DaveTraynor.com

Today is my father’s 89th birthday. Or, it would have been, if he had lived to see it. But he died in 1995, almost 10 years ago. Today, as I have every January 2 since then, I find myself wondering about the meaning of life. The New Year is always a time of reflection. The beginning of a fresh slate is a chance to start over, to resolve not to make the mistakes you did the year previous. That’s the conceit we start with. But to get there, to feel ready to begin with “becoming the best we can be,” we need to work through some of what we are.

My Dad died happy. I think. Although he was just 79, he felt he had lived a good life. That’s what he told me in the final days. He wasn’t being philosophical, or profound. That wasn’t his way. But I asked him whether he was ready to die. I think I asked because I wasn’t sure I was ready for him to die. But he’d been sick for three years and his life had shrunk to a daily routine of getting through the day. Still, he seemed more at ease in those last few days. He had decided to quit all the pills his doctor had put him on. His mind was clearer than it had been for awhile. And he was at home, in his own bed. Thanks to some dedicated home care workers, and my mother’s never-ending dedication, my Dad was going to die at home, which was how he wanted it. But was he ready?

“I don’t know if you’re ever ready,” he told me. “But I’m not worried,” he said quietly. By that point, he wasn’t talking much. I’ve got some pictures of him that I took the day before he died. He’s lying in bed with his eyes closed, and he looks suspiciously like he’s already dead. But after I had taken the photo, he opened his eyes and looked at me. “Are you done,” he asked? His humour always surprised me but it was comforting.

So today, I’m starting my 10th year without my Dad. As the years advance, I’m surprised how much of him I notice in me. Little things bring back memories. I find myself doing things that I remember him doing. There’s a connection there that is hard to put into words. It’s comforting on one hand and kind of creepy on another. Something has been passed on but I’m not sure what it is. My joints hurt more than they used to. I wake up in the morning and I’m aware that the years are passing. I’m not as young as I used to be. My children aren’t kids anymore, they’re young adults, with fascinating lives that don’t revolve around me anymore. I’m watching them grow up with mixed emotions.

But despite some misgivings about the year just passed, I’m excited by the one to come. Resolutions are good things. They may not be realized, but they help to focus attention on setting goals. I do want to exercise. I’m going to start with small doses. I want to move my arms again without pain. I want to exercise my mind and keep it limber. I hope to connect with friends I’ve neglected. I want to enjoy every day because they’re all precious. And when the inevitable arrives and one of my kids asks me the big question, I hope I feel the way my Dad did.

Happy Birthday, Dad. And Happy New Year to everyone.

Saturday’s massive quake in Indonesia cast a real damper on Christmas festivities this year. But it’s also another chance for the Internet to show off it’s massive ability to keep people in contact during times of crisis. I’ve got friends travelling in the area, and I was able to find out in short order whether they were OK (They were!).

I’m finding that the BBC World News site is one of the best for keeping up with what’s happening, and their cable news shows (often running on NewsWorld) have been the most informative coverage I’ve seen.

The blogosphere is humming with stuff. Go here and here to see a couple of examples.

I hope all is well with people you care about in that part of the world. Please send whatever help you can as soon as possible.

On a Lighter Note

I’ve added a Notify List to my blog. (The sign-up window is on the right, towards the bottom of the page.) I know that it can be annoying to visit a site like mine, only to find out that I haven’t updated it for awhile. I do have an RSS feed and an Atom feed on this site (again, on the bottom right) but I know that some of my regular readers don’t have a clue what a NewsReader is, or how RSS works. (Go here if you want to know more.)

So I’ve created a list you can sign up for to receive an e-mail every few days (more or less) telling you what’s new on the site. I doubt I’ll send it out ever day. I don’t want to be annoying, assuming that I actually update that often. But I’ll keep the updates fairly regular. This will be a handy alternative for people who don’t want to use the RSS feeds.

There’s no obligation whatsoever, and no one will ever use your e-mail address for any other purpose. Just add your e-mail address, and you’ll get an e-mail confirming you want to sign up. Click on the URL on that e-mail and you’re in. Simple as that.

