I'll leave the moral and spiritual suggestions to those better prepared for giving that advice. There's really no need for me to give any suggestions of responsibility to any of my family -- as a family, people will be hard pressed to find another family who better takes responsibility for the direction their lives take. No my suggestions revolve around technology. As a family, I think we lag many others with taking advantage of the technology around us. For too many, it is a mystery to them because they will not make the simple effort to even try to learn some of the simplest ways technology can make life a little more interesting to them.
It would appear that the older you are -- the more resistant you are to making the effort to learn about some of the cool stuff available to you. At 52, most of my childhood friends act no different than my elders, when they allow fear of the unknown to stop them from learning just a little something new. I certainly hope that until the day that I'm bedridden -- that I will always want to improve my knowledge, and never feel I'm too old to learn anything new. In many cases, two minutes spent learning something could save you hundreds of hours, and/or provide you with better entertainment - regardless of your age. Some of you have very powerful computers capable of burning high quality music CDs, process great memories in digital photos, make movies, find a place with the answer to any question you have on any topic, have a blog to be your personal soapbox, or even find the best prices for something on-line. Sadly these computers are used for plain text emails and minimal Internet browsing because of the lack of effort to spend five minutes to try one new thing a day.
I've tried to show people something as simple as cut and paste text from one area to another -- but they'll spend hours retyping something that that could have been highlighted, copied, and pasted in seconds. I've set up wireless networks so people could move about their homes with their notebooks -- but they're afraid to unplug the notebook. I get emails about how to attach a file in an email -- because it is easier than to want to learn how to enter the two keywords "email attachment" into Goggle and have 200,000 simple answers in a second. I've seen people go months without sound to their computer because a wire was plugged into the wrong hole -- when they could have looked at the instructions, or tried the hole next to it, or sought some help on the Internet or any visitor. I've seen people perpetrate 10-year-old Urban legends over and over again, despite having a toolbar with a link to first checking it out before emailing it to 50 people, who mail it to 50 people, who mail, and being part of keeping a lie alive....... I've bought people a digital camera and a USB card reader -- that is simpler to use than loading film in a camera -- and those cameras collect dust until they're lost. I have dozens and dozens of people who need me to resolve their computer issues - when they've been provided with a simple opportunity to challenge themselves to learn something -- and having the satisfaction of solving their own problem.
None of this is Rocket Science. Consider that the last grade of school that I completed in school was the 8th -- and I was a D/F student up until that point. So if I can self-teach myself what I currently know -- anyone can -- if they'd only make a small effort to try. Yet they either feel like it is easier to have someone else do it for them, just deal with the problem and do without the feature, or spend more time getting themselves lathered up into a frenzy over some silly little problem instead of spending less time thinking about where they could find the answer -- and going there for it.
The kool thing about learning technology today is consistency of different places to find answers. Once you've taken the initial few hours of getting past the first obstacle -- it not only gets easier -- but it becomes a vehicle that offers unlimited opportunities of self gratification. Treat this as you would a jigsaw puzzle or a crossword puzzle and do it for relaxation before you have the problem and get into a panic finding the answer under duress. The more of the puzzle you do -- the easier it gets to resolve. Better yet -- today offers so many more hints than were not available to me when I was learning. When I worked at United Recovery I saw problems like too much time typing work cards, master cards, and collection letters -- so I learned how to write a simple program where entering that information once save a ton of labor. When I saw how much time and money was wasted calculating payroll from charts, and sending checks to Al Stein to do the bookkeeping and return a month later -- I learned and installed accounting software. When I saw how long it took and the errors made with Donna logging payments by hand - and the retype it all in statements (with zero checks and balances), I wrote a program to not only do that -- but to give accurate information to make a Daily Accounting Summary and statistical reports. When we needed to take it to the next level -- I learned how to design a system that would do everything an agency wanted -- and explain those needs to a programmer who knew nothing of the needs of a collection agency, in the terms he could understand. When I started my own agency and couldn't afford a commercial software application to run my business -- I learned to program and wrote my own. Not only were there no support groups or the Internet back then, there wasn't even books on these then uncharted territories -- so 9th grade dropout had to figure it out for himself.
