My daughters decided to "hook me up for the beach" and general Florida life. hahah

BTW. My 2 year old granddaughter Lena, loves her Mom's iPhone. Mom let's her play with it all the time. Hey ... whatever. But, Lena will take it, in it's at rest condition. She will wake it, swipe it. Go to U-tube and select her play list of videos. She will then scroll through the list, and find one she likes OR a requested video. Play it. Adjust the sound if asked. When she wants, she will turn that one off and choose another. Tired of that, she will go to her mother's picture gallery, and scroll through the pics. I swear to God. I watched it happen. Even took a video of it. TWO years old. Totally at ease with the touch screen.
Gary

Haha, yeah you look ready for the beach, where the drink with an umbrella??

Kids are amazing. The iphones are so easy they can use it better than some parents.

Funny how we get used to technology such as the iphone. Information so readily available at our finger tips. Wife and I were in southeast side if Saskatchewan for 110th annual Bible conference. NO cell service

Glad to see everything falling into place for you Gary! Now its time for me to visit my cousins in Bonita Springs when they are at their condo. Might drive by your place, lol.

All the best,

Pedro

Yup, things are peachy on the Iphoney front...right until they run the battery flat. I can't even begin to count the times I've seen kids enter a terminal whine-fest when the electronic do-dads crap out.

I'd start right in to a lecture about how kids can't entertain themselves these days without some sort of gizmo to keep them busy, but the battery on my laptop is almost dead.

Well it sounds like we adults are the example to kids??

I have seen it in my nephews, one who was limited with tv, games etc. He plays alone all day long using his imagination with toy cars, legos etc. The other nephew complains that there is nothing to do as soon as tv, video games aren't available.

A bit more tongue-in-cheek than usual in my last post, I'll admit.

It is pretty amazing to see how well kids adapt to new technology, especially in contrast to some adults who have a hard time with anything more complex than a pocket calculator.

When you stop to think about it, you also have to give credit to the designers of the new gizmos and the work that they've done to improve the user interface for mobile devices. Just a decade ago, the highest of high-tech was the Palm series of PDAs, and they were anything but intuitive to use. They've all but disappeared now, overtaken by the morphing of the omnipresent cellphone into the electronic do-all of choice. The fact that a pre-literate child can pick one up and use it correctly and proficiently by just observing their parents and poking at it themselves is astounding.

Now if they'd just integrate that kind of simplicity and intuitive operation into other everyday appliances, like stovetops and clock radios. Why should it be so difficult and frustrating just trying to set the current time on my car stereo or the microwave? I have to re-learn the sequence every time the power goes out, even if it's just for thirty seconds. For that matter, why can't appliances just reset their own clocks with data taken from the cell network or GPS signals? My microwave is the worst, it wants the month, day, and year (in perfect correct format, of course) every time I go to reset the clock. I assume it's so that it can handle daylight savings time, but we've never gone that long without the power going out at least once, so I don't know for sure.

For that matter, why does everything have to have a clock on it anyway? It takes half an hour to go around the house and reset them all, what a waste of time.

Hi Sean
At the risk of feeding your neurosis, I endlessly rage against the needless complexity of our culture. It requires you to simply stop, and re-educate yourself to perform the most simplistic task which has been converted to useless complexity.
Clearly some programmers are superior craftsmen. And others just feel they do superior work and those who have trouble with their work are just stupid.

Hey Sean,
It's late and I don't feel like sleep yet. But also don't feel like noise and dirt. So; I had a couple of thoughts. I suspected they might interest you.
The real question ... Not why does everything have to have a clock on it ... but rather; how did they get us to feel obligated to set every clock they stick on everything!
That's the key to survival today, I believe. To understand that we retain free will to whatever degree we can resist the herd mentality. Don't set the darned clocks. . Ooooops ... Did I say that out loud? Haha. And, as they have gone to yet longer and louder commercial TV breaks ... Don't watch live TV. Don't go to Black Friday Sales, or participate in any of hundreds of mind control games designed to make you fear your opportunity has nearly lapsed. Don't buy the extended warranty on the $15 electric fan.
It's all hard to do. Don't read the billboards, tee shirts, and bumper stickers. We could regain hours and perhaps sort our own thoughts.
I do believe though; that the quintessential example of rebellion against the swarm which conspire to steal our concentration is this: DON'T SET THE DARNED CLOCKS.
Humbly submitted .... Gary.

