There are actually a number of transcriptions of the lyrics, and they are all wrong in at least one place.

And yes, this means I'm home now. :)

In about 24 hours, I should be back home again, or at least much closer to home than I am now. Being away from the usual stuff at home is nice, but I can only spend so long living out of a suitcase and eating out. I eventually miss the creature comforts of home. I miss an Internet connection that doesn't suck. I miss a comfortable bed.

On the other hand, being down in the Bay Area is also like being at home. The weather, the people, the places. They are what I grew up with. But it's different. Not quite like I remember it. And there's traffic. And the housing situation down here sucks.

This is not a subject I want to think about. It makes my head hurts. It's also a little sad. You can't really go back.

One of the things I don't like so much about traveling is that I am way out of my normal patterns. Sure, the change of pace and piece and quiet is nice, but things that I normally do simply don't get done. This week, one of those things involves my RSS reader. I have had enough things to do this week that I haven't had the time to spend a lot of time reading what's going on.

And as I look at the ever-increasing stack of articles in the RSS reader, my motivation to tackle it shrinks. And that seems to happen with a lot of things. The bigger and more daunting the task before me, the less likely I am to want to tackle it. That's why I'm really working to keep my inbox at zero, even if I can't seem to get to anything in the "todo" folders.

Oh well, instead of obsessing over it, I'm just gonna go watch some television.

If you're into that sort of things, Happy Valentines Day! Given that I am currently several hundred miles away from my wife--seems to have happened more often than not in the past 8 years--we decided this year that it wasn't worth spending any energy on this time around. We will not be contributing to the $100 average Valentine gift price in any appreciable way. ;)

Show us what's in your bag.
Submitted by Pants Party.

First, I will show you the bag. The new bag I picked up when I talked with my old friend Pradeep at VPN Dynamics:

So what's in the bag? When it's packed, two laptops, a book, various power plugs, cables, do-dads, and so on. So now I have three backpacks on this trip instead of the two I started with. It's rare I end up with more luggage than I started with. It's not as if I want to use it as more luggage means dealing with baggage claim in Sea-Tac on the way back. At least now it is a possibility.

I had one of those moments today that made realize that I suck.

Jaden was looking for one of his Spyro GameBoy cartridge and realized he left it at the gymnastics meet yesterday. And, of course, he came unglued. The wife was getting ready, so I had to try and handle this. And, of course, I sucked. I didn't know what I could tell him that would cheer him up. When he said we could go back to the gym and try and find it, I told him that it was closed and too far away. He asked if we could buy him a new one, I explained that it may not be possible to get that game anymore. Which, of course, didn't help him feel any better.

My wife overheard this and was not happy with how I was handling it. After a smart-ass comment about my handling of the situation--something along the lines of "are you trying to be mean or does it just come naturally"--she asked me why I wasn't saying anything to console him. I told her that I had no clue how to deal with that situation. Of course Jaden goes to mommy and I watched her deal with the situation. And I felt like I sucked.

My wife also made the comment that if I'm able to troubleshoot my way out of these situations at work, how come I can't do it at home. Simple: there are less emotions involved at work. I rarely see the people on the other end of the phone and I am able to think clearly. When presented with a sobbing person, I have a much harder time thinking clearly.

I don't know where I am going with this. I lost my train of thought. Maybe this is part of my difficulty with people. Maybe I just suck. Or maybe I just had a sucky moment. Whatever it is, time to move on.

Taking my semi-regular trip to the Bay Area to visit my co-workers and generally cause trouble. Have these trips almost down to a science in terms of packing. I am getting more efficient at packing for these trips. Helps that I am getting lighter and smaller gear. Or rather "getting better at figuring out what I can do without for a few days."

Despite carrying two laptops and enough clothes for five days, I can get down to two carry on-sized backpacks now. That doesn't leave a lot of extra room, and that's not a bad thing. I want to discourage large purchases or equipment acquisitions while I am in the Bay Area, or at least not carry it on the plane with me. That's why they invented FedEx. In fact, if I were smart, I would have FedExed a lot of stuff to the office already so I wouldn't have to carry as much on the plane. Oh well, maybe I'll be smart enough to do that on the way back…

Meanwhile, back to work, or maybe off to bed.