Monday, January 30, 2012

Oysters

I am just finishing up a wonderful weekend in Apalachicola, Florida. All of my life, I have heard of the tasty oysters harvested from this sleepy northwest Florida fishing village. This weekend I have had them every way imaginable and they were succulent and delicious. I especially liked them lightly broiled on the half-shell.

Clearly the economy of this quaint town is strongly tied to the oyster and the residents we spoke with and the museum displays speak of the oyster as a fact of life – something that is just part of the way things are here. The oyster supply must seem unending.

But I know the other side of the story, because I live on a tidal estuary on the Chesapeake Bay. The water is brown and murky, though I know just a few decades ago it was clear. The oyster population in our rivers is down tremendously and we, along with scores of other waterfront homeowners, are cultivating baby oysters in the hopes that they can survive and help filter the water in the river.

This year I have read newspaper articles about oystermen giving up their trade because the harvest is so small. The economic impact of this declining industry is taking its toll, along with the housing market, general unemployment and the rest. This is a far cry from the days when Baltimore packing houses were canning oysters to be sent all over the country.

At home we can still get tasty oysters, including the prized Chincoteague oysters from Virginia. It is still possible to go to a local restaurant and order oysters on the half-shell or fried. And they still taste great. How wonderful it would be to once again know that the oysters were plentiful in the Chesapeake Bay. And the best part is that the Bay would once again be clear!

Sunday, January 22, 2012

50 Things I Don't Have to Worry About Anymore

1. Sleeping in hair rollers
2. Using a pencil for math
3. Worrying if anyone can read my handwriting
4. Getting the snow tires or chains put on the car
5. Adding water to the leftovers to heat-up on the stove top
6. Being a lady going into a liquor store
7. Getting up to change the channel
8. “Teasing” my hair
9. Erasing or covering up typos
10. Change for the toll booth
11. Carrying around a checkbook
12. Keeping a fold-up rain bonnet in my purse
13. Licking postage stamps
14. Tearing up salad greens
15. Having a quarter for a phone call
16. Standing in line at the bank to make a deposit
17. Files of information in case I need it in the future
18. Encyclopedias
19. Saving magazines
20. Saving maps
21. Dictionaries
22. Thesaurus
23. Carrying suitcases by the handle
24. Cutting up chicken
25. Milk going bad in a week
26. Tangled hair after shampooing
27. Lifting heavy boxes of powdered detergent
28. Washing the dishes BEFORE putting them in the dishwasher
29. Winding my watch
30. Being sure that the store where I am shopping is punched on my “charge-plate”
31. Having my feet X-rayed at the shoe store
32. Changing the blade in a razor
33. Refilling the ice trays
34. Whipping cream in the mixer
35. Inspecting a hotel room before accepting it
36. Hand-waxing the car
37. Burning the paper trash in the back yard
38. Long distance charges
39. Somebody opening the car door on the passenger side while stopped at light
40. Getting lost
41. Telling people the hotel phone number for emergencies
42. Putting something hot down on the countertop
43. No way to know if the house is on fire except the smell of smoke
44. Changing light bulbs frequently
45. Locking and unlocking the car with a key
46. Loud, slow dental drills
47. Taking a stack of books on vacation
48. Wearing out the car upholstery
49. The pressure cooker exploding
50. Carbon paper

