Way back before those tubes or whatever they are were actually useful for communication (and I *don’t* consider downloading ASCII art nude girls from the Merit network onto an old dot matrix printer “communication”), I used to occasionally do a little landfill newsletter. I used a computer to type it but I had to print it and put it in envelopes and all that in the old fashioned way. It was kind of fun but I didn’t keep it up very long. I still have those files on my computer in some archaic version of MS Word and I should probably save them in my *current* version of Word before I lose them forever. Anyway. This morning, the power cord to my work computer suddenly started to make a little crackling noise and there was a little smoke. It was very exciting for about five minutes but after that, things slid slowly downhill. Nothing catastrophic. The computer itself is fine, I’m using a borrowed power cord, and a new one is on order. It’s just that I wished I had handled an ongoing situation more proactively from the get-go. It’s a small situation in the grand scheme of things and I will learn from my mistakes. Anyway, here’s a little tidbit from a newsletter I wrote in 1991, when the beach urchins were seven six and almost-fivefour and I worked as a contractor with them thar *beloved* slackers over at the EPA (kidding about slackers, those guys work hard). It reminds me a bit of what happened to my power cord today. Yes, it is wordy. I guess I am still wordy. I try… I titled this item “Back to the Nineties”. Wonder what the heck I was thinking back in 1991…

The number of people who remember life before TV is ever shrinking and as one of them I find it “mindboggling” that my kids have grown up thinking of a computer as just another appliance. For years, I have been watching adults approach computers afraid to touch anything for fear the machine will blow up. Once in 12 years, I have seen a monitor overheat and smoke a little – no one had used it for at least an hour. A car is potentially a far more dangerous machine in the hands of the average computer user and although occasionally someone at work destroys enough data to give me a minor headache, lightning poses a far greater threat than some lowly operator. Usually those most likely to wreak havoc are experienced enough that their fingers go faster than their brains. Kids are a whole nother story. If the computer doesn’t move fast enough for them they bang on the keyboard a while or toggle the power switch on and off a hundred times. Many “educational” programs begin by asking for the kid’s name, a feature which drives Bill and I crazy and on which most kids spend more time than they do on their math problems or whatever. They use just about anything except Dick, Jane, Ashley, Noah, or Sharinda. “M C Hammer” (a rap group) is popular and interesting nonsense letter combinations are also common. One kid has raised it to an art form:

zzzzzzzzzzzz (backspace to beginning)
zzzzzzzzzzzz (backspace to beginning)
zzzzzy (backspace to beginning)
zzzzzy (backspace to beginning)
zzzzzzzzzzzz (backspace to beginning)
zzzzzy (backspace to beginning)
zzzzzzzzzzzz (backspace to beginning)
zzzzzyyzzzzz (backspace to beginning)
zzzzzyyzzzzz (backspace to beginning)
zzzzzyyzzzzz (enter) (whew!)

Zzzzzyyzzzzz is just her first name. Next she gets to do her last name.

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