KJ

I went to my parents' place yesterday afternoon and came home with two large boxes of loose photos and a box of photo albums. Their 50th wedding anniversary is coming up in 2021, and although that's awhile from now I figured it made for a good excuse to digitize all the family photos. Probably we should have done this at least a decade ago, because then more people would be alive who recognized the people in them -- one of the big boxes was the photo collection of my mother's great aunt, so there are pictures going back at least to the early 20th century. As I was doing a first pass through sorting that box, I found one picture that is almost certainly my grandfather as a small child, a photo I'd never seen before.

I thought about sending the photos out to a scanning service, but since T has plenty of time these days, he offered to help with the project. So we ordered an inexpensive photo scanner instead. I'll be curious as to how that works out. I promise not to bore you all with thousands of family photos (I'm a little leery of the potential privacy issues anyway), but I may share a choice image now and then. Just going through some of the albums with my folks was an entertaining trip down memory lane. I look forward to being able to share these with family near and far, and maybe get some help with identification.

(Remember when we used to do these kinds of memes all the time? I miss them.)

1. Did you have a cell and/or mobile phone prior to your thirties? Did they exist?
I got my first cell when I was about 30 I think. They existed prior to that -- I was one of the last in my circle to get one -- but they were just starting to become ubiquitous.

2. Did you have cable when you were a little kid? When did you first get cable?
Not until we moved to California. The towns where we lived in Iowa were too small for cable, although one was talking about getting it around the time we left in 1985. Over-the-air TV reception is quite terrible in the Bay Area because of all the hills, so we got super-basic cable, but it only covered broadcast channels. I didn't have full-featured cable until after I graduated from college.

3. Do you know what 8-track tapes are and did you ever own an 8-track tape player?
I'm familiar with the technology but I never owned one.

4. Did you own cassette tapes and walkman or tape player in high school and college university?
Yep. I grew up with cassettes in the house and I had an old-school cassette recorder that I used to make mix tapes off the radio. I got my first Walkman in high school, and I used it to listen to tapes while on the long bus ride to school. It stayed with me through college -- I got my first CD player my junior year, which was the first year I had my own form room and couldn't mooch off someone else's equipment, but I didn't upgrade to a portable CD player until after I graduated, and it was many years later before I had a car stereo that could play CDs.

5. When did you get your first DVD player?
My housemate E had a DVD player (and a laserdisc!), and we started living together in late 1995. First DVD player of my own was probably not until I bought my first computer with one, but I can't remember exactly when that was.

6. Did you learn how to type on a typewriter? Did you own a typewriter growing up?
My dad had a typewriter for his work, and I took two semesters of typing in high school (one in summer school before freshman year, one as a fill-out-the-schedule elective in my junior year) on typewriters, but we got our first computer when I was in junior high, and that's really where I learned to type.

7. What was the first computer you owned?
My family's first computer was a PC Jr that my aunt (who worked for IBM) gifted to us. The first computer I owned myself was a Mac Centra, which I bought from my then-boyfriend when I needed one for grad school.

8. When did you first get email?
In college, when we were all assigned a school email address. I think this was a common experience in the early '90s.

9. When did you first encounter the internet?
My aunt bought us a subscription to Prodigy when she got us the computer, which was probably in 1987 or '88. We mostly used it to stay in touch with her; I didn't really get into using the Internet for my personal communications until college, when it became my primary way of chatting with friends back home, mostly via email and the Unix Talk app.

10. When did you start using Facebook, Twitter, and Dreamwidth, and Livejournal?
Facebook: I think I signed up in 2008, but I didn't get into using it regularly until 2010, right after my 15-year college reunion, when it became clear that it was the best way to stay in touch with Bryn Mawr people. In theory, I maintain a wall between Facebook and my fannish internet presence, but I've become much less strict about it since Lady Business won the Hugo and I decided I wanted to let people over there know. I still don't provide a strong connection, though.
Twitter: I joined in early 2009. I was off and on the first few years, mostly because I had trouble finding an app I really liked. I got more active in 2015 or so.
Dreamwidth: I got myself an account fairly early on, but I didn't start crossposting until sometime in 2010. However, I imported all my LJ posts into DW at some point, so this DW is a complete archive of my journal posting.
Livejournal: I signed up for LJ in 2004, when I was laid off from my dotcom job, with the idea that I would keep an unemployment journal. But within a year I discovered fandom and changed my life forever. For several months I kept up a fanfiction journal that was separate from this one (kjswritinglog), but I quickly learned that the separation was unsustainable, and I abandoned the idea. I stopped crossposting in April 2017, and although I didn't delete (I loathe the idea of contributing to linkrot), I haven't really been back there since.

