Reaching Out for Grandma
Believe it if you wish.
Every August, even if the creek rises, my mother's side of the family has a family reunion out in the country near where she and her 9 brothers and sisters were born. Five boys, five girls. She was the youngest girl; the one who was born in a barn more than 85 years ago now. Her Pa and her older brothers built the barn before they built a house on their property. They dug the root cellar by hand. I loved to go down in that dirt cellar to bring out some apples or a watermelon.
We are talking about the missing grandmother. Grandma Alice. The grandmother that Cici never had until last year. They met when we went to the family reunion. Ping and Cici swear that the KFC that we bought to take to that reunion was better than the KFC anywhere else that they have ever tried it. Maybe that is because the chickens didn't have to walk very far to get to KFC, I told them. We were not that far from Tyson Chicken's back yard. They call it Tyson Foods now, but when I was a kid it was just Tyson Chicken.
It is a 9 hour drive in each direction. You can fly, but it is hardly worth it. The airport on each end is about an hour away. Tack on the waiting time, the down time for changing planes, and the delays that usually occur, plus the time and aggravation to rent and return a rental car, and there isn't all that much difference in time. And if you fly, you miss the beautiful scenery along the way. Truly. The mountains are gorgeous.
Cici, I said as we drove home today, I don't think we will go to the family reunion this year. Why, Papa? She asked. Because it is such a long drive and I know it is very boring for you. Mama isn't here and you won't have her to talk with during the long drive. Plus I know it is boring for you when we are there because you don't know anyone, and I don't want you to be bored.
I was so surprised by her response. No Papa, she said. The drive is not boring for me, and I will not be bored while we are there. We need to go see Grandma Alice. She is getting older each year and we don't get to see her very often. We also need to go see the rest of our family. I talked with Mama about this and I want to go to the reunion with you.
So who has some ideas about what movies I should buy that she can watch in the DVD player in the Pilot? Let me see, if she sleeps some, we talk for a while, and she watches three movies, that should eat up 9 hours.
This conversation surprised me a lot, but in the same conversation, Cici told me another surprising thing. When we go back to Guangzhou, she said, I want to take you to a restaurant that serves the most delicious food. I know you will love it, Papa.
This is my daughter.
Every August, even if the creek rises, my mother's side of the family has a family reunion out in the country near where she and her 9 brothers and sisters were born. Five boys, five girls. She was the youngest girl; the one who was born in a barn more than 85 years ago now. Her Pa and her older brothers built the barn before they built a house on their property. They dug the root cellar by hand. I loved to go down in that dirt cellar to bring out some apples or a watermelon.
We are talking about the missing grandmother. Grandma Alice. The grandmother that Cici never had until last year. They met when we went to the family reunion. Ping and Cici swear that the KFC that we bought to take to that reunion was better than the KFC anywhere else that they have ever tried it. Maybe that is because the chickens didn't have to walk very far to get to KFC, I told them. We were not that far from Tyson Chicken's back yard. They call it Tyson Foods now, but when I was a kid it was just Tyson Chicken.
It is a 9 hour drive in each direction. You can fly, but it is hardly worth it. The airport on each end is about an hour away. Tack on the waiting time, the down time for changing planes, and the delays that usually occur, plus the time and aggravation to rent and return a rental car, and there isn't all that much difference in time. And if you fly, you miss the beautiful scenery along the way. Truly. The mountains are gorgeous.
Cici, I said as we drove home today, I don't think we will go to the family reunion this year. Why, Papa? She asked. Because it is such a long drive and I know it is very boring for you. Mama isn't here and you won't have her to talk with during the long drive. Plus I know it is boring for you when we are there because you don't know anyone, and I don't want you to be bored.
I was so surprised by her response. No Papa, she said. The drive is not boring for me, and I will not be bored while we are there. We need to go see Grandma Alice. She is getting older each year and we don't get to see her very often. We also need to go see the rest of our family. I talked with Mama about this and I want to go to the reunion with you.
So who has some ideas about what movies I should buy that she can watch in the DVD player in the Pilot? Let me see, if she sleeps some, we talk for a while, and she watches three movies, that should eat up 9 hours.
This conversation surprised me a lot, but in the same conversation, Cici told me another surprising thing. When we go back to Guangzhou, she said, I want to take you to a restaurant that serves the most delicious food. I know you will love it, Papa.
This is my daughter.
Besides, what would a family reunion be without your favorite son there? Your mother waits each year for this special occasion...go home son and enjoy the fried chicken!
