Changing music tastes ~

I remember when I was younger my wife and I would take our family to a town up in the mountains. It was a German village and they had craft stores and cool little restaurants that were very custom for their German village motif. It was near a river and so there was river tubing near there that would go through the town and everybody would wave as the tubers went underneath the bridge.

I remember there are shops there where when you went and they were really relaxed and quiet but they had this background music. Sometimes it was Indian flutes and chants. Sometimes it was spa-like music that I had never really heard and it just sounded so soothing and relaxing. And I thought how cool it must be to be able to work in that environment all day long.

Fast forward to today and I do that more often than not. I play relaxing music while I'm at work so that when I'm in my office I can enjoy that as background music. I have some Indian flute music, but I also have some spa music and a lot of smooth jazz. I've downloaded some of those three or four hour-long music videos of relaxing tunes from YouTube and put them on my player so that they come up in the mix.

But is fascinating because I still seem to gravitate towards that more and more as I get older.

Don't get me wrong, I still like a good rock 'n' roll song or some hits from the 80s. But because I need to concentrate more I don't turn the music up as loud as I used to. And because I have to listen and talk more I don't turn the music up very loud anyways because I don't have to turn it up and down and up and down to hear somebody talking to me.

It's fascinating how my tastes change over time.

Apartment living ~

When I was in college I lived at home for the first couple of years. The good kind of challenge and with my age and my younger brother six years younger than me. So took out a couple of student loans and moved to live in an apartment while going to college.

My parents helped me move. My dad cried when he left me there. I never understood that all my adult children started moving out of them I understood it perfectly.

It was a good apartment! It was on the corner on the second floor. It overlooked the pool kind of. So I could go out there and swim in the sun after going to class. I didn't do that a lot because I was working a lot trying pay for food and entertainment and gas to go back to see my parents and my girlfriend back at home an hour and a half away.

But I remember when I would be laying in the bed trying to fall asleep and people would be walking by my apartment window. And I was always scared that they were going to break in and take my stuff. Or break in and do bad things to me. It was always something I was worried about.

I got that from my parents who always warned me of the bad people out there in the bad things that could happen. And it was always a challenge because those things usually didn't happen. What a great learning experience!

Augmented reality ~

One of the most talked about technology things in the nerd circles that I read is augmented reality. It's similar to virtual reality which has been talked about for years and is finally becoming more and more available. I've been excited about virtual reality for years, but it's just never been personal and portable.

I remember one of my favorite games in the video arcade: Battle Zone. It was a tank simulation with wireframe tanks around the flat surface with wireframe blocks and pyramids scattered throughout. And these tanks would get you in their sights and start shooting at your tank. And your goal was to avoid getting shot while shooting them. I remember my strategy was always to go backwards as fast as I could so that I could see them, and pull in on their tail and shoot them before they got me in their sites.

Battle Zone was fun and gave you that sense of virtual reality but because it was a big arcade machine that you had the press your eyes up against in order to see the playing screen it wasn't quite what we were hoping for now with technology so personal now and with us all the time I want something that's with me whenever I wanted.

Augmented reality is where you wear glasses or goggles of some kind and GPS network location and landmarks things like little windows above people's heads or above places of interest however over those things in your line of vision. You can see everything and you're just looking through glasses but superimposed over the reality is this augmentation with extra information.

Heads-up display is one of the best examples of that that has got a lot of play in high-end cars and fighter jets but it just never took off in everyday life. But it's coming.

Recently I was thinking about augmented reality and how as a Christian I can use God's vision and leading like augmented reality. As I look around I can open my eyes to the Holy Spirit and see needs and prayer requests and things that I can do or help with. I remember the song "Give Me Your Eyes" was one of my favorite Christian songs a few years back. It's a story song of a guy on an airplane and praying that God would give him God's eyes so that he could see the surround him instead of just cruising through life without paying attention to the things that people need and desire.

I pray that God augments my reality with being able to see those things and then reaching out and actually trying to help people with those things.

Walking at work ~

I have spent a career working in a dark windowless room with a lot of other people all doing whatever they can to keep things moving and keep people safe.

Over the years I found different ways to reduce my level of stress while at work. Early on I would splash my face with cold water whenever I would go to the restroom. It helped me feel refreshed! As I got older I started wearing glasses and splashing water on my face became more complicated and I didn't do it very often.

Being an introvert and wanting some quiet I would go for walks around the parking lot when I was younger. And I still do. Early in my career the cafeteria was the place to go and that's where all of the people would take their break. Guys would sit around tables and laugh and complain and make fun of each other. It was very distracting and not my kind of thing so I tended to go outside and walk. Or try to find a corner to sit in and read.

