The Irvania Blog

As mentioned in my last post, there are a couple of ways you can keep track of me on a more timely basis, ways that I’ve been a bit better at keeping up-to-date.

I mentioned here a number of months ago that I’m now on Twitter (click here: http://www.twitter.com/MonstrousJake) although, like many in my age group, I’m not sure I understand the point of Twitter.

I’m not sure why I need to post updates on my every move (”Made pancakes for supper. Yay!”). It would make more sense later on, after I’ve launched my plot to conquer the world and need to keep my minions informed (”We will take over Slovakia today. Yay!”) or, better yet, after I’ve got my first book published and need to keep my fans informed (”Have a book signing in Slovakia today. Yay!”) Ideally, it would be handy after I’ve got my first book published and have conquered the world and have to send orders to my minions (”Make pancakes for supper! Yay!”)

The second way to keep in touch with me, and the one I’m more likely to see and respond to more quickly, is on Facebook (click here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1825976284).

Facebook, as an overall concept, makes more sense to me and my way of communication than does Twitter, so I check Facebook more frequently than I check Twitter.

For reasons beyond my understanding, a bunch of old friends have found me, or I’ve found them, on Facebook, more frequently than on any other Internet venue. I’ve had my own web site for 14 years now and have always been easy to find using Google or any of the other web search engines, but for some reason, Facebook seems to work better for this.

I still don’t have a cell phone though.

We were heroes of our generation, in a way. We were the PC experts when PCs were new. We were the network administrators, the desktop support technicians, the Information Technology gurus of the 1980s and 1990s.

We were the ones who made keyboard cheat sheets for you so you could use those early, user-hostile word processors. We were the ones who found your homework files when you lost them in the C:\DOS directory. We were the ones who tweaked and tuned your expanded and extended memory so you could use your mouse and your sound card at the same time. We were the ones who understood the subnet masks and had your IP address memorized. We were the ones who set up the network so that you could play DOOM against the guy down the hall. The latest versions of Windows and the Mac OS and even Linux are what they are today because we worked the kinks out of their forefathers in the 80s and 90s.

We laughed at the heroes of the previous generation, the mainframe experts, for we believed they were dinosaurs doomed to extinction in short order. They believed that DOS and Windows were only fads that would soon fade away, and that only secretaries and schoolchildren would use them. They called our PCs toys that would never be powerful enough to replace their room-sized behemoths. They believed that COBOL would once again be the language of the land.

Now, we too are dinosaurs. We became expensive, for we were highly paid. We became unnecessary when our employers began to believe that our jobs could be done more cheaply overseas. Then came the layoffs, and thousands of us were let go. Now some of those jobs are back, but at a much lower pay grade than we had enjoyed, back when we were heroes.

And so we dinosaurs, we who were once heroes, now search and wait and dream. We search for the Safe Spot, the Comfortable Place where we can bide our time. We wait for our retirement along with our older brethren, those heroes of the previous generation. We dream of those days, long ago, when we were heroes, when we configured the network to run DOOM.