I have confessed previously to being something of a technophobe – ironic, I know, since I am communicating by blog with my 5 regular readers.  Or maybe the better word is technoskeptic (although my computer informs me that’s not a word).

Regardless, I am reluctant to automatically see value in something just because it is the latest thing available from the interweb.  Laura and I are among the last Facebook holdouts on the planet; I regularly ignore Linked-in requests.  I can’t find a tweet and have no clue what it means to hashtag something.  Sorry . . . .

In the newspaper the other day there was a story about how a couple of businesses had been victimized by fake apps.  Maybe “victimized” was too strong because, apparently, the apps had been developed on spec without the permission of the companies – with the idea that the companies would be so impressed they would pay the app developer.   Maybe not the best business plan.

My reaction was one of puzzlement.  Even if the apps had been legit, their value was unclear to me.  For example, one was for a coffee shop.  What would a coffee shop app do?  Alert you to when a new pot of coffee is brewed?  I had a hard time imagining the business purpose, other than to have an app because it’s what all the cool kids do.  Perhaps I just lack a modern imagination.

Because we are all hypocrites, I must confess I added an app to my smart phone (yes, I know . . .) later that same day.  When looking up a movie rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I was offered an app to make it easier to get reviews and movie info.  I said “yes” and it was – easier, that is.  I now do not have to go through a browser to get to that site, and I have information compatible with my phone format.  An app with value and a purpose.  I can at least recognize the difference – that’s a start.

Cold used to be colder.

We just experienced several bone-chilling days of sub-zero temperatures here in the frozen tundra of Minneapolis.  Temperatures bottomed out in the minus double digits and did not go above zero during the day.  While it was not pleasant to be outside, we weren’t really inconvenienced at all – which was kinda strange.

At the risk of eliciting some criticism for rank back-in-my-day-ism, it truly does feel different.

A generation ago, at 13 below, cars would not start (at least not without head-bolt heaters that you plugged in overnight); it would be impossible to get the inside of a car to warm up; we’d be warned of the hazards of black ice (frozen exhaust) on the road; we’d worry about our cars’ gas lines freezing up and would keep the tanks full and add gas-line antifreeze.

Through some miracle (or combination of miracles) of modern engineering, these are not issues any more.  Engine technology has improved, battery technology has improved, gasoline technology has improved.  Our lives in the cold have improved.

On the home front, the pipes in the house I grew up in would routinely freeze.  Fortunately, they were the old poisonous iron/lead pipes that did not easily burst, but we had to squeeze ourselves (and by “ourselves” I mean “me”) into the crawl space under the kitchen with some sort of direct-flame heat source in an effort either to thaw the pipes or burn down the house.  To prevent the pipes from freezing, my parents would leave the water dripping at a pretty good clip overnight.

These days, to prevent pipes from freezing, we use insulation.  I think we’ve gotten smarter about avoiding heat loss and insulating technology has improved.  I kinda miss wielding a torch, but am grateful when the water turns on and the car starts.

I think I’m a reasonably intelligent individual.  I’m also pretty mechanically inclined and have a better than average grasp of technology – I set up our home entertainment center and programmed a universal remote, for heaven’s sake.

That makes it all the more humiliating to admit that few things make me feel more dumb than buying a new phone.  Seriously, I walk into a phone store and feel like the aging Buick sedan amidst the Corvettes and Chargers.

It’s a perfect storm of insecurity-inducing elements:  You walk into a phone store and are greeted by a group of 20-something clerks who, no prejudice intended, are working for modest wages and may or may not have college degrees – certainly they are unlikely to be computer engineering graduates — but who have greater facility with phone technology than I ever will have.  Their first question is designed to make you feel stupid:  what are you looking for in a phone?

I don’t know, maybe one that I can use for calls.

I’m familiar with the concept of the smart phone, having owned a couple, but I seriously have no idea how to distinguish one from another other than by shape and color.   I’m not really an Apps guy and I have no words for expressing an actual phone preference.

Then they start demonstrating the products.  Fingers flash, bells and whistles go off, my eyes glaze over and my brain shuts down.  Give me the thin pretty one.

Data plans?  Again, I have no context for even asking what I think are intelligent questions about pricing.  I take their word for it.  Sure that sounds good – just get me out of here.

