Category Archives: Uncategorized

It was a cold day for a walk, that’s for sure.  Just over freezing.  One thing I have discovered, it is that my wool pea coat far outperforms any synthetic coat I have ever worn.  It is pretty light, stops the wind, and will keep me warm, even if it is wet.  It also looks really nice.

I went for a walk to a local antique store.  One interesting thing is to look at the packaging that is still around after 40, 50, 60 years or more.  This is stuff designed to last just long enough to get it from the store to your house, and here it is, the better part of a century later.  Makes you think of the packaging not recycled now.  How long will it last?  I am sure blister packs will last a couple of centuries or more.  The most common packaging I see in antique stores is glass.  Luckily, it is easily recycled.  You do see metal tins, but they tend to rust.  You even see old paperboard packaging, so I guess just about any packaging will last, given the right conditions.  So, unless you are planning on keeping the box for retirement investment purposes, recycle!

Another thing I noticed, being a watch lover, is that Elgin must of sold a whole boatload of watches after WWII.  It is, by far, the most common antique watch I spot.  The real life and eBay prices reflect this fact as well.  You can get a decent looking, working, Elgin for less than $50.  Timex of 50’s I guess.  Speaking of Timex, you almost never see antique Timex’s.  The reason behind this is simple, they used hardened steel pins instead of jewels on their less expensive watches.  It makes them durable in the short term, but age very poorly in the long term.  A jeweled watch can last decades without maintenance and a lifetime with.  (The pallet jewels can even be replaced.)  A pin lever watch, which Timex was famous for, rarely lasts more than 10 years and is not economical to repair.  So I guess they were all tossed and the jeweled Elgin’s and Bulova’s went on.  Another interesting thing about watches, ladies watches outnumber men’s by about 5:1.  I think men must be hard on their watches and are not as sentimental about them.

Over the weekend we were able to go out and see the new Bond flick.  It was pretty decent and didn’t drag on.  A little more sex and a little less violence and the newest Bond would be perfect.  It was nice to spend a couple of hours with the Wifey.  Glenn keeps on growing and being two.  So much must be going on in that little head, so much he likes to bang it into hard objects from time to time.  I sure hope it is normal.

I am sure it has been written about before, but now I notice more than ever how disconnected people are becoming from the real world around them.  What do I mean?  Go to a local coffee shop, restaurant, bar, or even busy shopping mall and look around.  Look at all the people on cell phones, smart phones, blackberries, and laptops.  We went out to eat at a Corner Bakery and Tiffany and I observed a young man with a laptop computer.  Across from him was, ahem, a very attractive young woman.  I don’t know about you, but if I was sitting across from that, the last thing I would do is be staring at a screen.  But, the whole time we were there, he was just surfing away.  I can only hope it was his sister, but I kinda doubt it.

Another time was just this past weekend.  We went up to Gurnee Mills.  I passed a man diddling with his iPhone before we went into a store.  About 40 minutes later, after we left the store, he was still there.  You are in a mall, you can surf at home.

Another odd thing I see is teenagers walking down the street talking or texting on their phones and not talking to the people right next to them.  You went to the effort to go walking with these people, but why did you bother?

I don’t know about you, but when I go out, I go out to do things I can’t do at home.  I guess I am old fashioned.  It is wonderful we can all be connected, all the time, but what are we giving up?  I know you can convey so much more information with body language than with 1,000 lines of text messages.  I only need to give a glance to Tiffany and she will know what I am thinking, even without words.  Maybe I am just crotchety,  but I know I am seeing it more and more.  It is also beyond the “gee wiz” this is cool or “look at what I can do” aspect of technology.  You can tell people have fully integrated these tools into their lives.  I guess as I get older, I appreciate human interaction more.  Hopefully the younger generation will as well, and not get lost looking at minute screens.

On December 2nd, Cyberphreak.com will be 10 years old!  In that time, it has been hosted on 4 different servers and had about 6 major redesigns.  Currently I am really only updating the main blog and separate site blogs.  I can’t believe I have had a domain name that long.  .com names were actually getting quite hard to come by, even in 1998.  I will continue to run this site, as I like updating it, especially the watch blog.  The watch blog is actually now, by far, the most popular page in the cyberphreak.com family, with over 400 hits per day!  In case you were wondering, my Zaurus software feed is the second most popular page, as I have about the largest Zaurus software feed on the internet.

In my 10 years, I have never had paid advertising.  I figure do it for the love of it or don’t do it at all.  I am sure I could get money for advertising if I wanted to, but I guess I am an idealist.

What else has happened in the last 10 years?  I met Tiffany, got married, owned 2 homes, had a Glenn monster, gone through 6 computers, 4 cars, and 4 jobs.  Through all of that Cyberphreak.com has endured.  In a world of social networking sites and walled cities, itis nice to have something open and free (free as in freedom, not as in free beer) and something to call my own.

I don’t claim to be a political expert, and I will be glad this will probably my last post about politics for a while, but I wanted to share my thoughts about why Obama won and McCain lost.

Obama stayed  on message for his whole campaign.  I watched his speech 21 months ago in Springfield, and his message in Grant Park was more or less the same.  His ideas are strait forward and laid out on his website.  He ran a brilliant campaign and choose a solid running mate.  His coffers were deep, but for a good reason, people really want change.  Put it all together, and he is a hard man to beat.

McCain led a disjointed, almost bipolar campaign.  It was very negative in tone, which I think turned off a lot of voters.  He spoke of how liberal Obama’s record is, but he states he is a ‘Maverick.’  Last time I checked, mavericks are not too conservative.  He criticized Obama’s lack of experience, but then chooses Palin as his running mate.  He called Obama a socialist, but then proposes a massive health care program and bailing out mortgages.  He gave us a lot of reasons to not vote for Obama, but no solid reasons to vote for him. With a very disliked President sitting in office of his own party, he didn’t have that much chance.   The tumultuous economy did not help as well.  He offered the classic Republican solution, cut taxes, mostly on the rich.  Guess what, after 28 years of trying, trickle down economics does not work. At all.  The crumbs of the super wealthy don’t make anyone rich.  Time to try something new, which McCain did not offer.

In the end, I think the man better suited to the challenges ahead won and America was able to put aside its petty prejudices to elect a black man with good ideas.

Well, that’s enough politics for a few years.  There are more pleasant things to think about, like how Glenn is growing up and challenging is with the terrible two’s.

Hey eveyone, be sure to get out and vote today.  I went out this morning and voted alreay.  I am glad I choose the paper balot, it was much faster than the touch screen.  (At least there was no line for the paper voting, there was one about 10 deep for the touchscreen.)  Ahhh, technology.

So, I don’t care if you a Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, or some other party, do your part and vote.