My uncle is a Luddite

About a year ago I was in Boston for work and my uncle Vern drove down from New Hampshire to have dinner with me. I've always enjoyed my uncle Vern who reminds me a lot of my father. I guess in some ways he's the more senior version of my dad that never moved away from New England. As we were having dinner in the hotel restaurant I was explaining to Vern that I was in Boston working for the city on a project to move inspectors from using paper forms to mobile software on tablet PCs. These inspectors had just been forced to start using Outlook the month before and now were being wrangled into using arguably the most complex software, holding a tablet PC in your hand and navigating it with your stylus and using handwriting recognition has a pretty steep and dramatic learning curve. Naturally, the conversation landed on the inspectors aversion to this new technology and some of the anecdotes of how they dodged adoption.

Vern's eyes lit up during these bits and he immediately jumped in explaining his own personal philosophy of how technology only further separates us. As an assessor he could go online to research property prices and history, but he found it arguable better to drive down to the county offices in person or chat on the phone for a bit. He became such a regular that the county office workers even got to know his dog.

Sitting at the other side of the room was a group of about 5 people in which two of them were cranking out texts on their phones amid jokes and fork fulls of their meal. Vern explained how this was a perfect illustration of how technology was savaging that group's social interaction. I asked, wasn't technology actually enhancing and expanding it. Nicora and I often text throughout business trips and during the day, each allowing us to "be" with the people directly in front of us, while still connecting on all those common questions or exchanges of that familiar relationships consists of: "what are you doing?, how's your day?, Do you want to go to sushi tonight?"

Here's an article I just came across that seems to support the notion that technology provides for greater connection.

Do you think logging-in logs us out of human interaction?

50 years and two fresh starts

We celebrated my grandparents' Golden Anniversary last weekend. Some champagne, a jimmy-rigged wedding cake, little black dresses, and dancing to the oldies. Though I don't entirely believe it's been 50 years of wedded bliss, it's at least been 50 years of steadiness. Sure some bickering, definitely some family drama, but still, a lifetime worthy of looking up to. Josh and I will be the next in the family to reach that milestone and it's a challenge I welcome - my heart still beats true love for Josh and I can't wait to dance a whirl to David Gray in 2052. I obviously won't be a great grandma by then, or at least I certainly hope not, but hopefully there'll be some well-raised, content children to look up to our marriage as I look up to my grandparents'.

With 50 years behind them, my grandparents also get to celebrate two new engagements, two new additions to our fun family. Adria and Rob got engaged this summer and Jake just proposed to Lorressa yesterday. Congratulations to our family on it's summer of love!

Congratulations

Congrats Eli and Rina! A little bit ago an old friend of mine, Eli came back to home and got engaged at the top of Mt. Bachelor nonetheless. Eli have stayed in touch since sixth grade, which is pretty impressive since we haven't actually been in school together since after Jackson Middle School days of Barbershop with Mrs. Cash. It's a pretty great thing to look back on and see a genuine friendship going for that much time and across the different time zones we have been living in.

We're hitting my favorite part of fall and things seem pretty sweet with warm days, the Ducks rocking their first two opponents and my fantasy football league off the ground. Now if I could just figure out how to get the grass green again...

Powerpoint

My recent life in PowerPoint

• I'm a slacker and haven't blogged
  
• Last Saturday equaled 29. (sigh).
• I got mocked for not blogging
  
• Confession, I bought a Mac (and got the free iTouch and printer) it doesn't suck!
• A couple of buddies and I went camping for a weekend at Mt. Raineir and drank obscene amounts of beer and out did a football team in the campground for most obnoxious-up-late beer drinking tards.
  
• I returned to GoldyDale for a grand 10 year reunion celebration which was far too much fun
• I got mocked for not blogging.
  
• I drafted Rud Johnson as a RB on my fantasy football team
• Three weeks later he got dropped by the team
• I put together a module furniture desk and cussed at it for like an hour and dreamed of torturing the idiot engineer by forcing him to put it together.
• I was mocked for not blogging again
• Next Steps
• Questions?
  

August = Almost Over

Summer is slip sliding away. In a good way though. It's been nearly two months of back yard barbeques, rough housing with the dog in the late evening sunlight, tall boys of PBR, and endless watering of the withering front grass. I love summer, even as it fades. Part of the love is in the anticipation of a beautiful fall - the summer sun's work comes to full glory in the turning leaves of October - raking them from the lawn that we fretted over all summer and it all seems to come full circle. As we wear down August, and enter into September, my days on the porch will only lengthen, though the sun will grow more brief - I'll be holding on to summer and the simple moments it provides...but at the same time, i'll be yearning for fall and the wonder it provides.

What do you love about the summer?

Halfsies

I ran a half marathon today. It was good, easier than expected, and...(I swear I'm not whining)...anticlimactic. I haven't "raced" in eleven years, so I don't know what I was expecting to feel when I crossed the finish line, but what I felt wasn't it. Don't get me wrong, i'm proud of myself, I feel good about the fact that I went from zero on the workout scale to a 13.1 miler in 3 months. Perhaps it's my competitive side...i just didn't get the exhiliration that used to come with my high school races. But then, I used to win. So today, I got the, yeah you can finish a half, but 2,000 people can beat you feeling. It might be the blues, but i'll stick with labeling it the anticlimatic blahs.

one must stay sober: not always, but most of the time

so it was off to wine country on Saturday. in keeping with our plan to not have a plan we started out at Bella Vida, moved on to Maresh and then found our selves at Torii Mor's impressive event. We followed this with a quick stop at Wunderlea for their inaugural opening. We had a disgustingly good time tasting wine, gorging ourselves on cheese and crackers. As all things must, this eventually decomposed into a debate on neo liberalism and the ravenous forces of capitalism. Don't worry, no friendships were damaged and any discomfort was assuaged with a raucous bout of four square in the parking lot. Given the chance to stumble your way through the Willamette

valley with your wildly intelligent, Midwestern mobile-software-developing, folklore loving four square driven friends, I strongly encourage you to take the chance and go with it.