11. What was your first cell mobile phone? Have you ever owned a smartphone?
A Samsung flip phone. I still miss having a flip phone for calls. I got my first iPhone in 2009 and quickly became addicted to it.

12. What was the first printer and the paper that you used when you got your very first computer? Could your first printer print photos?
The printer that my aunt got us with the PC Jr was a thermal printer, that printed everything on a single roll of paper. So you had to cut them into regular-size pages with scissors and flatten them between heavy books before you could turn any papers in. It did not print photos.

13. When you were in college/university, freshman and sophomore years, did you type on a computer or type-writer?
I had a really crappy cheapo electric dot-matrix typewriter that I used the first half of my frosh year. Then I discovered the joys of the computer center and never looked back.

14. When did you start using streaming?
I've used Pandora off and on for awhile, can't remember exactly when it started. I still prefer to own my own music, so I've never signed up for a paid service like Spotify. We signed up for Netflix streaming sometime in the late 2000s, after a few years of being on DVD-only plans.

15. When did you get your first MP3 Player? Do you even own one?
I got an iPod in the early 2000s I think, not first generation but pretty early on, and kept using them even after I got a smartphone, because I could upload my entire music collection.

16. Did you own a record player, cassette player, CD player or MP3 player as a kid or teen?
My parents had a turntable for my entire childhood, but I never had one of my own. See above for the other answers. (Of the above, only MP3 players didn't exist in my teen years).

17. When did you start blogging on the internet?
With my LJ, in 2004.

18. E-book reader -- when did you get one?
I don't own a dedicated e-book reader, but I got an iPad Mini in 2014, and I chose that form factor largely because I thought it would make an ideal e-reader in terms of size, shape, and weight. I have a Mini 4 now, and although I use it for many many things other than books, it's still my only e-reader (although I still read more in print than digital).

19. How do you listen to music? On what devices?
Most of the time on my phone, but I also use my laptop (which is how I'm listening right now).

(Don't know what Moose Day is? See here.) Today has been fairly lazy -- breakfast at the cafe across the street, then spent some time upgrading the software on all my devices before we went for lunch (Thai) and a walk (before the rains come tonight). This evening I expect will be mostly leftovers and Dragon Age. So, not really a traditional holiday (typically, one goes out for high tea on Moose Day), but nice all the same. I should really get my act together to plan something next year, though.

In contract to last years multi-week extravaganza, I had a nice low-key birthday today: vet appointment in the morning, quiet afternoon at home, dinner out with a few friends. The vet trip was Tori's regular check-up, which now happens every couple of months or so. The news was extremely good -- all of her blood tests came back in the normal range for the first time ever, so we can keep tapering down her meds. Best birthday present I could have gotten.

I did get another gift, for myself: an iPad Mini, dark gray with a bright red cover. Finally, a multi-purpose tablet that's exactly the right size for me to use as an eReader! Is this the moment that I being to shift away from paper books? Perhaps, although I don't expect I'll ever ditch them entirely.

Tomorrow will be another quiet day, and then Friday is the first day of FogCon. Yay, FogCon! If you'll be there, let me know and we can find a time to meet up.

Oh, like I could resist that subject line when we just had two noticeable earthquakes less than six hours apart. Supposedly they were about the same magnitude, 4.0 and 3.8 respectively, but the second was much scarier to me, probably because it lasted a lot longer, maybe a whole 10-15 seconds. (That may not sound long, but in earthquake terms, that's awhile. The 1989 quake was 30 seconds, and it felt like an eternity.) They were also in about the same place, along the Hayward fault in the East Bay; the news is calling the second one an aftershock. No real damage anywhere, just a little nerve-wracking.

In other news, iPhone 4S! The sharp screen is pretty sweet, although I'm not sure how I feel about the edge ridges. I liked the curvier feel of my 3GS. Also, I would prefer if TweetDeck did not crash all the time, thanks. That might be an iOS 5 problem, because it got a bit crashy on my old phone, too, after I upgraded it. Let's hope that gets resolved soon.

So a few weeks ago, you may recall that the universe granted me an iPad. At the time, I had every intention of making it my secondary "on the go" computing tool, for those times I didn't want to lug around my ancient and heavy MacBook. Really, I did.

But did anyone think that was going to last?

No, I didn't either. After a weekend of pretending to agonize about it, I went to the Apple Store on Wednesday and walked out with an 11" MacBook Air. One of the new ones, with the faster chips and the 4GB of RAM. I have been tempted by the idea of an Air for quite some time, but this new generation finally pushed me over, because should be powerful enough to serve as my primary computer.

