ISN'T HE CUTE?

Sunday 19 December, Mike set up our family PC with Skype, an online call and video conferencing service. I have tried it several times now, and I am truly amazed how easy it is to talk with someone and view them at the same time. 300 years ago, when I was a kid, television had been just invented. I was just 12 years old when my parents bought their first one. It was a console, with a small 19" screen. Our front room was so small that the TV was placed in the doorway to the front bedroom, which had another doorway that connected to the kitchen.

Our telephone was the circular dial type. Our number was something like "Fernwood 325." After a few years, we got an updated push-button phone, with lighted buttons. Both of these phones were huge, black desk types, with black chords. Our system was a "party line;" meaning that we shared our connection with 6 to 8 other households in the neighborhood. In order to make a call, you had to lift the receiver and listen for a dial tone before dialing. Often you would interrupt a neighbor's conversation, and have to apologize. In case of an emergency, you would have to declare that was the case, and ask them to hang up so you could make your call.


Needless to say, you had to be really careful to not badmouth or gossip, or you could easily be found out, and perhaps have to answer to entire neighborhood.


In today's world, using Skype is marvelous, but I'm not to convinced about the privacy of it. I believe that the whole world could listen to your conversation, if the right hacker was interested in the content of your call; so using discretion is still, and always the best policy.


I tried to copy a photo from the Skyp's picture gallery, but I guess they have the program rigged so that pictures cannot be copy and pasted to this blog (I wanted everyone to see the faces the grand kids pulled at me). So I put this photo of Matthew taken in 2007. This is one cute kid, don't you agree?