I'm so glad you could stop by. This is my personal blog of daily life and my journey through life. You will find a strong emphasis on family and friends as well as finding my ancestors through genealogy. Unlike my other blogs this blog is more of a catch-all so any topic is fair game.
Well, for the most part I think 2012 came up slapped me in the arse, twisted me around and said thank-you very much. It was about the oddest year even though we made a lot of progress. Life is good and it is really beyond being good so I can't complain. Even though we were adjusting to our new home, we did a lot of renovations, travelled more, entertained more and life was basically good. Just 2012 was odd.
I had an injury accident that saw me off my feet for about 3 weeks. Then hubby came down with a gastrointestinal upset that put him in the hospital for five days. He very seldom gets sick but when he does, he does it good! The weather was off the entire summer and the first time we took the boat out we took out the outdrive, again. We used the boat twice meaning it was a costly toy. The decision has been made to sell the boat. End of. That was made a bit easier by a new acquisition last week.
So, looking back at 2012 the only word that works is odd. Good but odd.....
I was quite saddened to learn of the passing of Tom Bosley on October 19 at the age of 84. He played the role of Howard Cunningham, the patriarch of the sitcom Happy Days that aired from 1974 to 1984 on ABC. Set in the 1950's the show was a reminder of gentler times that stressed good family values. Thanks Tom for the Happy Days you shared with us. You will be remembered fondly in our hearts forever! RIP
On our way home from our recent vacation we stopped at Magnolia's Plantation for pecans. I spotted the neat open top pop cooler sporting glass bottles of CocaCola®. I may be dating myself but I can remember when most pop came in glass bottles. Given that any pop cans contain Bis-phenyl A in the coating I still prefer glass bottles or soda fountain pop but then I seldom drink pop. Still this type of display brings back a touch of nostalgia :)
My goodness when I look back on our computer experience it is astounding just how far we've come in a short period of time. When I was in secondary school we were introduced to computer punch cards using Fortran. I proudly brought my spent cards home so they could be turned into a Christmas wreath for the front door. Years ago we bought an Atari 64 that one of our kids was just mesmerized by. Said kid would sit for hours and I do mean hours punching in line after line of code for the simple reward of seeing a small white ball bounce across the screen. When I went back to university I was still working on an old electric typewriter which was a step up from my even older manual typewriter. Back in secondary school I learned touch typing and a Pitman shorthand both of which I still use today. Think of the shorthand as an earlier version of today's internet lingo like LOL. The electric typewriter was upgraded to a self correcting electric typewriter the same year. Then I discovered computers! I learned a whole new language called Linex and learned how to search using Gopher and get email through Pine. If that wasn't bad enough I was introduced to Mac. All of a sudden a whole new world opened up.
My husband declared that the self correcting typewriter was not good enough for academics so he brought home a brand new Amstrad PC that ran on MS Dos®. It even had Gem Paint™ and Wordperfect. I think we had that computer for a couple of years before we upgraded to Windows 3.1. Fast forward to now and having gone through a lot of operating systems I am still comfortable working in Linux, Windows, dropping to Dos and Mac. For daily computing I prefer Mac while my husband uses Windows. My computer is dual OS both Mac and Windows XP.
Just look at the size of those discs though and they were only write protected with a small piece of foil tape! Over the years the discs got smaller and smaller but always increasing in storage space. Next on the scene for us were the 3¼ floppies with the hard case then came CDs and now memory sticks that likely could hold more memory than our old Amstrad could!
It's rather fun reminiscing about computing and how much it has changed in a very short period of time. It's also amazing to think of how much we've learned over the years about computing and everything that goes along with it. I wonder what the next 20 or so years of computing will bring?
I am a wife, mother and grandma who enjoys the many aspects of homemaking. A variety of interests and hobbies combined with travel keep me active. They reflect the importance of family, friends, home and good food.
"I have called this principle, by which
each slight variation, if useful, is preserved,
by the term Natural Selection." —Charles Darwin from "The Origin of Species"
