A Late Birthday Greeting!

You may have missed this yesterday (I almost did), but yesterday marked the 40th birthday of the computer mouse. Yes, on December 9 of 1968 (when I was less than a year old) a Stanford computer scientist stood up (or rather sat down, as the photos I've seen show) at a conference and demonstrated the world's first personal computer, complete with a working computer mouse. The mouse was technically not all that different from the rolling ball mice that you probably used on your first personal computer (though that first mouse was probably five times the size of your old wheel mouse).

It's hard to believe that the computer mouse is that old. What's even more amazing is that many of the "new" technologies that we use were created in the late 60's. Not only the computer mouse, but the Internet (which was called the Arpanet back then) was also created in 1968 (or '69--depends on whether you count the IDEA or the IMPLEMENTATION as the creation date). Email is even older than that, having been created simultaneously by several researches in 1965.

It's just amazing to me that these "new" technologies are so old. I like to think that I have some foresight into the future, but I could never have predicted in the 1960's that computing would look the way it does now. Never mind that I was less than 2 years old at the end of the 1960's--I'm not talking about that. I'm just saying that I can't see that far into the future.

But some people could. Specifically, one of the guys I am most impressed by is J.C.R. Licklider, who ran ARPA in the early to mid 1960's. He wrote a paper in 1968 predicting how computers would be used by ordinary people to make their lives more productive. Now keep in mind, this was in 1968, when computers were gigantic machines that took up whole floors of universities, and were things that ordinary people only saw in movies, spinning tape heads and spitting out strips of printout. The idea of a computer being in every home probably seemed like science fiction to most people back then. That Licklider could then predict--prior to the invention of the mouse or the Internet--what he did about the future is incredible. And I'm not just saying the guy predicted computers would get smaller, or that there'd be one in every home. If you read the entire paper I linked to above, you'll see that he predicts the following:
1) Office suites like Microsoft Office
2) Chat rooms and dating sites
3) Audio and video on a computer and download sites like YouTube
4) Porn (and other base human desires like gambling) taking over this future network
5) A commercial use of the network
6) A disparity between wealthy humans who could afford computers and the network and those who couldn't (Today this is often referred to as the "Digital Divide.").
7. Denial of service attacks on computer networks (The dude not only was discussing a hypothetical network, but how to hypothetically hack his hypothetical network).

So I want to recognize the mouse on its big day, but more than that, I want to recognize people like Licklider who could see so clearly what the world would be like today.

Joe Biden and Other Stuff

I have a lot of respect for Joe Biden, and I am very enthused by the idea of him being Barack Obama's running mate. Joe Biden has always struck me as a reasonable, thoughtful individual, and I think his experience will assist Obama in his campaign, despite the negative comments made by Biden about Obama back in the debates.

More than that, though, I am enthused by the entire Presidential race this year. If only John McCain would choose Mike Huckabee as his running mate, I'd have all four of the candidates I was most interested in running on the two tickets.

1988 was the first year that I could vote for the President of the United States. I was 20 years old at the time. To be honest, I didn't really know enough to vote back then. I voted for Bush because I had grown up with Reagan as President and thought he'd done a really good job, and I saw Bush as a continuation of Reagan. That was about the whole thought process at the time (I also voted for the Kentucky lottery that year, a vote I would very much like to take back now.).

So I don't really count myself as having seriously voted for President until 1992, when Bush and Clinton opposed one another. And for every election from 1992 on, I have never really been excited about any of the candidates. And truth be told, I only once voted for the winner in all that time (and you could put an asterisk on that win anyway, as I'm talking about Bush's first victory over Gore, which he may not have won without the Supreme Court's intervention).

Uh, I guess, without meaning to, I just gave away what all of my votes for President have been for my entire life. Oh well.

Anyway, to get back to my point, I never really cared for anyone on any of those tickets. I always felt like I was voting for the lesser of two evils.