I currently have a hillbilly smile.  This past Sunday I bit into something soft (yes soft) and lost about half of a right top molar.  The gap is just next to my canine so is visible when I smile – discouraging me from doing so even more than usual.  I am really looking forward to the process of getting a crown.

Over the past several years I have been slowly redoing some fine dental work that was accomplished when I was a child.  While I have had no new cavities in the last two decades, I have had significant remodeling work done on existing fillings.

Somehow, even though my teeth have suffered no such decay as an adult, my childhood dentist managed to find cavities in pretty much all of my molars.  Now, 35 – 40 years later those old fillings are wearing out.  Some to the point of weakening my teeth (case in point, my broken molar).

I won’t name names for fear of libel (although I suspect Dr. Bischel is dead), but it seems to me that it could be pretty easy as a dentist in the late 60s or early 70s to “find” cavities in unsuspecting kids.  This was before the era of dental hygienists or routine x-rays.  We were simply taking the dentist’s word for it.  That would be a decent bit of extra income and once the drilling and filling is done, all the evidence is gone.

Or maybe my dental hygiene as a kid was just that bad . . .

What good is being immortal if you are not around to enjoy it?

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has a traveling exhibition featuring the terracotta soldiers from the Chinese first empire.  In an effort to protect himself in the afterlife, the first emperor ordered the creation of thousands of clay soldiers and hundreds of clay horses to be positioned standing guard.  A few of these pieces are now on tour.  These clay sculptures from 2200 years ago are amazing in their variety and detail.

In a quest for immortality, the emperor (shortly after becoming so) ordered work to begin on an elaborate burial compound that apparently includes an underground palace, multiple chambers for entertainers, courtesans, and officials, and, of course a tomb.  Turns out, it’s pretty easy to get things done when you have hundreds of thousands of conscripts at your disposal (literally).

On learning all this, my first reaction was to reflect on how powerful a motivator immortality is and how the emperor, who lived to 49, swung and missed on that score – actually one story is that he died from mercury poisoning resulting from an elixir concocted to make him immortal – probably too ironic to be true.

In another way, the emperor did achieve a degree of immortality as, among other things, I now blog about him.  Too bad he won’t be able to read this post.

Laura and I had the genuine pleasure this past weekend of visiting with some of our favorite people:  Laura’s aunt Carol and uncle Roger; my uncle Bob.  Having lost all our parents at a relatively early stage in our lives, these folks are our last close link to that generation:  Carol and Roger are in their early 80’s; Bob is in his early 90’s.

Much has been written of this generation, calling them heroic for winning a war and toiling to build our modern world (both of which they helped do).  That ‘s not why these folks are my heroes.

Carol and Roger and Bob (and my aunt Mae who just recently passed away) are not heroic in the history book sort of way.  They are folks who married, raised families, worked jobs, and were members of churches, community groups, card clubs;  they fished, took car vacations, stayed in motels;  golfed, did needlepoint.  In sum, they lived (and still live) simple good lives without complaint, self-absorption, or knowing what the term self-actualization even means.

Sometimes we make things a bit too complicated. . . .

Our son is home for the holidays after surviving his first semester of law school.  Fresh off exams, he is reading for enjoyment (in his case, large history books) and catching up with friends.  The other night he asked to use my computer to check Facebook.  Afraid my computer was allergic to Facebook (I am not on said site), I asked him why he couldn’t use his own computer.

He said that, just before finals, he loaded productivity software onto his computer and now was blocked from accessing Facebook.   My reaction:  why would you load potentially virus-laden, pirated spreadsheet, calendar, and word-processing software onto your computer and risk losing the ability to access the internet?  My view of productivity software is Microsoft Office or something similar, and I was prepared to assist in helping him remove whatever virus had infected his system.

Wrong!

Apparently in the modern student vernacular, productivity software is a program that blocks internet access to any potentially distracting sites during the period when that student should be studying for finals.  It was a simpler time when the only distraction one had was the TV in the student lounge that got all of 3 channels — nobody thought to unplug it.

I feel like I should say something about the murder of 20 first-graders, but words seem inadequate and others more skilled than I have already tried.  I’ll stick to two themes related to the event:

First, how is it that we can establish appropriate restrictions on other constitutional freedoms but that the Second Amendment is somehow off limits?  I am not a huge fan of government intrusion in people’s lives, but we all are part of a society where we must relinquish some degree of freedom in an attempt to live peaceably together.  Whether or not it would prevent the sort of violence we have once again witnessed, it seems reasonable to limit public access to individual weapons of mass destruction.  Such a modest limit does not seem to overly infringe on a Second Amendment right that already has been interpretationally stretched well beyond a level that constitutional originalists may deem appropriate for any other individual right.