Hi Gary, it looks like we'll have to start the insomniacs thread here (guess I'll have to lay off the tea earlier tomorrow)

I totally agree with your philosophy of not buying in to the rampant consumerism that's pushed so hard in our culture. I understand perfectly how and why it's done (short version : $$$), I just don't see that I need to be a part of it ALL the time. I'm sure that there are millions of (commissioned) salesmen out there who would disagree, but the "less is more" philosophy has gained on me over time.

The thing that bothers me the most about the ubiquitious/extraneous digital clock trend is the fact that they make life more difficult, not easier. It's an example of poor integration and lazy design philosophy. How hard would it be to design in a rechargable battery or a capacitor that can drive the clock logic circuit for a couple of hours? Would it even cost an extra dollar? Is that too much to ask for a big-ticket appliance that's supposed to last a decade or more? It wouldn't be so objectionable if they'd just default to a blank screen, but they never do. Every single one of them has to sit there blinking at me every time the power supply hiccups. I suppose I could "solve" the issue with a couple inches of black electrical tape, but it torques me that I have to use an ugly work-around for something that shouldn't even be a feature in most cases.

Don't even get me started on the omnipresent thicket of extraneous and unneeded LEDs that festoon everything that needs electrons to work.

Gee ... what a grouch. Haha.

Actually, on day one of my administration ... I'd institute "salesman island". There would be a section for the loud barkers and back slappers. A region for that fake toooo happy type. A county for the folks that have to use a paragraph of canned greeting to answer a phone. Area for the guys that make up the fake science gimmick advertizing words ... Housinheisenflexinburgers indeed!!! I'd go on, but I need coffee ...

And ... there'd be a "special place" for the guy that invented the phone tree!

Now - this thread started out with a very nice picture of your host ... and look what it's degenerated into ...

Gary



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/19/2012 01:36PM by barnespneumatic.

So...is it truely hijacking when you do it to your OWN thread?

I am thinking you guyz need to switch to decaf and i just have to chime in on a couple things.... can i get a penny?? I have always considered myself mechanicly inclined ie: rebuilt engine in my old road runner, fix my 8 track player when it broke, was able to change the gears on my first lathe for each operation(atlas) and even manage to run million dollar++ machines at various companies through my carreer with minumun to no training! So as anyone tore apart one of those touch screens to see how they work?? and got one back together repaired hmmm and i am not talking changing parts either. They work off thermal heat from your finger cant even use a pencil eraser to operate the track pad on this cheep computer i am typing on now!! simply AMAZING . Would like to shake that kids hand.So to the clock thing... At the cemetary where my father is burried there is a huge sun dial and i walked over there one time a couple years ago with my son to explain what and how it worked after he asked me about it(its 6ft across beautiful bronze/brass/ marble) Sooo after ten or so min of talking about it and reading the dial which is quite ornate and defined he told me the time was wrong . Imagine that Those ROTTEN kids... gotta love em maybe it was a daylight saving thing. Do you think he believed me??? I think i will ask him (my son) what the plasma is made out of that comes out of the the end of my millermatic torch

Thanks
Kurt



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2012 12:02AM by kurt wag.

I'm tired of being outwitted! 2 year olds can operate a smart phone better than I can and every appliance i own demands i set the time! Most of them will not function if I don't set the time and all of them will flash at me like the telltale heart if I don't...

DECAF!!!! . I ain't dead yet .... Haha

Inside those touch pads is a nebula of ectoplasm. The transvergance boundary layer between the sixth and seventh dimension intersects a line drawn between
Greenwich, England and Moscow Square. When you touch a spot on the screen, the entire time space continuum is disrupted and random numbers and letters are tossed into the void until equilibrium is reestablished. The truly remarkable part is that this can be crosspollenated up to 186,000 times per second. That's as simple as I can
put it.

Front door locks that you can activate via your phone, and which report to you when your child gets home. Hey, sounds completely necessary, simple, and after all ... what could go wrong? Who wouldn't want to devote a month to debugging that, when it won't let your kid inside, and you are 1,200 miles away?



Gary

Ah ha! The endoplasmic transvergance boundary! I knew it!

It's always 12:00 somewhere in the interdimentional space-time continuum, so THAT'S why the clock is always blinking it.

Well, I think our work here, is done.

I figured I'd end it as it started.

You see ... it is posts like this, that seperate us from the "Fluff" you find elsewhere on the net.

Gary

Oh, I don't know. Your beard looks pretty fluffy in that photo.

I think I have a couple of black hair,s remaining, but that is it. HA HA..............Have not had a chin seen in years,,,...

Me neither. And I've still got some pepper to mix with the salt. Less every year, but I'm thinking of it as becoming blonde again instead of going grey. A very silvery-platinum sort of blonde, but definitely not grey.