I don't feel that way this year. I'm leaning pretty heavily toward Obama/Biden right now, but I like John McCain as well. In fact, after learning about him during his run for the Republican nomination in 2000, I really came to respect the man for his courage and his ability to do what he felt was right party be damend, and I decided then and there that if he ever ran for election again I'd go so far as to campaign for him. And I probably would have, too, but his campaign initially sounded very much like a reiteration of everything George Bush had done for the previous 7 years, and I didn't want another 4 years of Bush, so I soured on him a little. Lately, though, he has moderated his position somewhat.

The point is I think I'll be happy with either candidate. I just hope that in the process of competing for President these two men--whom I respect and admire very much--don't stoop to hammer each other until there's nothing left in the end but a couple of ordinary politicians.

It Just Sags Like a Heavy Load.

Now that I'm getting on into my forties, I am becoming aware that some of the dreams/expectations I had as a child are looking pretty unlikely at this point. For instance:

• It would appear that I am NOT going to be a rock star after all. I will not get to travel all over the globe and have scantily clad groupies waiting for me backstage. Pretty much every song I've ever heard and loved  I've imagined that I was the person who wrote that song, and that I was the person singing it on the radio. But I can't write songs, I can't play an instrument well, and I can't sing, and I don't think you'll ever see me on MTV (Do they even still play videos on MTV?). 
• Though some actors get started late in their lives, it's looking like I WON'T win that Academy Award. And to think of all of the time I've spent practicing my acceptance speech, and all the time I've spent practicing the expression I'd make the first time I was nominated, when I didn't win ("It was an honor just to be nominated, and everyone takes all of this far too seriously" I'd say).
• I used to look at my body and think I was just "that close" to having a terrific body. If I put a concerted effort into it I could get there, get really defined and get a big ole six pack..  Now I'd say I'm "t   h   a    t           c     l     o     s     e" and the odds are starting to work against me. Even a concerted effort wouldn't get me back to the "that close" I used to bemoan.
• I am not going to be a professional athlete after all. I actually pretty much knew that by the time I was in high school and sitting the bench for the football team. Still, though, I always told myself that I still had all four years of my college athletic eligibility remaining, thanks in great part to the fact that I red shirted all four years I was in college. Maybe when I got into shape (see Bullet Three above) maybe I'd try out for the team. 
• I also apparently am NOT going to be a millionaire. I never really knew exactly what I was going to do to become a millionaire (though looking back, I would think my Oscar-winning, Super Bowl ring-wearing, rock and rolling self with a killer body could probably land some endorsement deals), but I always thought I'd be rich and famous sooner or later.

But nope. It ain't gonna happen. The extraordinary life I thought I was going to lead never materialized. The "extra" in "extraordinary" sort of fell to the wayside, and I'm moving solidly down the path of "ordinary." I live in a nondescript house that looks pretty much like all of the rest of the houses in the town I live in (the couple of streets of garish, near-million dollar homes the exception), and I'm living a nondescript life that looks pretty much like all of the rest of the lives of people I know. I'm sure there are people somewhere who are living the exciting lives that I've watched on television, but I'm not those people now, and I won't be in some future date.

Maybe THAT's all a mid-life crisis really is, realizing--not that the end is near--but that though there may be PLENTY of days ahead, none of them are going to contain those fabulous dreams you used to imagine would be yours...eventually. The time for "eventually" is running out, and if you ever really had a chance, you missed it.

But don't get the idea that I am going through a hard time right now. I'm not really. In fact, this whole topic isn't something new. I've thought about writing about pretty much ever since I started this blog, but I didn't want to give people the idea that I was going to go buy an expensive sports car, or that I'd be writing on here soon about my new 28 year old girlfriend. I'm not REALLY all that bummed about all this, and I think it's funny more than anything.

Actually, and I'm being completely serious here, I think the moment that all of this DID hit home with me, and when it DID actually hurt a little, was a couple of years ago when Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning was doing a series of commercials for MasterCard. One commercial in particular really got to me. It was funny, very funny, and I laughed out loud the first time I saw it, but you know what they say about jokes--there's always a little bit of truth in them. And at the same time that I laughed I also felt a punch in my gut. I know this is egocentric, but I swear I felt like Manning was really talking to me! He MEANT what he was saying. And I saw that commercial maybe two dozen more times over that football season, and I was a little sullen about it every time.

