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Setting The Foundation For Techie Saturday

Setting The Foundation For Techie Saturday

RJ Walters

Here we are at a new Saturday and a new category here at RJsCorner. So, I thought I would use this first post to tell you why I chose this topic. The general view of us senior citizens is that we resist change, particularly things technology related. It is perceived that most of us don’t have cell phones and we have no idea how to use computers. Lord forbid trying to get us to understand how automated home systems work!

To that view of us, I say “BUNK”. Yeah, I admit that some of us might fit that description, one of them is occupying the house with me, but there are many of us who are still in the learning mode and willing to tackle something new every day. We might not seek out the very latest technology thing but we don’t shun them when we see how they might improve our lives.

Getting back to this new “Techie Saturday” explanation, I am going to give you a weekly lesson on the tools and apps that might improve your life, or at least give you have some idea what your kids and grandkids are talking about.

What makes me qualified to be your techie guru? Over the years I have had more Apple computers than I can even count. I will also quietly admit that there were a few years in there that I was, due to a corporate edict, a Windows guy but my heart and loyalty remains Apple. I am on my 6th cell phone. I played around with Android but finally went to an iPhone and never looked back. iPads are constantly by my side to jot down notes for post ideas or to just ask Siri a question that popped up in my mind. I had to wait until I was almost forty for the PC/Mac to be invented. After it was, I spent hours and hours programming my first computer, which was a TRS-80, to control the lights in my bachelor pad apartment. From the get-go, I totally immersed myself in the techie world.

Because I am deaf, I might not be up to par on music things and social media is to some degree still somewhat unexplored for me, but for the rest of it I keep up with the daily news and read a couple computer magazines every month.

Ending this initial post, come back on Saturdays with your questions and your learning hat on. I’m sure there are even some of you out there who can school me on some of these topics. I actually look forward to that. 🙂

Not Mine To Carry…

Not Mine To Carry…

RJ Walters

I’ve learned a valuable lesson in the last month or so. It is a lesson that I embarrassingly should have learned ages ago but was just too stubborn to accept. Much of my, and I’m sure many other’s depression, is from letting stuff weigh me down that is really not mine to carry.

There are dozens of stories every day about the idiocy taking place in the current Oval Office. I used to worried about it as if I could actually do something about it. I know from the first amendment that it is the responsibility of the press to carry the reporting load and I salute them for doing it so well in spite of all the trash-talk lies about them being “enemies of us people”.

For the last couple of weeks, I have basically ignored all news about the extreme narcissist in the Oval Office. I know from personal experience that if you really want to diss a narcissist the thing to do it to pretend he doesn’t exist. His whole life is about bringing attention to himself.

I still see the headlines about this guy in my daily feeds but I have not once in that period of time clicked beyond the headlines. He is no longer in my life, at least until I see something about the “i” word.

I have been a political junkie for 50+ years so it is just too hard to skip that topic entirely. I will continue to read and talk about the other branch who’s role it is to be the checks and balances for the executive branch. Of course with the current leadership in the Senate stalemate is almost guaranteed but at least the House will once again be trying to do their job. If and only if the GOP Senators grow a backbone and seek another leader will they be able to do the same. But that is a story for next Monday’s political post…

In 2019 I will work hard to shed of the feeling that I need to carry dead weight of other’s incompetence. It is simply not mine to carry.

Letting You In On A Little Secret…

Letting You In On A Little Secret…

RJ Walters

For this “Seeking Wisdom” Thursday I am going to give you some of my personal wisdom. Unlike some person we all know, I don’t think I am perfect but I have gleaned a fair amount of wisdom during my years on this earth. Much of it comes from the mistakes I have made, but isn’t that where the really valuable wisdom comes from?

I am letting you Millenials, and anyone else who cares to hear it, in on a little secret. No matter how old you get, you are still a forty-year-old but stuck in a decaying body. It doesn’t matter if chronologically you are in your seventies, you still think and sometimes foolishly act like you are forty.

Why forty? Well, that is the age where, in my wisdom, you become fully adult, if you ever actually become a full adult. 🙂 The teenage years of making stupid mistakes actually extends well into the twenties. After that, it is a learning process to find what the world and your place in it is actually about. By the time you are forty, you should have pretty well gotten all that stuff down. Of course, the years after that pile on the wisdom but forty is the point that your body starts on its long downhill grade. So you lock your mental psyche on that year.

I was never much of a Mark Twain fan but when we visited his hometown in Hannibal Missouri years ago I came across the words in the featured image above. Personally, I know not a day passes that I don’t feel young.

So, the next time you visit a nursing home, or other places where old people hang out, remember all those folks see themselves pretty much the same as you. You insult them when you baby-talk them or just plain ignore them. A lesson in empathy when it comes to old people is to go out of your way to say hi and recognize their presence. Why? Because someday, and sooner than you think, you will be the one on the receiving end of that transaction.

That is enough of my wisdom for now. I gotta go replenish my wisdom bucket now. 🙂

What do you think?

Optimist Or Pessimist??

Optimist Or Pessimist??

RJ Walters

It seems almost impossible to be an optimist in today’s world, especially now that a totally incompetent person leads our version of it. But these times are not the only time we have been severely challenged as a nation.

Are you optimistic or pessimistic about America’s future? I’m optimistic. I say that because there have been many moments in our history when old ideas and old arrangements stopped working and people chopped them up. Those transition moments were bumpy, and it was easy to lose hope, but then people figured it out. Never underestimate the power of human ingenuity.

Source: New York Times

This quote is from David Brooks who leads the way for those of us who still claim to be optimists.

I think too many of us are still in the “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” mode when it comes to hard times. We throw up our arms in defeat. We see our country controlled by the inmates instead of the good guys. Yes, it takes courage to be an optimist now. But, courage we must have.

I admit that we have never had such an incompetent person in the Oval Office, nor have we had a more partisan ruler of the Senate but eventually times change and things return to normal if there is such a thing. We will survive these times as we have all the others. I don’t even want to think that the opposite is even possible.

Several years ago I learn that Mark Twain become an extreme pessimist in the last part of his life. During that time he wrote some utterly bitter and spiteful things that greatly tarnished his literary image. By the end of his life, he had reached a position of cosmic proportions. I now understand how that is possible but absolutely vow to never allow that to happen to me. Pessimism like can destroy life itself if left uncontrolled.

If it is a choice between Optimism and Pessimism, I will choose optimism every time.

We The People…

We The People…

RJ Walters

I hope that there is no American over 8 year old that doesn’t know where the title words come from. For this Artsy Saturday I give you the words in shoe laces! They were found at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville Arkansas.