The Early Years Pre-Dijicam

This is a photo taken of me, oh, I don’t know, maybe forty-some years ago, back when I was a chick magnet and could play and sing Hank Williams tunes and drink Smirnoff Vodka ’til the sun came up and still put in a good day’s work. Danang, Vietnam 1968 ?

  
Now, that’s a pretty old photo and I was really shocked when the photographer who shot it with his film camera contacted me a few months ago. Ron Meadows, damn, we were sidekicks. He taught me how to play that guitar, or one just like it, 42 years ago!

Well, the world evolved. We have digital stuff everywhere, now. That’s how Ron found me, scanned a photo he probably had stuffed in a shoebox or scrapbook all those years and emailed it to me. He searched for me a long time, before the internet was invented, spent money looking for me, even. After awhile he figured I was dead. Along came the digital age, the internet, scanners, digital (Diji, in Japanese) cameras, Facebook, laptop computers, satellites, GPS, Celular Phones and lithium batteries and I’ll be a sonovbitch if Ron didn’t find me!

Before I really do die we’re gonna get drunk together, maybe, one more time. Thanks, Ron, we’ll do beer and not ride Harleys, OK?

 

Remember the Good Old Days?

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, typewriters didn’t have plastic keys!

This was a brand new laptop, just last month.  I’m probably still paying for it.  Haven’t even figured all this Window 7 stuff out yet and my “S” key is already melted!

They just don’t make machines like they used to.  I bet Mark Twain didn’t have half the problems we do nowadays with all this junk technology.  He probably had a real typewriter, one with wrought iron, metal keys; something you could leave a lit cigarette on, go get a cup of coffee and not have to worry about your whole house burning down and toxic fumes, stinkin’ burning plastic and all kinda pollution coming outa the machine.

Now, I know somebody’s probably going to try and tell me I should quit smoking.  And I probably should but, it probably won’t happen, at least not in this lifetime.  If you think I’m a miserable old goat now, you should see me when I try to quit smoking.

Smoking is good for some people and I’m one of them.  It drives the Doctors nuts when they give me physicals, stress tests and all those wierd  examinations.  One time they stuck me in some contraption that looked like a glass helicopter with a breathalyzer and a bunch of computer wires hooked up to me.  The technician had to leave the door open and wave his arms while he was screaming, “Inhale hard, exhale harder, longer, more, more , more, harder, a little bit more, more, more”!

When I flopped outa the bubble, all sweaty from huffin’ and puffin’ on his damn air tube he showed me the ticker tape with the results and said I did amazingly well. He wanted to know how long ago it was since I had my last smoke.  He figured I’d quit 30 years ago, or something and the Doctor sent me in for a follow up, I guess. When I told the guy I had my last smoke about 15 minutes ago, he almost choked !

And all the stories you hear about bartenders and airline stewardesses croaking from second hand smoke, hah!  They’re making it up.  I have proof.  Have your ever heard of a dog or cat catching cancer from people smoking cigarettes around them?

Now, I try and be polite and don’t smoke around non-smokers but, I won’t let them kiss me, either, at least not on the lips, anyway.

When the Doctors tell me I should quit because if I don’t, I’ll die, I just smile and tell them they’ll probably die someday, too.

Anyway, the laptop is fine.  I put the fire out and turned it upside down to shake all the ashes outa the keyboard and everything seems to be working perfectly. Wondering now if I shoulda spent the extra grand and bought a Mac.

Not in a Writer’s Frame of Mind

This probably happens to the best Writers in the World, sometimes!

You know what I’m talking about.  One of those days where words just don’t flow.

There’s all kinds of advice about it you can read online.

Take ten deep breaths.

Have a coffee break.

Take a hot and cold shower.

Go for a walk.

Do some Yoga.

Ride a bicycle.

Eat chocolate.

Rotate your socks.

Play your favorite music.

Treat yourself to some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.

Salsa, Lasagna, Pizza

Stand on your head.

Water your plants.

Get drunk and phone home.

Well, I’ve tried them all and nothing seems to work.  Even the damn computers are giving me a hard time, today.

Extracted from an email I just sent:

“I went and fooled around with my Google Blog on the website and think I’ve really screwed it up. The site looks good enough but, I was building an Amazon Camera store and selecting only stuff I wanted to sell. Well, all the HTML Codes and whatnot, I had to copy and paste into a bucha jibberish I don’t understand, obliterated everything! Poor girls in their orange kimonos have POWERED BY GOOGLE on them!
But, other than that the site looks great. Mr Adsense Google may not like it though, I got him beat down to a little skinny banner at the top of the page. Wonder if anybody ever wrote a Google / Adsense / Amazon Affiliate / HTML Codes for Dummies book, yet?”

I’ve discovered, the best thing for me to do is yell at Mr. Google, Amazon Dot Kom, Billybob Gates and MR HTML Codes loud enough for them to hear me through the monitor.  Tomorrow, I bet I’ll be writing.  We’ll see…..

 

Hey, It’s The 21st Century !

Hah, Just got one of these WordPress Blogs for myself because that’s what all the famous writers are doing. The differences between the real professional writers and myself can’t be all that great that I can’t catch up to them.  Maybe, I’ll even pass them.

We were probably all born in the same Century; not sure how many of us will be sticking around for the next one, though.  But, since watching my youngest Grandson and his classmate from Kindergarten playing with an old Windows 2000 computer, I decided I can learn all this 21st Century technology, too.

The little guys are Japanese.  They don’t read Japanese, let alone English.  The computer, which I call my electric paperweight, probably could be classified as an antique.  Gigabytes weren’t even invented, yet when that 256MB baby was brand new !

So here’s these two little boys with popcicles, poptarts, ice cream, potato chips and whatever else it takes to keep kids quiet when you’re watching them on a rainy day, clowning around on the computer.  It’s on an old coffee table that’s shoved in the kid’s (junk) corner of the living room.  So, Grandpa doesn’t really care about them making a mess.  It can easily be concealed by pulling the drapes over it, if somebody like the wife shows-up.

So I sit in the peace and quiet of my other office at the kitchen table and work on my Laptop doing photography stuff, uninterrupted.  Ocassionally, peek in the room to see what the boys are up to, especially, if it gets quiet for too long or, if you hear the Universal sound for disaster: “UH-OH”.

Well, one time the silence got deafening, so, I figured either they fell asleep or something  really, really bad was going down.  I quietly sneak a peek. And couldn’t believe my eyes.  What they did with that piece of junk computer was unbelieveable.  It made me mad.  It was absolutely infrickincredible !

When I saw what those two kids had done, I made up my mind.  I’m never gonna be afraid to try hitting different buttons again.  Experiment with every new gadget, program, social networking tool, blog, or widget available.  They can’t bite.  And when you get stuck there’s CNTL, ALT, DELETE and ESC.  Backspace, my favorite; I have to repaint that one every now and again so you can read it.  And there’s always the one I learned to use before I got into finding buttons to switch the electronic desk warmers OFF; rip the plug out of the wall.

Grandpa’s gettin’ with the 21st Century……