technology

Spring is here. No more snow, the flowers are blooming, the bees and butterfly’s are flying, the pollen is in the air, and the days are warmer. Winter wasn’t all that bad, except for some really cold weather and some snow storms. Now that I am able to get out of the house more often I have been busier than during the winter. I have been going to the gym more often, and taking more walks with Max.

Easter season has been busy with an egg hunt for the kids, our 65 annual Maundy Thursday service, Pizza/Movie night, and Easter Sunday Service. I have also become addicted to college basketball. A friend of mine who is an ODU season ticket holder took me to two ODU Monarch basketball games at the Ted Constance Convocation Center and now I am hooked on college ball. I watched almost every game during March Madness using either the ESPN app or the NCAA March Madness app. I was hoping for Wisconsin to take it all but at least they beat Kentucky.

Baseball season is almost upon us and I hope to take in at least a few Norfolk Tides games. We are having our annual family picnic at Woodstock Park in Virginia Beach April 26th. I am looking forward to seeing all my family members. The family has been constantly growing and we have become quite a clan.

On the tech. front, I bought a new HP Stream 13 laptop from Best Buy. It has a 13 inch touch screen, 2 GB of RAM, a 32 GB SSD, card reader, USB ports, and HDMI out port. It is running Windows 8.1. So far so good. I also bought a Netgear Range Extender to extend the range of coverage for our WiFi. It works amazingly well. Did I mention I bought a Raspberry Pi Model B to play around with? I also have a new wrist watch from Fossil. I love it.

Well, enough for now. I think it is going to be a great Spring. I’m getting refunds on my State and Federal taxes, my Social Security is coming in now, and I am on Medicare and a new medical plan with Aetna Blue Cross Blue Shield. All is well.

God is good all the time and all the time God is good.

I have been a geek for as long as I can remember, going back to when I didn’t even know what geek meant. As a child, all I wanted for Christmas was a chemistry set, an electronics kit, or a microscope. In school my favorite subjects where biology, chemistry, and physics. I followed the space program starting from the original Mercury Seven. I built a Heathkit radio and built and launched model rockets. In college I earned a degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering Technology and later Computer Science. I remember my first 4 function LED calculator replacing my slide rule in college. I have had computers from an Atari 800XL and Mattel Intellivision, to my present Dell Dimension E521. I remember 300 baud dial-up modems and BBS’s. I think you get the picture.

In the last couple of years my attention has been focused on firearms. I have always enjoyed shooting and since I have retired I have spent much of my time acquiring and shooting firearms. While doing this, my other passion, technology, has sort of languished. Recently, starting with the introduction of tablet PC’s and a host of other new technology, my interest has returned once again to all things geek. Within the last six months I have bought an LG Blu-ray disc player with Internet capability, a new cable modem, a new Cisco dual-band 802.11/n wireless gigabit router, and a Buffalo Technologies 1 TB NAS. (Network attached storage). This is in addition to the Roku Internet media device I already owned.

With an internal 250 GB hard drive in the LG disc player, the 600 GB drive in my Dell Dimension PC, and the 1 TB of my NAS, I now have almost 2 TB of disc storage. My wireless network is now much faster than it used to be. I am able to stream audio, photos, and high definition video to my Samsung HDTV and 5.1 surround sound system flawlessly. The Internet content that is accessible to me via my Roku box and my LG Blu-ray disk player is astounding. I have been seriously thinking about cutting the cable TV cable and saving a significant amount of money every month. There is very little available via cable TV that I cannot get over the Internet with my present setup.

I think for the present my appetite for technology has been sated. At least I hope it has as my wallet can not take any more. That is all. Peace.