As a reminder, here is what the Second Amendment says:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

While there is some nuance here in terms of how one might interpret this right, I do not think it is a stretch to say that a ban on assault rifles is an appropriate potential infringement.  It is no accident that that the NRA has focused its efforts legislatively and has not sought to judicially enforce its view of this provision.

Second, in contrast with our legislators’  lack of political courage to take on the NRA, we saw extraordinary examples of individual heroism displayed in that school on Friday – teachers sacrificing themselves to protect their students; administrators running into harm’s way to try to prevent the carnage.  May we all be so worthy if, god-forbid, the opportunity was ever to arise.

Laura and I spent a long Christmas weekend in New York.  In our opinion, there is no place more Christmas-y, with all the lights, displays and excited crowds.  I am pleased to say that there is plenty of photographic proof that I was there:   I spent my weekend trying to be in as many pictures as possible – not out of any narcissistic tendencies ( I know I am photogenically challenged) – but out of spite.

When did it become normal behavior for everybody with a smart phone to snap a picture of pretty much everything they see?  Whether in front of decorated store window displays or in front of art at the Met, people need to record their view for posterity.  And they need to be far enough back from the object to get it all.  And they get pretty upset if folks who are simply living in the moment and enjoying the view walk in the “no-go zone” between their camera and the subject.

This is beyond annoying.  People stop without regard to people behind them and expect the crowd to wait for them to snap the picture.  It’s worse when they are trying to capture a loved one.  The no-go zone is pretty much the same, but it takes twice as long to pose precious darling to get just the right shot.

I think the problem is that extra pixels are free.  Back when we had to pay for film and developing, people (other than my cousins with their endless slide shows) were judicious in their use of the camera.  Now there is neither camera (per se) nor film, making the taking of pictures free and convenient (and inconvenient for the rest of us).

So, I made it my mission to get into as many pictures as possible this weekend.  If well timed, one can stride into the no-go zone at precisely the right moment.

If the picture takers ever were to review all these photos and delete the ones not worth keeping, I would be deleted.  But I am not convinced that anyone ever looks at most of these pictures once snapped.  Thus, I am preserved digitally on multiple phones, cameras, and cloud-based storage systems.  Proof positive I was in New York this past weekend.

I’m a pretty handy person.  I’m also one for launching into a new task without necessarily considering how it will end.  Some days this is a problem – turning what was supposed to be an easy chore into an all-day or all-week ordeal – and, the worst part, leading to spousal ridicule.  Last Sunday, on the other hand, was a good day – although I did not avoid the ridicule.

It was a two-chore day.  I was able to dismantle and repair a kitchen cabinet drawer that had become non-functional – a large drawer filled with heavy kitchen bakeware had derailed.  Miraculously, the repair required only a single trip to Home Depot – they had the part and I was able to make the fix.

The other chore was a bit more unconventional.  We are planning to be away for a long weekend and do not have anyone handy to water our Christmas tree.  For a person as into Christmas as I am, it will not do to have a live tree become a deadly dried out fire hazard this early in the Yule season.  A tree should not double as a yule log.  Thus, I needed a solution.

Intuitively I knew that I could set up a watering system with a larger adjacent basin and siphon.  I even validated that intuition with some modest internet research.  Turns out there is a wealth of knowledge on this point – people attaching hoses to the side drains of coolers – people setting up watering systems with basins disguised as Christmas presents.  The theory of this latter system is to allow for ease of watering throughout the entire holiday season.  I only needed the temporary system, but needed to test it out before trusting it for a long weekend.

Thus, Sunday was my test day.  I used a large Rubbermaid™ storage bin and a length of clear flexible plastic tubing.  I guess I’m not suited to a life of crime because it was ridiculously difficult to get the siphon established.  In retrospect, perhaps a narrower diameter hose would have been better.  I also would not recommend attempting this with one’s spouse sitting nearby.  Not only was she no help, but her laughter was downright counterproductive.   I don’t think she would laugh quite so hard if our tree and house were to go up in flames.  The price to be paid by the innovator.

By the way, the system works.