Heeeee’s back! No, not The Terminator.  Arnold is otherwise occupied. It is I, as Winston Churchill was wont to say.   I have been out of pocket for the past couple of weeks. Getting back to a routine is not so easy. Eventually I will wind up the reunion aftermath, which I will get back to working diligently, but not at breakneck speed.

For something different:Just so you do not conclude that I don’t have a life outside the reunion, I will eschew the fixation on our recent great reunion and offer a few thoughts to ponder.

Confessions of a smart phone non-junkie. I readily admit that I have a smart phone. I also readily admit that it usually sits on my desk, turned off. I think my bill usually shows about 35 minutes a month actually calling someone. My phone has about five apps, mostly banking related. I don’t play games on the phone. I rarely text, read emails on the computer, and don’t talk to the mysterious voice of Siri on the iPhone. Still, I pay some exorbitant amount in case I want to. One reason I don’t text is because I have fat fingers, and it takes a terribly long time to type in a text. A second reason is that each one costs 20 cents. Of course, if you send more than 50, you can pay $10 a month and have unlimited texts. Thirdly, with the iPhone, Apple has commandeered my PC, and I hate it. Now all that may change because I discovered I can dictate the text message and the voice recognition is pretty decent.

Not a social media person either. I don’t tweet, leaving that for the birds. I have a Facebook account I never use. Actually I have two Facebook accounts, which is against the terms of use conditions, but they won’t let me combine them into one. There is some other procedure to follow that appeared to be more trouble than it is worth.

While I am not into the social networking, I do have concern that technology is passing me by. Main frame computers have been around for 65 years, and the desktop has been here for thirty-five or more. Social media is what is making us not users dinosaurs . So today, I spent some time trying to educate myself on some of the stuff that is out there. Here are some of the hot social media packages today. I won’t describe them, but I will show my ignorance since some have been around for several years. Pinterest and Instagram are probably the two most widely used, but then there is Google+, Tumblr, Rdio, Vine, Whatapp, Obvoo, etc. and so it goes. Hulu and Pandora are pretty commonplace by now.

Turning philosophical and pondering old age, whenever it gets here. I was reading a book and came across this statement, which struck a chord. “And it’s a life with no shortage of moments to recommend it, a life that picks up speed like a boulder rolling down a hill, easy and natural and comfortable, and yet beyond control somehow; it all happens so fast, you wake up a young man and at lunch are middle-aged and by dinner you can imagine your death.” I probably would not have given that much thought forty years ago, but now I do.  How about you?

Signing off today. I do have some more photos, a few left from the kid’s party and others, so watch for them.