A Global Village Sitting Just This Side of Cyberspace
Well, It’s been one helluva week for global communications at my house. First my computer decided to chew up the operating system and spit it back out on the screen in convenient little chunks. I decided to reformat one of the hard drives and install an Ubuntu Linux derivative, Mint as an additional operating system. Usually I’m a Zenwalk man but I got irritated with always running into good Ubuntu software repositories and very little for Zenwalk. I also couldn’t get the Raw Photo plugin for GIMP to work in Zenwalk for some reason.
Anyways, that’s pretty geeky stuff. I know most would be completely uninterested in it. Let’s just say the computer is working on all levels at the moment. Whew! I then decided to upgrade my WordPress installation on my server. I know, I must be a real glutton for punishment. I stared the upgrade and left for work this morning expecting the files to upload and all be sweet. I’ve done this many times before. Here again, the electron gods were not smiling on me. I got to work and hit my site only to notice that there was nothing there! Nada! Not a single line of code or anything!
OK, so that’s all sorted now. For this week’s Creative Photo, I’m gonna appease those Electron Gods and produce a real virtual Global Village suspended in Cyberspace. Hope this changes my luck!
On a side note … see the circuit board in that photo? It’s no longer causing me any troubles 
Emotional Economics of Globalization
My daughter has a nice big globe sitting on her desk. When I venture in her room, I frequently sit on her desk and spin the globe. Over the weekend, I was sitting on her desk chatting and unconsciously spinning the globe. I stopped the spin near my home town in Texas. I jabbed my finger there and had a good look.
I grew up in a place where you spend most of your childhood thinking of ways to get the hell outta there. Well, here I am sitting on a desk on the opposite side of the globe. On the side of a mountain near Melbourne, Australia. Saying “G’day Mate” and driving on the wrong side of the road.
I now find myself often thinking of the family and friends back in my hometown. I think that it wouldn’t be so bad to be back in that little town again. I think that I’d love for my children to grow up with their cousins, aunts, uncles, second cousins, and … hell, basically everyone in the town, close to them.
But, we’re still here. On the other side. What keeps us in the land of parrots and animals with pouches? It’s hard to describe. I think it’s lifestyle, career, my wife’s parents in Sydney and … money. It’d take a wad of cash to move and re-establish back home. And … there’s something about living in the land of Oz. Something magical that I just can’t describe. Maybe it’s a a real fantasy land for a fella from a small town in Texas. I dunno. One day, I’ll go back home. Until then … I’ll be Down Under.
