NotSoThoreau

I read an interesting post about postal mail; link here . One of the things that concerns me about digital media is what it means for our future. The article touches on how letters have touched peoples’ lives and how that will change when we no longer have mail. I believe we’ll find this true in other areas of our lives as well. For example, I’ve seen a schedule that belonged to Lon’s wife Kate. Most of the information in it is no longer relevant, but you can still see some of her personality, and how she spent her week. I have a hand drawn Moleskine Reporter from 2008. In the month of October, there’s a place where Lon wrote his contact information and address. I can look at that and remember him writing that in the ICU waiting room.

You can’t do this with digital stuff. I have old stuff that used to be on my Palm and it has no meaning at all. Even old email doesn’t have the same impact as an old letter would. They are not written by hand and do not reveal as much of the writer as a letter would. They are more akin to typewritten letters. I can remember when people used to complain about getting typewritten notes in Christmas cards. They felt it wasn’t the same as a handwritten note.

There are so many ways that technology is causing human interaction to disappear. Take books. Have you ever read a notated book, the kind where someone has written comments in the margins? It tells you something about the person and their interaction with the book. (I’ve never been able to do that myself. I was raised to never write in books. I think the most interesting example of this was a Bible, owned by an older woman that I knew. She had notes everywhere in it and had obviously spent a lot of time studying it.) You can interact with a digital book, but it’s not going to leave a historical record of that interaction.

I think that young people instinctively know this, but can’t articulate it. All of us would like to leave our mark on history, even if it’s in a very small way. It may be that only those most resistant to using technology in the future will leave that mark. For me, I’ll use my digital journal for quick posts and pictures. I’ll keep using my handwritten journal. It may not have significance for anyone but me. Then again, someone might find it interesting a hundred years from now.

It’s been really bad weather in the Gorge. I am so glad that I have been able to work from home. I’ve been working from home for almost two months now. It gives me so much free time at home. It helps the folks at work too. I was able to cover for someone that was out sick on Saturday.

I picked up a new to me computer from FreeGeeks. It’s a Mac G5. I’ve installed Ubuntu on it. The only downside is that my nice studio display only has a 1024 resolution. It doesn’t work as well for me as a higher resolution would. I’ve been using that Thinkpad a long time now. It’s nice to have a backup computer.

Well here we are, in a brand new year. The holidays here were pretty low key. We gave inexpensive gifts. I gave Lon a low crowned top hat. He’s gotten compliments on it. I have a nice carnelian ring. We went to the company Christmas party, to Tacoma to see Lon’s sister and the grandson. We had a quiet Christmas at home and stayed up to see in the New Year.

I’m sorting out the things I’d like to take with me into this year and the things I want to leave behind. There are some new things I’d like to do. I can’t do those new things if the old stuff is cluttering up my life.

One of my Facebook friends posted about having Thanksgiving all planned out and what a great holiday it is. I started to post a comment but decided to blog instead. Thanksgiving was always OUR holiday. Jeffrey’s birthday was the 24th, so it was usually a double celebration. He always cooked up a nice spread, with a turkey that he cooked and basted for hours. Sometimes we’d go to a friend’s place, but mostly we’d have Thanksgiving together. It was really hard that first Thanksgiving without him. I was very lucky that Ginger invited me over and I had a good time.

This year, I’m making the feast. We have several friends, single guys without a family to visit. It happens that they could use a place to celebrate. So I’m trying to decide what to make. Our big oven has a burned out element, so I really should replace it, if I’m planning something big. Quinn hasn’t committed to coming. So we’ll make what we can of it. It won’t be the holiday I used to have, but it can still be good.

I installed an app for an O’Reilly book called “iPhone: The Missing Manual”. (There’s a free, lite version you can try first.) I thought it was so handy that I went ahead and bought the full manual. The thing that impressed me most, which I really don’t see reference to online, is how you can slide from the ABC keyboard over to do punctuation. It immediately returns you to the ABC keyboard. You slide from the button for the 123 keyboard, over to your punctuation, then just lift your finger. It truly speeds things up. I do most of my blog posts from the phone now and I keep a daily journal in Wonderful Days. I definitely want to be able to type faster on the phone, but have not managed to type well with more than one finger at a time. It’s all just part of the craziness of using a phone for things like this.