50 Things I Don't Have to Worry About Anymore

1. Sleeping in hair rollers
2. Using a pencil for math
3. Worrying if anyone can read my handwriting
4. Getting the snow tires or chains put on the car
5. Adding water to the leftovers to heat-up on the stove top
6. Being a lady going into a liquor store
7. Getting up to change the channel
8. “Teasing” my hair
9. Erasing or covering up typos
10. Change for the toll booth
11. Carrying around a checkbook
12. Keeping a fold-up rain bonnet in my purse
13. Licking postage stamps
14. Tearing up salad greens
15. Having a quarter for a phone call
16. Standing in line at the bank to make a deposit
17. Files of information in case I need it in the future
18. Encyclopedias
19. Saving magazines
20. Saving maps
21. Dictionaries
22. Thesaurus
23. Carrying suitcases by the handle
24. Cutting up chicken
25. Milk going bad in a week
26. Tangled hair after shampooing
27. Lifting heavy boxes of powdered detergent
28. Washing the dishes BEFORE putting them in the dishwasher
29. Winding my watch
30. Being sure that the store where I am shopping is punched on my “charge-plate”
31. Having my feet X-rayed at the shoe store
32. Changing the blade in a razor
33. Refilling the ice trays
34. Whipping cream in the mixer
35. Inspecting a hotel room before accepting it
36. Hand-waxing the car
37. Burning the paper trash in the back yard
38. Long distance charges
39. Somebody opening the car door on the passenger side while stopped at light
40. Getting lost
41. Telling people the hotel phone number for emergencies
42. Putting something hot down on the countertop
43. No way to know if the house is on fire except the smell of smoke
44. Changing light bulbs frequently
45. Locking and unlocking the car with a key
46. Loud, slow dental drills
47. Taking a stack of books on vacation
48. Wearing out the car upholstery
49. The pressure cooker exploding
50. Carbon paper

Sunday, January 15, 2012

50 Things I Didn't Have to Worry About in 1964

I won't say that life has gotten simpler, since I graduated from high school in 1964, but I will say there is more to think about, worry about and generally keep up with. I thought it would be fun to compile a list of some of things that were not a part of my life in 1964.


1. Losing my phone in my purse
2. Losing the remote control in the sofa
3. Finding a key case big enough to hold a really FAT key
4. De-magnetizing my room key
5. The hot tub
6. Losing data
7. Filling up my hard drive
8. Recycling anything
9. Things exploding in the microwave oven
10. Figuring out how to open a child proof cap
11. Having my GPS lead me astray
12. Ice spewing from the dispenser
13. Faxes not going through
14. Fastening my seatbelt
15. Changing my watch battery
16. Identity theft
17. Getting a phone call during a play
18. Remembering to bring the sunscreen
19. Remembering to use bug spray
20. Texting at a traffic light
21. Charging my tooth brush
22. Too many post-it notes
23. Uploading photos to anything
24. Red light cameras
25. The cable going out
26. Rebooting the Ethernet hub
27. Finding an ATM
28. A barcode that can’t be read
29. Wearing the letters off the keyboard
30. The ice maker getting stuck
31. Handling hundreds of emails each day
32. SPAM (not the food)
33. Getting into the HOV lane
34. Getting in the EZ Pass Lane
35. Wearing slip on shoes when flying
36. Putting my cosmetics in a zippered bag
37. Full body scans at the airport
38. Unattended luggage
39. Terrorists
40. Fitting my roller bag in the overhead bin
41. Printing my boarding pass the night before my flight
42. Listening to my GPS complain about recalculating
43. Calling 911 in an emergency
44. Loading music onto my telephone
45. Synchronizing my calendar
46. Pumping gas
47. Storing plastic grocery bags
48. Being on time for the free breakfast at the motel
49. Gaining admission to the airport lounge
50. Opening the garage door when the power is out

Sunday, January 08, 2012

Techie or Technophobe - Critical Decisions

The other day I read an ad for a new kind of computer. This ad was in a magazine for the over fifty audience, and it was promoting a touchscreen computer, with a bright screen and no connector cables. It was designed for seniors who were overwhelmed by conventional computers. The ad made the point is that is too bad that seniors, whose quality of life could benefit from access to the world of the Internet and email, are the very group that has the most challenges in using computers.

At 65, I have friends, my age and a bit older, who use computers all the time and couldn’t live without them and all the latest gadgets. On the other hand, I also have some friends who use a computer in a limited way and still others who never learned and aren’t about to this late in life.
I have to say I am grateful that I am pretty comfortable with computers and gadgets, as it is helpful now and I think it will ensure me a better life when the body starts to fail. Unlike some folks, I find my brain is the best part of the brain/body package and I know as long as I can keep my brain engaged there will a reason to keep on living.

Looking back, I have to ask myself what made me a bit of a “techie” instead of a “technophobe.” There were definite decision points along the way. Decisions I made decades ago set the pattern and it has only continued. How easy it would have been to have gone the other way!

