Tech Dads

The old dad who fixed everything around the house with and adjustable and Philips head and a hammer, adjusting training wheels on bikes, the errant leaky faucet, the malfunctioning lamp that just wont stay lit, have been replaced by the tech dads of 2012. Tech dads around Christmas are not the men staying up late to put together the bike. The tech dad is hunched over his laptop solving tech problems for his kids much the way the old dads used to solve problems with a wrench.

Take Christmas day. I set up two notebooks complete with getting them online and punching in encryption codes and changing screen savers and passwords. Not a big deal really. The tech dad nightmare was my seven year olds Mp3 player. I get why Steven Jobs did such a great thing with the IPOD, because the old technology barely worked. Two hours to get the little bugger to talk with rhapsody and download music then I just started sliding over my own mp3 files from my laptop.

Then it was on to the remote control helicopter. No biggie really except extremely difficult to fly. Many crashes. Then onto setting up the digital camera so it would download. Not extremely difficult. The Uverse guy shows up and I have to transition all computers to the new provider. Rebooting and passwords and encryption keys. Setting up the phone to Tivo and control the television. Some tech issues to resolve between televisions.

The mp3 player craps out. The notebooks cant find the WIFI and my sons speakers need to be hooked up and his phone wont sync to the axillary jack on his receiver. Encryption keys and rebooting and the tape monitor circuit for the phone and recharge the mp3 player. All is well until the wife's laptop crashes.

Tech dad is on the job.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...I have one word...plastics!
Hemingways Attic...surviving as a writer

Anthony Wieners Wiener

It isn't so much that Anthony Wiener snapped a picture of his own wiener and shot it out into cyberspace via twitter it is that the media machine between Palins Wallyword vacation takes a break and puts Wieners Wiener page one in cable and network land. The wiener in question hacked by the crazed hacker who shot it off to the unsuspecting innocent is now abroad in some cafe on the left bank with a mask on and a handheld, laughing into his latte as Wiener explains his wiener to Wolf Blitzer who looks like he never had a wiener and if he did it had a beard.

But famed nobody Andrew Brightbart could not wrestle this wiener to the ground as twitter pulled in every network and newspaper in one hundred forty character hubris or the equivalent pixilation which makes for a very grainy wiener shot indeed. Anthony Wiener on explaining his wiener told Wolf and anyone who would listen that a hacker prankster punk took a shot of his wiener unbeknowst to him and tweeted his weiner to all would follow a Wiener. But is it your wiener Wolf persisted. Lets just say I wont dignify that with an answer Mr. Wiener responded.

And even as Lawrence O'Donnell berated the Wiener followers and Weinter cabitzers for being so fascinated with Wieners wiener he led with the story also to say no one should lead with a wiener story and haven't we fallen to a new low? Indeed. Mr. Wiener held fast to his hacked punked pranked story but did not specifically deny the wiener in question was his wiener bringing more wiener speculation from the Wiener watchers and followers.

At the end of the day all we know for sure is that a mans' wiener was compromised by being tweeted by someone and we cannot be sure that the wiener was not Anthony Weiner's weiner who tweeted his own wiener but that it is someones wiener even though Anthony Wiener will not say that is it not his wiener but that he was punked hacked or pranked by somewhere out there in cyberspace by someone who possibly took Anthony Wieners weiner and tweeted it for all the world to see. The moral to the story is that no man  should ever tweet another man's wiener. Especially not Anthony Wieners wiener.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Are Computers our Titanic?

She was unsinkable. Technology had reached a point in 1912 that man could conquer the seas. The largest ship in the World set off for New York and never reached her destination. The Titanic went to the bottom taking 1500 souls with her. Our unsinkable creation went down like a stone against mother nature. That black berg waiting out on the dark icy seas reminded us that we were still just puny humans against the forces of the Universe. The great War started several years later and we saw the dark side of our vaunted technological prowess when millions of men perished under machine guns and high explosive shells.

And now we have another disaster. The tornado in Joplin. Our Titanic is the computer, the cellular phone, the IPAD, IPOD, IPHONE. We cannot be wired enough in our digital cocoon. We master the world with out handhelds and have apps that tell us the weather, the stars, the history of the World. What more could we want and yet with all our wired technology over 125 died in Joplin and people are still dying from storms and tornadoes. And probably ninety percent of those people had a phone or a computer just before their house or their hospital or their KMART imploded from the negative pressure of a F4 tornado. So with all our vaunted technology, we are still running for our lives.

Could it be we now live in the same bubble the people who sailed on the Titanic lived in?The bubble of the digital age exists mostly in our mind. It has little to do with the physical world. If you put a computer in a field it is essentially worthless. You can not eat the computer and once it runs dead or loses contact with a hotspot it isn't even as good as a primitive Morse code transmitter. It is just a hunk of plastic. That's what we carry with us now. Hunks of plastic with batteries. You can bet those people in Joplin running for their lives, you can bet a bunch of them clutched these hunks of plastic that didn't tell them to find shelter or what to do when a mile wide tornado is bearing down on you. Where is that app RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. Should have downloaded that one.

But the computer seems very puny against the monster force of a tornado. The computer is a human generated device for humans to communicate with. It is programmed and powered by humans. The data is provided by humans. It seems sometimes we believe God is providing us with our apps or our songs or our directions or our maps or answering that weird question about Liberace or who really is the fastest pitcher in the world. Sadly, it is not God. It is just another mortal with a plastic device. And so we are left with our super fast digital age confronting storms that destroy towns in seconds. Snuff out lives with the indifference of the Universe.

And we can relate to those people who plunged into the icy Atlantic from their elaborate ship complete with heated swimming pools and bowling alleys. The Titanic was the most advanced ship of it's time, it was their IPAD, their IPHONE, their bluetooth. And yet those people thrashed around in a cold dark sea that cared nothing for them or the fact their magnificent ship was headed for the bottom of the Atlantic. Humans live in their own world and maybe that is because the world outside could care less if we live or die. Where is the app for that one?


http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man will blast off this summer



.

Talking Books and ending up in Technoland

It just seems technology trumps all. You start out by talking books and end up talking technology. Inevitably someone has a Kindle. So the conversation swings from the merit of a book or the suggestion of  a book to the device delivering the book. Do you have the talking kindle? Do you have the small Kindle? What screen settings do you like? Where did you get your Kindle? How much did you pay?

This then brings in the technological trump card. Phones. Who has an IPhhone and how do they like it and what do you use it for and how much did you pay and what plan and how does it compare to the Blackberry. You make small attempts to steer the conversation back to books or just about anything but the technology genie is out of the bottle.

What do you think of the IPAD? Do you use one? Did you hear about the way it converts writing into text? How about voice recognition software? Do you use that? I hear typing will be going away all together. How much did you pay for your IPAD and do you have an IPOD? You get my point. Technology is now the safe conversation. It is the ailment or weather conversation of yesteryear, because everyone can weigh in and the best thing is you did not have to read the book.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out in September
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/