I think I got over it finally, though. I watched the commercial just a few minutes ago and I don't find it painful anymore. It's just funny. You can watch it, too, right here:

(I can't see the video.)

A Game of Telephone

Several people in my district have been playing a game of telephone this week, and I guess I ended up being the loser...

This all began Wednesday when the Food Service Director for my school district (whom we'll call Sally), who is new, found out that she didn't have a keycard for the kitchen doors to give to her new dairy supplier. The supplier delivers milk once a week, in the wee hours of Monday morning, and since I'm in charge of the security systems in our school district, Sally wanted me to issue a keycard (one of those credit card-sized things similar to what you get these days in a hotel) by the weekend. She figured that it was Wednesday and she didn't need it until Friday, and that that wasn't an unreasonable request.

And if this had been a normal situation, she would have been correct. But this wasn't an ordinary situation. This was (unbeknown to anyone playing) a Game of Telephone. Note the changes in red below.

Sally asked her assistant Wednesday morning to contact me and let me know that she needed a keycard for the dairy delivery company. The assistant called one of the secretaries at the Board of Education Wednesday afternoon and informed her that Sally wanted Bryan to give her a keycard TO the dairy DEPARTMENT.

That secretary was confused (understandably) by the message, and she wanted to talk with me about it in person, but I was out in the schools working and never came back to my office Wednesday afternoon. She wasn't going to be in the next day, so she related it to another secretary in the building: "Tell Bryan tomorrow that Sally in Foods needs a KEY to the dairy CASE."

Late Thursday morning that secretary told me, "Bryan, Sally called, and she needs a key to the REFRIGERATOR. I assume you know what that means."

As you can imagine, I had NO idea what that meant. I thought maybe it had something to do with the new kitchen at the high school, a construction project that had just recently been completed. Why would I have a key to the refrigerator? I was irritated by this request, actually. So I fired off an email to the Food Service Director. "Sally," I wrote, "I don't have ANY keys for ANY refrigerators. The maintenance department should be in charge of this."

By the time Sally got this email, as you can see above, it had mutated so much from her original request that she didn't even realize that it was RELATED to that request. Further, if you re-read my email to her, I didn't mention the idea that I thought she was asking me for a key to the refrigerator. I just wrote that I didn't HAVE a key. So she assumed that I was asking HER for a key to the refrigerator. Mass confusion was taking place.

Meanwhile, NOTHING was being done about the dairy delivery guy needing access to the buildings...

All of this was unresolved until 5 minutes before quitting time Friday, when Sally showed up in my office a) demanding her keycard for her dairy person and b) wanting to know why I needed a key to the refrigerators in the kitchens. It took several minutes of sorting things out before we finally got to the bottom of the confusion.

And that's why I spent last night driving around my school district programming all of the kitchen doors instead of spending time with my family.

It would have been funny if I weren't so tired.

The Swine Flu and Chrysler

These days I find the news pretty boring. And that may be shocking to some because everyone I talk to seems pretty uptight about all of it. "What do you mean 'boring'?" they ask me. "We're all going to die of swine flu! Did you know that there was a confirmed case in KENTUCKY? And what about Chrysler going bankrupt? Who would have ever thought that?" And if you watch the nightly network news, they are sort of whipping everybody up into a frenzy.

But let's start with the swine flu thing. First of all, as far as anybody knows for sure, we're just talking about the flu! The flu comes and goes every year, and yes, it kills people. According to the CDC website, 36,000 Americans a year die from just the plain old, ordinary, run-of-the-mill flu. So the flu is somewhat dangerous at any time, but is the swine flu a bigger deal than any other flu? There's no hard evidence to say so.

And as far as Chrysler goes, I don't really care if they go under or not. I would never, NEVER, NEVER consider buying a Chrysler anyway, so it's no sweat off of my back. Sure, thousands of people will be out of jobs, but people are losing their jobs left and right in this economy. I feel bad for the auto workers and all of the other affected parties, but I'm really not all that moved by it. 

So I guess I'm just saying to everyone who's in a panic, relax. We'll all look back on this time in a few years and laugh about it. The way we laugh at Y2K today.