Few of you need to take on those types of challenges under the gun as I had to -- you just need to learn some of the very basic things a computer can do to make life easier and more enjoyable. The below four suggestions are of super easy stuff to start with -- which will not only give you quick and immediate enjoyment; but start to tear down the "I can't do it walls" that I hear too much.
Music on your computer. I have a computer at my desk at work at DDS, one at work at Lonestar / Swcc, and this one in my bedroom. All of them have about 4,000 songs, which take up 11.4 GB of drive space, and if played end to end -- would give me 9.1 days of music without hearing the same song twice. There is always music playing when I work on the computer -- and it sounds great even through $20 USB speakers. With these songs I can create 100s of play lists with as many or as few of the songs of my choice that I want. When a song is in a playlist -- it isn't a duplicate taking up extra space. It is just a different arrangement of the same songs played from the single database of music. Every night I go to bed with one of five "Beddie Bye" playlists of a dozen songs that help me fall to sleep. I can burn custom CDs right from my computer of any 80 minutes of arrangements I want -- to play my truck or motor home, or give away. The remarkable thing was that this was not only totally free, about the easiest thing I've ever down on a computer, and while it sounds like it was time consuming to set up -- it was all done with about an hour total of my time. I challenge all of you to challenge yourself to try this:
Go to the iTunes site, to download and Install the free iTunes software. Downloading software is standard across the board. Do a download and installation of any application once -- and it will be virtually the same way for anything you download in the future. It is really goof proof, and you will learn something very useful. The download site will walk you through the installation, and there is a Support site if for some reason you get confused. Again the first time is time there might be confusion -- but after the first time you will have forever passed that obstacle.
To load your music, just insert a music CD into the CD-Rom drive of your computer and walk away. It will automatically load all of the songs -- with information like Song, Artist, time, album, genre,.....It takes about 5 minutes per CD to load. I put a stack next to my computer and over the course of a couple of days loaded 3500 songs by just putting a new CD in as I walked by. All you have to do to load all of your CDs onto you computer is know how to push the button that opens your drive. Hardly rocket science.
Once all of the music is loaded -- you can search by song, artist, album, year, genre, or whatever -- and drag that song into a playlist. When you drag it into the playlist -- it still stays in the master list, so the song can be in as many playlists as possible. This application, like all quality applications, has simple on-line help by just clicking the Help link in your NavBar. You will most likely not need it -- but it is there if you do.
Finally you can automatically buy songs for only 99 cents from the iTunes store with a couple of clicks while in iTunes. It is great for that favorite song -- not worth buying an entire CD for. Click to select the song, click to checkout -- and the song it automatically downloaded to you computer.
Outlook as a Personal Organizer. I couldn't live without Outlook keeping my schedule straight -- and my time efficiently used. I can tell you what I was doing virtually every hour of my life since 1985 between Outlook and Sidekick before that. Most all of you have Outlook (not to be confused with Outlook Express -- which is just the email part of Outlook), in your Microsoft Office folder. The biggest problem with people underachieving is organization and efficiency. An application like this can change your life by making you more productive than the average person. The benefits are:
A calendar / day planner. In addition to my keeping track of days that I'll be gone racing, days I'll be out of town for a convention, appointments, reoccurring scheduled events like quarterly tax payments, birthdays, anniversaries, .... Many sites have a little file to import. For instance I'm a Houston Rockets fan. Virtually all sports teams have their schedule that you can import into your calendar. As a side note: Without my calendar as a record -- we wouldn't have Hope. It is a fact. It became court evidence as proof of our standing to challenge some bad people from abusing her.
To Do List. You can have a to do list, and when you intend to bang out some of those tasks that day -- you can drag them to your calendar and put in the time frame you allot for them. I consider myself a very efficient and productive person and this is my number one tool to any business successes I might have experienced.
Email -- stationary and signatures, distribution lists, folders for filing important emails, searching for items in past emails -- this is the best there is.