Since I did a post where I said that one should not be concerned about how many apps they can use on their phone, I thought I might mention how many apps I DO happen to use these days.

Here’s what my two home screens look like. I found the wallpaper at Poolga . It seems to suit me and I think it works well with the icons. I’ve tried to restrict how much stuff I have installed, so that I can minimize the number of screens I use. It’s working so far but it’s still a relatively new phone for me. I upgraded to iOS 5 last weekend. It seems solid, although I have a small bit of lagging on some screens.

Second screen:

Stuff I use regularly:
Life Balance: This is my old standby and part of the reason I went with an iphone. They talked me into a Mac at one point too. It’s been several years since I used this on a regular basis. I used to be a heavy Palm user and it was my main planning application.

YNAB: I’ve followed this budgeting software since they first started out. I finally decided to buy it, since it will run on Linux. The iphone app is just great. I’m still struggling with my budgeting, but it’s so easy to keep track of my transactions with this.

Wonderful Days: Okay, so it’s sort of goofy but fun. It’s a journaling app that lets you add pictures and sync with your Evernote account. You can email an entry, post to Facebook or save as a .pdf file. I prefer to write a daily journal, but it’s been hard to find the time the last few years. I’ve been able to make a daily entry with this, since I bought it. It’s not as detailed as my regular morning pages were, but it’s definitely better than nothing at all. I like to post pictures taken with Hipstamatic, to give it that moody feel.

I just found this! It’s like a window shade that pulls down from the top bar. Must be something new with ios5, since it’s integrated with the new Reminders app. Anyway, thought I’d post a screenshot of my latest discovery.

Hoot Suite: Just started using this recently. It pulls together Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter streams. Now, I do have a Twitter account but I’m not a big user. I also am on LinkedIn. I use Facebook mainly to see what my friends have to say. I also have the separate iphone apps for those sites, but I do like the looks of this one.

Here’s the Facebook stream:

Hipstamatic: This is a fun app. It puts filters on your camera, to take pictures like the old point and click cameras. (There’s a touching story behind the name Hipstamatic, which you can read at the website.) The app starts out like this:

Here are a couple of pictures I’ve taken with it, just to give you a feel for how weird and wonderful it can be.

Beautiful Tarot: This is a recent addition. I used to play around with this back in the 70s and I’ve always loved the imagery of the Rider Waite deck. This is an excellent tarot app and really seems to be close to doing a traditional reading. You tap on the cards to read the meaning.

Fuji Leaves: It’s hard to describe this. It’s a music app. You arrange the leaves and drop the stones onto them. It makes a sound. You can also load “songs” that other people have created. It can be very hypnotic. This is the daytime side but there’s also a nighttime side. Fun and mindless.

Many apps are basically just the company websites. I have several of these. A couple are for banking. There’s Ebay and Craigslist. I have the Dominos app so I can order pizza from my phone. I use Pandora a lot but it’s not interesting enough to do a screen shot of it. Right now, I have 53 apps installed, and that doesn’t include the built in apps. I may thin this down again. Most are free but I do buy apps if I like them. It’s cheap enough that I can afford to buy something that doesn’t get used (like Egretlist. Love the looks of it, but still don’t use it.) I definitely have not spent as much on these apps as I did on Palm software. This has been a fun post and I hope it hasn’t been too boring for those of you that aren’t into iphones.

I was thinking about technology, brought on by Steve Jobs’s death. I have this sort of love/hate thing with Apple. I really love the hardware. I love Macs, even old Macs. I hate the Apple cult, who feel that all Mac operating systems are perfect, until the next one comes out. Reading the articles about Jobs, it reminds you of the impressive amount of technology that he helped create in his lifetime. What a vision! When you think of the technology that Microsoft created, there’s no comparison. I’d rather live in the world of Apple products.

In my lifetime, we’ve gone from tubes to transistors, rotary phones to computer-like phones, black and white tvs to 3-D. It’s an incredible transition and one that has affected our society and our world in so many ways. I watched “Pirates of Silicon Valley” last night for the first time. When Bill Gates goes into the Apple office and is looking at the artwork, my first thought was for him to take out his cell phone and take a picture of it. It’s what we would do now. Isn’t it an amazing thing, to walk around with a tiny device that you can make calls on, take pictures from and connect to the internet with? It truly seems like magic. The downside is the distance it can make between people, where we spend more time interacting with devices than we do with other people. People are the part of life that really matters. Let’s not forget that.