It's only been two days, but I think I'm in love. Full size keyboard, beautiful sharp screen, and so, so lightweight (less than 2.5 lbs). The reported battery life is less than I'd hoped for (not quite 5 hours), but it is so superior to my old machine in every way that I can overlook that.

Not to ding the iPad -- it's a really great for consuming media: games, websurfing, and especially video. It's a handy tool, and I'm glad I have one. But it didn't suit me for writing at all, especially not for extended periods of time. The major reason is the lack of a real keyboard -- I can't touchtype on the virtual keys, and hunt-and-peck is a disaster for my RSI. But also, I like to switch between apps as I write, and that's a lot harder on the iPad. I know many folks swear by full-screen writing, but I don't think it's really for me. For short bursts of writing, sure; it's better than the iPhone for that. But for real, sustained writing (like this very post!), I can already tell that the Air is going to be so, so much better.

After probably a good year of debating the issue, T and I finally took the plunge and signed up for Netflix Instant. (Yes, I know how late I am to this party.) Now I am staring at the television section, open-mouthed, feeling like a kid in a candy shop and yet paralyzed with indecision. Do I pick up my rewatch of Babylon 5? (Sadly stalled because the WB took the free streaming episodes down when I was about halfway through the first season.) Or finally do that rewatch of Avatar: TLA I've been meaning to do for ages? And then there are the dozens and dozens of shows that I've missed and have been wanting to check out, but I have no idea where to start: Doctor Who, Six Feet Under, 30 Rock, The Office, Dexter, Friday Night Lights, Fringe, Sarah Connor Chronicles...

Any suggestions?

After relatively uneventful plane, bus, and subway rides, I am now settled in amybang's living room and hanging with her cats.

Have I ever told you all how much I love traveling with a laptop? The downside is that I don't get as many books read while on the road, but the upside of Internet everywhere (and now, with the phone, that's *literally* everywhere, except during the plane flight) is more than worth it. I don't think I can ever go back to a desktop as my primary machine again. It's just too convenient to be able to keep up with the 'Net, not to mention being able to work on writing.

Conference starts tomorrow; I hope it's as good as the last one. I suppose I should try to get to sleep soon, but with my body telling me that it's only 9:30, that's easier said than done! Ah, jet lag.

Drove up north today to have lunch and exchange gifts with my parents and brother. Got a couple of books, a gift card (which we will use to buy Star Trek on Blu-ray!), and a hand-knitted bag made by my mom. With this visit, I officially round out my holidays; back to work on Monday, although school doesn't start for another week.

The upcoming week will feature a lot of meetings. Between those, I plan to focus on finishing up all of our break projects. I'm on track to accomplish everything I wanted to accomplish, which is pretty exciting. I don't think I've ever managed that over a school break before. Then we swing back into action with a new group of students, although this start is historically pretty small, so it should be relatively low stress.

As for the upcoming year, I have reason to hope that it will improve upon the last. Work is settling down, which is a big help in that regard. I don't have much in the way of travel planned, just a conference in Boston in April and BMC Reunion (15 years, how did that happen?) in May. I expect we'll also head down to San Diego to visit T's mom at least once or twice, and we're making noises about going to Vegas at some point. (It probably says something about my expectations regarding travel that I consider this roster of travel "not much"...) Closer to home, I'm slowly getting started on getyourwordsout, having made decent progress on one story already. Behind on word count, of course, but right now I want to focus on the habit of just writing something every day. Productivity will come later. I hope.

Also, a 46" HDTV is on its way, planned to arrive on Friday, so that's pretty exciting. My scintillating life, let me show you it. ;)

We learned today (through research, fortunately, not the hard way) that meat thermometers are not allowed in the passenger compartment of an airplane. If you want to travel with a probe thermometer, put it in your checked bag.

Because of course a meat thermometer is a deadly weapon. Just like that bottle of water they made you throw away. Unlike, say, a ballpoint pen, or knitting needles. (Help, someone stop me, I'm applying logic to airline security procedures!)

So yes, we are in fact packing for San Diego. Flight is late tomorrow morning; we return on Sunday afternoon. The cooking implements are for the big Christmas dinner that we're helping to make on Saturday -- it's our first time cooking for the whole clan without T's dad to direct traffic, so wish us luck. I'm not bringing my laptop, but I will have my iPhone. This is the first time I've traveled with the phone, and I'm interested to see how well I can use it to stay in touch. I have no idea what reception is going to be like at my mother-in-law's place, though, so if I disappear for a few days, that's why. Wish me luck. All around.