Life after weddings

Last weekend my daughter was married. MARRIED!

Who would believe it?

I've been joking that a wedding is a lot like a colonscopy-- the prep is far worse than the actual procedure, and after the fact, you have to look at the pictures to even remember what actually took place. It's all a blur.

In truth the pace of technological changes is much like this also. You spend hours learning to use a software program and briefly enjoy reaping the benefits of the new tool. Put it aside and you can only vaguely remember why you thought you needed the program/tool. Something new has replaced it. Something different is now the 'in' thing. If you kept track of the time you spent in learning, relearning, and actually using all these wondrous tools, would technology have saved you any time at all?

Keeping Up with Technology

Once, many years ago we converted Super-8 video to VHS tapes and felt like we had accomplished a once-in-a-lifetime acrobatic feat. This weekend, with temperatures dipping to -17, it was time for pre-spring clean-up and I unearthed floppy disks, zip disks, and all sorts of technologies on my bookshelves that I no longer can use.

How do we cope with technology changing so rapidly that we can spend a weekend a year updating from disks to CDs to DVDs to thumbdrives to iPods. How do we know that the format we choose will be here in 6 months, let alone 6 or 60 years?

When I browse through old photographs that remain crisp with detail, I wonder if our newer digital wonders will last through the generations as well.

Cold Enough For You?

As I begin my first blog, it is -10 outside. I'm sure some statistics student someplace is contemplating the question of bloggers: are there bloggers living in cold climates? are people more introspective when they are sitting in the cold and the dark? are their postings darker and more twisted?

Of course I should mention that I *love* the cold and the dark and the snow. Good thing too for I'm an Alaskan.