But I always found it interesting that nobody else was walking around the parking lot. It was an easy walk, nice and cool in the evenings and mornings. Sometimes the heat of the day actually felt good after being in a cold dark room for a hours. But I walked. Usually one lap, sometimes two laps around the parking lot. It was fun! But I was alone out there.

I remember being made fun of for walking around the parking lot. People would ask why I did that and say that it was stupid. That was early in my career. That was also in the middle of my career. But as I've gotten older it's more crowded out there. A whole lot of these younger people are out there walking around the parking lot every break.

I remember when I was in headquarters doing a lot of programming on a computer I made it a point to stand up and walk around the floor of the building that we were in once an hour. It didn't matter how long the walk took, I just got up to step away from the keyboard and clear my head for a couple of minutes. Sometimes I would do two or three laps through the building just to extend it out. My boss would chew me out and say that I wasn't focused and needed to concentrate and stay busy. I was sitting in a room with several other programmers and everybody looks like they're doing a whole lot but most of them were just surfing the early Internet and writing gag programs to prank each other with.

A few years ago I ran across an article that said that getting up and walking around once in hour was probably the best thing you can do for your mental and physical health. Since then I've read multiple articles that talk about that and talk about the dangers of sitting for too long and how our office jobs have led to our sedentary lifestyle so many times.

So I like to think of my walking around the parking lot at work as another case of me being ahead of my time. I love that!

Grateful for streaming ~

Holy David Post

Recently my wife and I went to a retirement community to visit with her mother. Her mother was in her 90s and required full-time care.

The visit went well and we enjoyed seeing her and doing the little activities that she does where she lives. We took her on a couple of adventures which was fun. But it required us to slow down and do things a little bit differently than what we're used to.

But there was one thing that reminded me of the past that I'm thankful we're not in now. Due to storms the Internet connection for the place where we were staying was out of service. The Wi-Fi was up and running and we could connect but there was no Internet.

In the room where we stayed they had a TV with an antenna and all the channels you can pick up on digital TV now.

We resisted for a couple of nights but then one evening we had some time on our hands and wanted to vegetate in front of a show. So we turned on the TV and found a show we used to watch, Law and Order.

Having to watch commercials again was terrible! Five minutes of show followed by 10 minutes of commercials was mindnumbing. The commercials themselves while they could've been funny were just wrong. One was about your skin, one was about your bad health issue that you needed to get this medicine for, one was about things you needed to buy, one was about clothing that you should be wearing or shoes that you should be wearing, and I can't remember the other one. Over and over and over these things just pounded on our psyches telling us that we were not enough we did not have enough and that all we needed to do was give our money to these people and give our time to these people and they would make us enough.

Having to watch over the air TV that night makes me incredibly grateful for streaming services that I use now. While XM Radio drives me crazy with their commercial free channels that talk about XM radio and what are basically commercials I really enjoy the music. And I enjoy being able to listen as we drive cross-country without having to hunt for a local station filled with commercials about things that I don't want to spend money or time on. I love Netflix, I love Prime Video, I love YouTube without commercials or ads. And I love my ad blockers on my browsers.

Just a reminder of how far modern technology has brought us. I hope they have ad blockers in the meta-verse!

Sending postcards ~

Over the past couple of years I've been sending postcards. I love sending postcards! I use them as a way to share what we're doing and just give a piece of my life to others that I love.

For a long time I would buy postcards and collect them whenever we would go on trips. I would take stamps with me and I would write out several postcards but I was also buying extras so that I could put them away in my collection.

Now I use an app called TouchNote that uses pictures that I take and then I can upload the picture type on the back of it and pick an address from my address book and send it even while I'm out and about. It's amazing!

What I found is that postcards allow me to share a little bit more directly in places where I can't necessarily be as often as I wish that I could be.

I remember my wife's sister would send postcards whenever they would go on trips. Different places around our country, different islands, we got a couple of postcards from Europe. It was a lot of fun! But with her I always thought that she was bragging and trying to show people how great she was doing.

I hope people don't think that of me and what I send on postcards. They're one of those things where I'm thinking of them and wish that I could share more of my life with them but I can't and so this way I can let them know that I'm thinking of them. My thought is that they might enjoy whatever it is that I send them.

I tend to send postcards of my wife's paintings to our kids and other family members. I tend to send pictures of our adventures to our kids after we visit them. That's a lot of fun!

I've started sending postcards to myself when we go on trips so that I have a picture of the adventure when I get back. And I'll send one every day so that I get a record of what we did and get to enjoy it all over again when the postcard comes in after we get back.

If you've gotten a postcard for me I hope you enjoyed it! If you don't send postcards yourself you ought to give it a try. It's actually a lot of fun and it's a quick and easy way to be kind and show love to others.

Have fun with it!