I used to always post a self potrait of myself. Haven’t done that for awhile. So here are some recent pictures.

First there’s me:

Here’s Lon from Tacoma last week:

Here’s Quinn with Lennon and Lon’s sister, Davey:

Looks like the action has been over on quinnscove or spindlitis lately. It’s been busy at work and busy at home. Getting ready to move the rest of the stuff to the river. We can’t afford two households. There’s been a lot done to get to this point. I finally feel unstuck. I expect to be taking a lot more pictures. I’ve picked up Hipstamatic and it’s pure fun. It’s nice to play around a bit. I’ll try and sort out another post soon.

After a wait of several months, I finally managed to upgrade my phone. When I was first considering this, back in March, I was dead set on a WebOS phone. I really did love the Palm OS and I heard great things about it. The problem is, HP has not done a great job on hardware. I’ve read several reports of the phones just not holding up.

When I checked to see what was available, there wasn’t much of a selection. The Motorola Flipside has been a good phone for Lon, but I’ve not been impressed with Android. And the other thing I wanted to avoid was the bloatware that AT&T installs. I really hate having a phone where I can’t delete unused stuff. It irritates me. I didn’t have $100 for a Veer or an iphone 4. And so, I now have an iphone 3gs. For $50, it’s a real bargain. I’ve found that most Apple hardware is good enough that you can run the low end stuff for a long time. And this phone does not feel low end to me. I don’t really like having to sync with iTunes (I use Lon’s computer, which still has XP installed.) But that’s a minor annoyance at this point. The phone has excellent call quality. The pictures I’ve taken have been pretty good, for a phone, and it’s remarkably easy to use. I thought I’d hate a touch screen but this works very well. I am really impressed with it. I’ve upgraded to Pandora One, since it’s so nice to listen to music on the long drive back and forth to work. And I’ve installed a few apps, but nothing like what I did back in the Palm days. I purchased Egretlist, Diacarta, and YouNeedABudget. I think there’s another knitting app that I want.

There’s a reason why smartphones are popular. It’s really nice to be connected anytime, anywhere. I was able to use Gmail to pull up an email my attorney needed, and could view all the attachments on my phone. I’ve used the built in map (Google) and the Mapquest app to get to where I’m going. I saved time yesterday finding the drop box for my ballot by mapping it out before driving there. It’s just an amazingly powerful tool.

I guess I’ve been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the cell phone era. I talk on the phone enough at work that I hate to talk on it when I’m off duty. I guess I just needed a phone that is a pleasure to use. Now, if I can just come up with a low end Mac to replace my aging laptop……

It hasn’t been bad out our way. We are still struggling with finances. We still have a move ahead of us. My stepson has been through a rough spell. I had a blowout on the freeway Tuesday night, but managed to keep the van on the road and got home eventually. I made it to the Sock Summit marketplace and bought some nice fiber. And I’ve finished a few small shawls. I reworked the Spindlitis site again and will be adding more content to it this week. It’s a bit thin right now. The chickens at the river place hatched out chicks and we have three of them! It’s not like the old days, where I’d have batches of fifteen or twenty, but still… We have been making plans for life at the river and there’s a lot I want to get in place to be more successful next year. Finances will improve once the boat is paid off. And the lawsuit is still a factor, with another hearing later this month. Lon’s family will have to settle his mom’s estate somehow. They still haven’t had a memorial service for her.

The best thing is, I have a good relationship to help me deal with all of it. We can pick each other up through the rough spots. I know there are people that have learned to deal with life’s troubles on their own, but I do appreciate having a partner. I know that we will have good times together, along with the bad.

Hard to believe that it’s been so long without an update. We spent a very hectic time trying to pull together enough money to pay taxes on both places. We sold our pickup with a dump bed, the cop car and the UHaul van. Really left our finances in a mess, but we pulled it off. Then, July 7th, Lon’s mother died. We went up to see her on the 5th. They’d moved her to hospice and I really didn’t think that she had long. She was 89 and had dementia so I guess it’s a blessing in a way. It’s never easy.

