Why I don’t blog (much).

I have always loved to sing.  I played guitar a lot in junior high and high school and into college for a while. I certainly enjoyed these activities, but nobody within earshot did (besides my mother, of course).  What can I say; my friends and family were honest. I learned a good, perhaps negative, lesson from this: sharing can be pretty darn painful and while I might enjoy something, others may not.  Unless I am pretty darn good at something, I am not going to ‘share’.  Fast forward a lot of years, and while, ironically, I now make a living writing professionally (technical science), I had a similar experience with writing as I did with music.  My early attempts at writing, in school, early jobs, letters, etc., met with similar reviews to my music making. It left me feeling that writing (or singing for that matter) would the last way I would be sharing my life and stories with people.  I do pretty well at live presentations and one-on-one conversation and have published a number of technical papers along with hundreds of public presentations.  However, now we live with ‘blogs’, which I just found out yesterday, is a contraction of web log, go figure.  I have a lot of conversations with friends, colleagues, and family, all interesting and very appreciated. These inevitably lead to the modern question of ‘do you have a blog?’ followed by the statement ‘you should have a blog’.  My overall predicament is exacerbated by comparing myself to my brilliant, funny and talented immediate and extended family putting our superb blogs and web presence (Garry, Carolyn, Sue). I don’t want to embarrass myself anymore. The situation is further complicated my short attention span/ interest in a wide variety of topics. I have never been able to focus on a single ‘thing’. I have my hard core science topics, along with interests in the great outdoors, family, exercise, hobbies, politics, nature, etc.—I don’t know how to focus a blog. All for now, for those of you that actual read this—I hope this helps.

Voice Commands on Droid

My cell phone has a good sense of humor. I recently purchased a Droid 2 after much, much pestering from my seventeen year old (now eighteen). Near as I could tell, it was so that he could see the new features on the Droid 2 versus his almost new Droid 1. I am clumsy with the new smart phones--I was very comfortable with my Blackberry w/ a physical keyboard. My new phone has a mind of its own because of my apparently clumsy fingers and it keeps asking me for 'voice commands'. It seems every time that I try to go to the home page, it asks for a voice command. My family has witnessed my clumsiness and cluelessness many times. This evening, with my youngest son and wife sitting in the room, I told my phone to 'go to hell'--it immediately replied in a loud clear voice, 'which short cut'.