…and around it goes

I know, this is actually slow and I could do it faster using Packetderm bandwidth, but I’m at home and fifteen years ago this would have taken me over a day.  That is progress.  Even ten years ago when the first invocation of cotse was made it did not have this kind of bandwidth.  Now I have it at home.

This will be the story we tell our children.  Gone are the “I had to walk both ways to school, barefoot, in the snow,  uphill…” tales of my parents, replaced with my “You kids are spoiled, I remember when we were lucky to have a 300 baud acoustic coupler connect.  We used to listen to the whistles and could tell the connection we got by the sound of the whistle.”

Granted, I also remember three channels on the black and white TV and no computers, I may even have a TV in the closet with a pong line on it, but my mark on the door jam measuring our progress is bandwidth.  Faster and cheaper.  Fiber in the homes.  Wireless faster than high cost wired connections of yesterday.  Video now on my cell phone.  These were dreams fifteen years ago, now taken for granted by my kids.

They get impatient with the download, “is it done yet dad”, while I am amazed at it’s speed.   I have no doubt that the title of this post will be laughed at as slow in another ten years or so.  It will probably be wireless speeds that do it too, with us even in our pocket and wearable devices.

Anyway, I never walked to school barefoot in the snow, but I certainly do remember that 300 baud acoustic coupler connection from my DECWriter to the University’s time shared Vax.

I went shopping the other day to buy a few necessities and saw that the grocery was getting rid of some rose stock.  Two dozen, all colors of the rainbow, for only $10 (score!).  Being a practical man I saw an obvious benefit to an inexpensive and unexpected two dozen roses.  So I grabbed them.

I got home, clipped the ends, and I put them into a vase.   Roses always go over well.  I went into my office and pondered how I would redeem my brownie points.  Unfortunately, every plan has a fatal flaw, especially in a house with cats and kids.

The cat thought only one thing, “he bought me a salad”.  He was happy.  He promptly ate his salad then apparently decided to see if he could find creative spots to vomit it back up.   A nice floral pattern, of course, they were multicolored roses.  Remember, I’m still sitting in my office, completely oblivious.

This is how it went when my girlfriend got home.

She takes off her shoes and steps in cat puke.  I think the cat vomited on everything (I imagine that he ate more than the recommended daily allowance of roses for a cat).  He even vomited from a beam ten feet up onto everything below.  Yes, eewww.

The kid comes running out “Mom, Steve got a bunch of roses for only $10 (he said they were a score) and Oliver ate them then threw up everywhere.  I tried to stop him.”  I’m still sitting in my office, completely oblivious.  I guess I needed to be kept in the dark about it until Mom could be shown.

It didn’t go quite the way I’d planned.