In the spirit of giving this Christmas season, here’s something that you can sign up for and keep getting all year long.

Each week I get a note in my in-box that I always make time for. It’s called This is True. It’s put together by Randy Cassingham, a guy in Colorado who has been publishing his quirky column for years. He takes funny stories that have appeared in newspapers around the world and packages them up for your consumption. And he usually adds his own, unique punch line to the pieces, which often add to the fun.

Along the way, he manages to highlight a lot of the stupid things that people do, most notably the obsession with so-called “zero-tolerance” campaigns in the US against drugs, violence, etc. Often these are carried out by school boards and officials, with ridiculous zeal.

There are two editions available. One is free. The second, the Premium edition (and the one I subscribe to) is just $20/yr (although he’s finally raising the price in January) and it’s got content not found in the free version. Cassingham also offers unique items to buy, such as his immensely popular GOOHF (Get Out of Hell Free) cards. People who are angry enough to tell someone where to go can also give them a card to allow them to get out of there once they arrive.

Cassingham also runs a web site called the True Stella Awards, which highlight lawsuits that should never have been filed. And in his spare time, he’s got a pretty good site on jokes. You can find them all at the This is True website.

We’re into the final stages of Christmas countdown. Jaime arrived home from Victoria late last night (early this morning actually!) and she’s already off with Kelly hitting the malls this morning. It’s so nice to have her back.

Like any good father, I spent most of this morning trying to figure out why her computer isn’t working properly. I’m sure it doesn’t mean much to anyone else, but I can’t stand it when something doesn’t work right, so I’m busy wasting all kinds of time working on it. The computer is connecting to our Wireless router fine, but it doesn’t seem to be connecting to the network for some reason, so it won’t connect to the Internet…if anyone has any bright ideas about what it might be, please let me know.

Oh well, blogging might be kind of light for the next while, as I settle into being busy with family for the next while. But watch for updates as this season moves along.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

I’ve mentioned Flickr here before. It’s a new service that lets people post their photos on the web and gives an easy way for others to see them. I’m using it to post photos here (see the posts below about Kelly and Jaime.)

For those of you that want some more info, here’s a good article from Wired News about the service. I think a lot of you will be interested in using it.

Following up my previous post about the World in 2014, here’s a short article about Google’s plans to make a lot of the books of the world available on-line.

Is this company for real? Or is there a more nefarious plan behind all this? It’s a discussion that’s going to be going on for awhile. In the meantime, this is a lot of fun to follow. Add your comments to this story and see whether we can generate some of our own discussion.

There’s plenty more articles out there about Google’s just-announced plans as well. Here’s a link to Google News, with a listing of most of them.

That’s the premise of this very interesting video.

Take a look and see what might happen down the road.

I don’t know much about the group behind this intriguing piece. But it sure is interesting. And technically, very cool. Go ahead and click to see see the piece. It’s about eight minutes long.

Now I’ve done it. I’ve been trying out Firefox, which is a new Web Browser from Mozilla. It’s an open source creation, and if that doesn’t mean much to you, you might not be that interested in the rest of this post.

For years, I’ve used Internet Explorer to surf the web, putting up with many of the weird things it does, and worrying about security issues. Then I switched to a Mac and started using Safari, which I am very happy with. Safari is from Apple, and it’s a really nice application.

But there’s been a lot of buzz in the press about this new browser, so I thought I’d give it a try. One of the things that intrigued me was the ability to browse using tabbed pages. Safari also offers this, but for some reason I haven’t been able to figure out how it works. But in Firefox, it’s easy. And very effective. I find myself using Firefox almost exclusively now, although it’s only been a couple of weeks.

My biggest problem is that I had built up a big batch of saved bookmarks in Safari…and now I’m adding new ones in Firefox. I wonder if there’s a way to import or export one or the other? If anyone knows how I could bring my Safari bookmarks over to Firefox, I’d love to know. I’m still not sure whether I’ll switch to Firefox permanently, but I’m liking it so far.