When life takes a turn (or: a convert in the making)

We had a very nice Christmas, relatively quiet, lots of food, fun, games. Santa been berry berry good to me…. he didn’t cost me an arm and a leg for one thing!

On a serious note, and don’t let this one concern you too much, for I think we’ll be OK when all the dust settles–although I am looking for a good parent support group to help us through this–my kids have taken a turn in a direction that “scares” me.

This is a clear case of peer influence here. I should have seen this coming, what with the kind of crowd they have fallen in with, the ominous looking symbols on their laptops should have been warning enough….. My sons went and bought one of “those” computers. You know, the one with the fruit logo on it that has a little ‘bite’ taken out of it. Yes!! One of *those* !! ah!!!! I am so ashamed!! I was in shock! Were did I go wrong?!? I should have talked with them more about market share, industry standards, the beauty of DLLs….. My wife and I sat up all night talking about what in the world went wrong. Big help she was. She actually said “maybe this isn’t so bad. Maybe it’s for the good…” What!! uuggg! Leave to an end-user to say something like that.

Don’t panic, Brent. Deep breaths, think happy thoughts…. You can handle this…. But to have that thing in my own home!!! I never thought I would ever see such a day!

“Gotta sing! er… write!”

Originally “penned” Sept. 19, 2006

Here I am, sitting Caraboo’s. Down the street my car is getting an oil change. I have my Blackberry and a Bluetooth keyboard.THis is the worst keyboard I have ever used in my life! FOr one thing, it’s a fold up keybord and it won’t lay flat. It teeter-totters from the qwert side to the yuiop side. Going from the – a – key to the ” key is a real joy, like my right and left hand are in a competition to keep their side on the table. THen ther is the fact that I press a key and it may or may not wok. Er, work….

But if you are a word junky you take what you can get. Hard to get a writer’s buzz off of the Moosehead beer of keyboards, though. Maybe this is how down and outers feel when they are sifting through ash trays looking for cigarette butts.

No, this probably more like Lance Armstrong trying to ride my son’s bike: very cramped, knocking his knees into the miss aligned handlebars, gears that don’t work, funky sounding brakes — but by golly, I”m gonna hit the road! Ride or die!

But on to the joy of the moment: