Cyberphreak.com

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.

I am really tired of hearing the presidential candidates saying how the housing market is ‘broken’.  It is not broken, in fact, it is now working exactly like it should.  It HAS been broken since about 96 or so, with many years of divergence between incomes and prices.  Housing going up 20 to 50% a year with incomes going up 3% is broken.  We don’t want and can’t afford a return to the old housing market.  If you bought a home you can’t afford, I am sorry.  Home ownership went from a 100 year historic 60% to 65%.  Those extra 5% are what is the problem.  Many people own homes now who shouldn’t.  Let them be foreclosed and let market prices return to where they should be.  It is a hard lesson to learn, but necessary.

Another thing, with all the credit markets, yeah it’s screwed up.  You know why?  Due to all the deregulation of the last 30 years, we lost the checks against leveraging, so we returned to the problem of the 1920’s.  Borrowing money to invest it.  Too much lending, not enough making things to create real weath, not the funny money that is our economy now.

So, now we are just entering a phase where market forces come back into play and the weak loose and the strong survive.   Hey, I’m a liberal, but I believe in the free market with regulation.