Get a digital Camera: Do it for your personal entertainment -- in addition to opening some doors to tearing down technology walls. This is a way to learn a little about technology -- that can be greatly expanded at a reasonable pace. I haven't used film for years. Hope can take and process digital images -- and there's no excuse for anyone to not take the few minutes to learn how to take photos and get from their computer to their computer, and back up the best onto a CD. If you still are using film -- a digital offers these advantages:
Photos that don't fade, scratch, have spill marks, stick to each other, forever lost when thrown in boxes in the closet,
Photos are free -- take 10 instead of one and keep the best
Tools to crop and touchup bad photos (you learn something easy and enjoyable)
Instant gratification
Better Cameras for the money
So easy that you will be angry with your self
Download to the Internet (you learn something that will be useful in many other areas)
Last forever
The downloads on the Internet survive fires
1 billion places to get help if you are too stubborn to read the five minute step by step instruction
My suggestions of three levels of good Amateur cameras (Click)
This is just a starting point. Once you invest a little time with your digital camera -- you will challenge yourself to take better and better photos, share then on the on-line family photo albums, start to do funky retouching, take drives looking for that excellent photo.
Learn to use bulletin boards as tools: Forget for a second that most of my family members have not successfully registered on the www.OldHippiesRoots.com site -- thus haven't seen any of the history about their family that only the registered and logged in members can see -- boards are helpful in answering any question about any subject. When I have a racing question on how to go faster, safer -- I most often refer to a board on that. When my motorhome had a problem that no one could identify -- a board frequented by motorhome and truck mechanics lead me to the answer. All of the applications and programming languages I use -- have me going to a board for answers to my questions. When I needed a fuel pump for my Buick Grand National -- a board that specializes in GN owners gave me the advice of which one was the best for my situation (going faster) and where to get it. When I have computer problem I can't figure out -- a board will always have the answer. I've save thousands of hours by tapping into this free advice. While my interests are going to be different than yours -- there is a board for any topic in the world that you can socialize with others having the same interests -- and resolve problems. Dogs, cars, photography, racing, sewing, church, music, movies, trivia, politics, humor, lawn tractors, go carts, motorcycles, home decorating, law, medicine, kids, money, investments, colleges, vacations, places --- anything. Learn the basics of participating on one board -- and you will know how to participate on any board and have a tool that will make your life much easier.
When you click register on any board you are asked for a user name (the nick name you want to go by), a password, and your email address.
You are then sent and email (to the address you gave) with a link in it to click. When you click that link -- your registration is completed and you can post. They email the link to complete your registration to you to discourage spammers and trolls.
Once you log in and click the remember me box -- most sites will automatically log you in every time you go to that site in the future -- but you should still write down your username, password, for each site in a little notepad that you keep by your computer.
Should you lose your password, there is way on almost every board to email it to the email address used to register the login (so keep it current).
Terminology:
Board: The site that has a collection of forums for various topics or subtopics
Forum: The area where specific topic threads go
Thread: A topic might be a question someone needs answers for.
Post: The individual replies for that thread (answers to the questions -- replies to a statement or opinion)
Troll: An asshole with nothing better to do than stir up crap on a board
Spam/Spammer: Someone posting worthless information with no other goal that to sell his product.
Whack: A post or thread that was deleted by the board administrator
While this message to challenge yourself most likely sounds too harsh to many of you -- I challenge of you to challenge yourselves to do the above four things -- regardless of how old you are, and how little you know about the topic. These are about the four easiest things to begin with -- and once learned will open the door to more and more useful ways to expand on them. No one has a legitimate excuse to not try these things -- as there is help around any corner (including me) for those who will at least make a small effort to try and resolve their own questions. All four of these challenges are the basics that will open the door to the next level -- for those who enjoyed the self satisfaction of not underachieving. If I can do this -- any one can. I will help any of my family who is willing to make an effort. There are computer forums at both www.oldhippie.com and www.oldhippiesroots.com. Put your questions there, so it and the answers creates a database of information that will help others that run into the same obstacle. If someone visits your home that might know the answer -- don't be afraid to drag them to the computer and ask them to show you.