The river is back down and we are making some progress at cleanup and at moving. It’s still the world’s slowest move, but that’s the way it goes. There’s a lot to sort out. My stuff is there, of course. I’ll have to work from the house for now, since I can’t get fast enough internet at the river to support my work phone. And there’s still so much stuff here. It’s a bit difficult to try and share the van between us and Quinn. Quinn’s car needs an engine and he’s working on it. There are times when he needs to borrow the van too. I’m really glad that I only need to go in a couple of days per week.

We have chickens at the river sitting nests, so am waiting to see if we get chicks out of this. I have one hen at the house here that is broody, but the eggs aren’t fertile. We spend some time trying to plan out what needs to be done at the river. I’d like to start working up a garden for next year. We need to come up with money to start rebuilding the trailer there and of course, there are taxes again next year. It just never ends.

I have been knitting a lot, mainly small shawls. I have a couple of projects just sitting there while I churn out yet another shawl. The good news is that I’ve been using up some yarns that I’ve had forever. It’s nice to have them turned into something a little bit useful. And it feels good to be knitting again. I haven’t been spinning lately but that’s okay. As you can see, I’ve had a lot of stuff to do.

The river is still high. We’ve moved down one old float that we want to take apart. The next project is to move in a single story houseboat. This is also going to be taken down. Low water caused some problems with the float structure several years ago and it’s just not rebuildable. If we can get it moved in, it will be a lot easier to tear down. It will give us a closer spot for the Aqua Home, which we plan to work on this summer.

And we are finally getting closer to putting the house up for sale. It’s gotta be done. Quinn is going to move in here for the summer and we can show the house after a little touch up work. It means all sorts of upheaval, but I am hoping that we can finally get past this. I have plans for making a garden at the river and doing major cleanup.

We may also be past the law suit in a few months. We’ll see how it goes. There is so much stress involved with all of this and I haven’t had much time off lately. I’m hoping for a beach trip over the 4th of July weekend. Lon had another birthday on Sunday. I managed to make a german chocolate cake from scratch for him. I’m getting better at cooking.

Work has been going well. I work from home three days a week. It’s helped a lot with our finances and I feel a lot more productive. I work a split shift those days, so I have time in the middle of the day to do things in town. I try and think about how this time will be when I look back on it in a few years. The stress has been bad, but it’s normally a pretty good life.

I haven’t been posting much here, but I have added a lot of pictures on the quinnscove.com site. (If you go there, don’t use www in front of it!) The Columbia is over flood stage. We’ve been doing a lot of work at the river. We’re moving an old float over to be taken apart. We’re also moving one of the houseboats in too. High water won’t last forever.

There’s still a lot of water due to come down from Montana, as the snow melts there. In a lot of ways, it’s wonderful to see this much water at the river. The bad part is that we may not have a solstice messabout this year. The water is too swift for the wooden boats and there’s no place for them to camp.

I had a few sweet potatoes that were sprouting and decided to start them, the way we used to do. This one is just starting to leaf out. I’ve got a couple more going as well. There’s nothing I like as much as a sweet potato vine.

When I went back to my old job, I returned to the 150 mile round trip commute. Daily. It’s all freeway, but I had some very near misses this winter, and winter in the Gorge is unpredictable. With gas prices climbing and a decidedly inefficient car, I was faced with possibly having to find a different job, closer to home. Thanks to my boss and the company owner, my current job is now the job closer to home. Today was my first day of telecommuting. It’s a two month trial, but I’m doing all I can to make things permanent.

I wish I could say that it was a smooth transition. I’d worked on getting the phone set up Saturday and thought I had it. Then, this morning, it wasn’t working right. We got it working, then I started losing the internet. Finally, after having Comcast give me a second ip address, both the internet and phone were working at the same time. I can access most of my tools from my computer, but there are a few applications that I needed a remote desktop to access. I’ve got that part working now too. I’m able to log into the phone queue and take calls from my desk in Quinn’s old room. It’s a nice view.

Advantages to the company are– I can now work a split shift, giving a bit more support in the morning. I’ll be taking a 3 hour break in the afternoon, then working another three hours. It’s also like getting a raise that didn’t cost them any money. And, if someone calls in sick on the weekends or they get hammered with an outage, I can jump in for whatever is needed. My office is just down the hall.

Advantages to me are simple. An extra 9 hours a week that I don’t spend driving. Less money spent on gas, and this runs $25-30 a day. And I get to stay with a company that I do care about. It’s a real win-win situation.