When I was in high school, my mother made me take personal typing. She could type and felt it would be useful for me in college to type term papers. And she was right! I always typed my own papers in college and in graduate school. I never thought of typing as secretarial work, even when I had a secretary to do it for me. I often found myself typing my own work rather than writing it out and giving it to someone else to type. Quite simply, I could think better while typing. The only problem was the whole thing about typos. Erasable bond paper became my best friend until they invented typewriters with correction ribbons.

When I was in graduate school, I had to write this 250+ page paper and it was no fun typing it on my electric typewriter. My husband had access to this amazing typewriter than recorded what you typed onto magnetic tape. I put that entire document into this machine and printed it out. And the best part was I could make corrections on the magnetic type.

But when my husband brought home his first home computer about 35 years ago, he tried to convince me I needed to use it. He told me I could put my magazine subscriber lists on it and my file of advertisers. I told him that I had other ways of doing that and it was more trouble than it was worth. But within a few months he got me to try it and I was hooked, though more often than not, confused.

Shortly afterwards , my husband got a flyer in the mail from Auburn University School of Engineering about a short course in microcomputers. It was being offered in Birmingham and I could stay with my parents. I decided to go and learn what I could. I was the only non-engineer in the class and thank goodness the course wasn’t graded.

Then I started using computers more and more. I had to have my own computer about 25 years ago and have had my own ever since. At work, I was the one who championed bringing in computers.
As the years went by, the computer got be
tter and more powerful. And I kept on upgrading and keeping with the changes. I have been using a laptop now for more than 15 years and some form of desktop machine for more 34 years.

But what would my life be like if I had never learned to type; or if I had rejected computers as irrelevant to me when they first came along?

I have a lot of sympathy for my friends who struggle with computers and with those who refuse to try. Thirty years of learning is a lot to catch up with quickly. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have never used a computer before and be faced with a new desktop computer, a sea of cables and only an online manual written in a tech speak, usually translated from some other language. I consider myself lucky to have made a few good choices decades ago.

Sunday, January 01, 2012

A Computer without Data

A few years ago, I would have said that was a really strange concept. But now, in the context of cloud computing, it makes a lot of sense. The data is in the clouds and the computer just accesses the data remotely. I think that they used to call that a terminal – whatever! Of course, we were doing cloud computing before it had a name, and have been operating virtually since 2006. So, what’s to change?

In a nutshell, I am finally ready to keep my computers clean – to store all the data I need someplace else that I can access it and change it from my computers, my cell phone, my netbook or anyone else’s computer. For years, our client databases , accounting files, and management systems have been Web based. Last year, I started saving finished work in what I called Work Product folders, by client.

So what’s left? E-mail was what was holding me back. I had resisted moving where I did email from an Outlook file on my computer because I really felt the online email service was just too slow! So whenever I traveled, I had to take my laptop with me so I could access my searchable email archive. Old habits die hard!

A few things happened to make me reconsider how I handled email. The first was that I managed to repair a relatively new laptop that I had replaced because the cursor jumped around. So now suddenly I have two pretty nice laptops that were basically identical. Then my son and my husband make some changes in the home WIFI network that really speeded up Internet use. Now I can finally get the speed I need to use the Web-based email program.

The implications of using the Web based email program are huge! Now I can do my email on any of my devices and I am actually operating on the server. That means when I delete a message, it is gone (well in the trash and can be recovered until I empty the trash). You know what they say about handling something only once!

On the whole, Web-based email sounds like a perfect solution, BUT! Unfortunately, I get around 500 emails now a day and even just keeping the stuff I must maintain for our company archive would quickly max out the storage I have on my email account. So I left my Outlook account set up on both laptops and let it download automatically. So, yes, I am keeping some data on my computers, but I am only using it as an archive – so I am pretending that it doesn’t count. Besides I have set up an archive folder on the my Web based email desktop and move anything especially worth keeping there.

Since all of our important documents are stored in the clouds and I have solved my email problem, I am really free! Well, not exactly – there is still the calendar. I have had my calendar on my iphone for the last few years and had given up on having it on my computer, Alas, I have discovered (later than the rest of the world, I suspect) that you can link a Google calendar to your iphone. This is nice, though I must admit that I am seldom without my phone. On the other hand, others who need to can easily access my calendar.

So, another year – another radical change! When I stop liking change I will know I am truly old!