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Make sure you don't get Ferris Buellers Day Off! Maybe an old Disney movie like Follow Me Boys, or how about The Egg And I?
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I think you are right, Smitty, but I bet she would laugh at Ferris Bueller. She loves to watch funny movies, but maybe we can take a mixture of genres with us.
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Easy to believe. They have very great reverence for their elders. I do computer work for a 95 year old woman, and my wife told me very bluntly that I would not charge her for services.
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Hey Craig, I admire a 95 year old person who does Windows.
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No, she is a smart cookie, she has a nice little Intel based iMac with the 20" screen. Her children like it that way, as with its built-in camera it is very easy to do Skype or other video chats. My usual work for her entails issues caused by things like her ISP being flaky, or getting a new peripheral working. She likes not dealing with viruses and spyware like some of her Windows friends do...
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She is smart.
I started off in the Apple world when I left my Commodore 64 behind. That was my first computer. Remember how powerful we thought that little machine was?
I think my Apple was called the Apple GS II. I loved that computer and it never had any problems. I eventually donated it to my son's baseball team because they needed a computer.
But then I also started in the Word Perfect world.
I sometimes think of going back to the Apple world but always worry about compatibility issues, whether they still exist or not. The price on computers is almost unbelievable these days. I just bought one from Costco - an on-line special price for an HP desktop with an Intel Pentium Dual Core Processor 2.5GHz, 4GB SDRAM, 320GB hard drive, Lightscribe DVD SuperMulti drive, and an 18.5" widescreen flat panel monitor with integrated speakers and graphics. Heck, they even threw in a printer.
Price: $499.99 including shipping and handling.
The kicker is that I also get a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it is released later this year.
Now that's a deal.
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Yes, I remember well. I still have my operational Apple ][+ (first computer I ever owned) and my next system, an Apple ][gs.
Our campus is about 50/50 for Macs versus Windows, with more people leaning towards the Macs as frustration levels rise from spyware, malware, and virus issues.
Yes, there are some unbelievable deals out there on cheap PCs. There are some limitations to these items that most laymen will not notice (they have to take shortcuts somewhere). It is too bad you have to deal with Vista until Windows 7 is available
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That's it, the Apple II gs. Great computer. My kids learned how to use a computer on that little machine.
The legal world has never gone to the Mac world. At one time Word Perfect ruled in the legal world, but that changed (unfortunately from my perspective) and now Word rules.
I agree about Vista. I have had to deal with it on one of my computers, but I already pre-ordered Windows 7 for that computer from Costco for about $50. The next computer I bought after that was determined by which one I could purchase from Dell with XP instead of Vista. I am not a gamer, but it is essentially a gamer computer. That is the only way XP came already installed at the time. I just hope Windows 7 is as good and as stable as the reviewers have told us.
The only corner I could see that was cut on the HP I just bought is that it doesn't come with wireless or a built in web cam, but that isn't important to me for this computer. Costco has a habit, if not a policy, of requiring the good stuff on the computers it sells. You could probably find something that I missed, but all the usual suspects seem to be what is needed: Processor and processor speed, memory and drives, functionality of 6 front and back USB ports, headphone and mic ports in the front, slots for expandability. My guess is that you would fault the graphics and audio, but as a non-gamer those features matter little to me.
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I actually follow trends pretty closely, and know of some firms a number of years ago that were truly concerned about security and malware. They took it upon themselves to create what they needed on the Mac, and it is available for sale. There are actually quite a few resources: http://www.macattorney.com/, http://www.themaclawyer.com/, and a nice article here http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1184869659955.
Until she retired recently, I used to assist a local attorney with computer support. She used a PC with WordPerfect (had all the templates for different forms) and Timeslips for billing. This machine was never put on the network. When it became clear that she needed network access for research, she bought a Mac to do that (the PC never was online ever, to protect confidential information).
I use both systems. I also have firewall software, anti-spyware, and other protections on my PCs here at home. Frankly I tend to use the Mac most, because all the protection software tends to slow the PCs down
That said, I think you will be pleased with Windows 7. Our testing has shown it to work better than Vista or XP. We will never officially support Vista at the college.
And you are right, the corners they cut on those machines are going to be things that typically only a computer geek would notice or care about. The two biggest are less cache on the processor and shared memory for the video system, both of which cause a decrease in performance. However, as you say, if you are just doing mostly text based operations, the speed difference is not going to be noticeable to you.
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