Texting to the Future

Sometimes I get in a persnickety mood and I loose interest in writing. My wife suggests that this is Writer's Block but I think that is wrong because if I had The Block I figure I would try to write and be unable to but this can't be correct because I wasn't even interested in trying so it is simply a classic case of persnicketiness.

At the moment I am just a little bit persnickety so that means I will write a little bit. So there.

Yesterday a momentous event in my life occurred which will actually prove to be a lot of ado about nothing. I sent my first text message from my cheap cell phone. I wasn't even sure that my little phone could do this. So I spent fifteen minutes screwing around with my phone and yep -- I found that I could text with it. It took me a while to figure out how to get the correct text letters. It seems I that you have to punch in the number keys over and over until you hit upon the right letter. Punctuation was a problem until I stumbled on the number 1 key and learned that if you jammed it over and over I could come up with all sorts of punctuation. Here is the message I sent: "ELLE, THIS MY 1ST TXT MSG AND I AM SENDING IT 2 U. LUV, DAD". I have yet to figure out how to type in non-caps. I typed in her cell phone number and hit send and it told me that she received it.

I haven't received a reply from my daughter. She usually keeps her phone turned off until she needs to use it, and second I'm pretty sure she thinks texting is stupid. I'll probably get a call from her whenever she turns her phone on and she will ask me why I am sending her a text message when I could just call her on her office or home phone.

I see no practical application for this new found talent over than to prove that I can do anything a fourteen year old can do.

I've been pondering as of late. The awesome thought occurred to me that 1,000 years from now someone could do a DNA analysis of one of my way-far-off-kin and come up with a string of ancestors and find me. When I think more about it I figured out that I would be responsible for a long list diverse people. Maybe there will be a king or queen in there somewhere and surely a scoundrel or two and I figure about 90% of them will figure that they have contributed little to humankind but just made their way through life and maybe 10% will know that they had a positive impact because of their dedication to others or to science and maybe there even be a family on Mars who actually did this DNA analysis and will trace their genealogy all the way back to me. It is pretty heady stuff to think I will have been responsible for so many folks with talent and passion and fear and love and bravery and sadness. I never thought about this awesome impact I will have on the humankind when I had sex those couple of times and ended up with kids. It is probably good that I didn't think about it at that time or it might not have happened. When my martian DNA researchers pinpoint me in their history, what will they know about me? Somehow with their technological prowess that will pluck my text message to my daughter out of the either and study it. Kinda' makes me want to resend that message.

I have a lot to do today. My goal is to start digitizing some of my old audio tapes....magically transforming songs from cassette tapes into a format that I can actually listen to them. I have all the ingredients to do this -- I just have to sit down and get busy. The second thing I want to do is do a little research on that new fangled Nu Wave Infrared Oven that I see advertised on TV. They take frozen food, like a rock hard turkey, and cook it in this thing and it supposedly comes out perfect in a really short time. It is easy for me to get suckered in to these things so I want to read some reviews about it. Does anyone know anything about these ovens?

Now, back to my persnicketiness.