Computer expert by default

In my house I am the resident computer expert. With that said, let me give you a quick background about me and computers (or is it computers and I?) When I was in college my roommates Dave and Steve both majored in computers, an emerging field at the time. I majored in what I thought was something much more stable, communications (theatre/radio emphasis), thinking that computers were just a passing phase. Then Al Gore went and invented the internet, and computers went through the roof. Now most of the stuff I learned about radio is done by computers. (Oh to travel back in time and study computers).

Now for a shocking revelation from the computer expert of the house. I have never bought a new computer (hope to change that soon). My first computer was a used laptop my brother-in-law let me have. I had to buy a new power adapter for it, but didn't pay thing other than that. It worked fine for my writing, and for playing games. Really slow online, but it was okay. The computer I'm using now was my father-in-law's home computer. He got a new one two years ago or so, and I took over this one. It is 13 years old, and full of all kinds of junk I can't get rid of. "Why not," you ask? I don't know? 5 years ago or so, we flushed the memory and rebooted everything on it, and somehow, the guy who did this fix managed to lose our control panel (Can not get to it anywhere) and any time I try to delete or uninstall a program, it says I need to get clearance from my administrator... I have no administrator...what do I do?

Okay, you see my level of expertise. And let me be open with you, I have no clue when people start talking RAM and hard drive and MB or GB...Okay, I know a GB is bigger than an MB, and the higher the number the more space you have for storing junk on the computer. Other than a 6 hour class on Powerepoint I have never had any computer training. So how, you may ask have I become the computer expert? It is quite simple really, because I'm not afraid to do stuff. I teach myself. I print all the didgital photos our family takes (I use Paint Shop Pro, not photo shop) I make mini posters out of just about any picture my wife, mother-in-law or daughter find. And of course I'm the guy who can google anything (although Dakotah is also a darn good googler now).

The funny thing is because I take the time to learn stuff on the computer, everyone else gives me all the computer tasks, leaving me little time sometimes to do what I want to do (write, write, write). So the middle age guy on the old computer with no formal computer training is the man with all the computer answers in our house... I think our house is in trouble.

Social Media and the aging process

Going with a different color ink for the letters tonight, what do you think? Tonight's topic is social media and the aging process. As I age, I find myself more and more into this social media stuff, which is supposedly the domain of the younger generation. At least that's how it started.

My first real experience with social media came with MySpace probably about 4 or 5 years ago. Several of my friends from Domino's kept telling me how great it was, how you could reach out to your friends, how you could keep updated on music, etc. These were all pretty much teenagers I worked with, and I brushed MySpace off as just something for kids. Then I got an invite from my friend Doug Brown from my KLoRD days. He had set up a page to promote his music, so I joined, and quickly found I enjoyed it. I even did a bit of blogging. At time I had over 300 "friends", but most of these were bands, or people who were interested in the same bands I was. A few were friends mostly from Domino's, and young people I knew on the mountain here. I had only one or two friends near my age, a few voices from my past. I made my MySpace page as load and flashy as I could, and tried to convince myself I was as young and hip as most of my friends there. But as time went on I felt less and less connected to my MySpace friends.

Then about a year ago I think, I started hearing, "I switched from MySpace to Facebook, come Join me." from more and more MySpace friends. And so, I did. And it has been amazing. I have found friends from college, high school and the church I grew up in along with my KLoRd fiends, Mo Media friends, Camp O-Ongo friends and of course Toyota friends (All places I've worked). I currently have 210 and know at least 200 of them personally. I read an article a few months ago that "old people" are ruining facebook. By their definition, I'm pretty sure I'm old, and I'm guessing most of my friends are too (My dad is on facebook and he's 82). I'm not sure what we've done to ruin facebook, but I say lets keep ruining it.

For months I was happy to stay in contact on facebook. I kept hearing about this Twitter thing, but had no interest. You know us old folks are slow to try anything new. Then a job as internet information director, or something like that came up at work, and I applied, but it said you needed to know twitter, so I quickly signed up for twitter. I didn't get the job, (Probably too old and unhip) and quickly abandoned my Twitter account.

Then came the swine flu scare and I found out that the CDC had a twitter account that posted swine flu updates. As any old guy who fears dying of swine flu would do, I jumped on twitter and started following CDC updates. Purely out of curiosity I started following a celebrity or two...oops! I was hooked. I now follow 152 people. Athletes, authors, celebrities, dancers, and a couple people I actually know.
I think it is a fun way to get a touch of who these celebrities are as real people. that is if you can find the real people from the fakes. Thank Twitter for Verified accounts to make this easier.

And now with Blogger, I am attacking the blogsphere and hope to gain some attention (or at least a few more comments) as a writer, so someday the novel I'm trying to write might be published, or at least made available on Kindle before I am too old to enjoy the royalties. So please read my blog post. Comment on them here (my comments are open to anyone, not just Blogger members). Share them with your friends. And promise you'll by my novel....whenever it gets published.