Coopernundrums

    I am very lucky to have what I consider a true friend for every stage of my life.  I am also very lucky in that I have somehow, through the buzz and blur that is life, always managed to keep in touch with my buddies.  My Wife and constant companion for the last 18 years is of course exempt from this post, since she is my ultimate best friend and confidant.  I felt like this was interesting to share since after I thought about it long enough I came to realize that I seemed to make great friends at almost every key stage of my life.  Maybe you can relate and maybe just maybe you are lucky enough to be one of the folks I am talking about here!

    I don’t suppose too many people can say that they had a friend in kindergarten that they still hang with today.  I am proud to say I have just that.  Although we went through a period of almost 7 years where we lost touch, I am happy to say that we reconnected recently and will try not to let so much time pass between form here on.  Now he has a lovely wife and baby girl that I hope to see more of real soon.

  
  GO VISIT Scott Johnsons 56 Geeks page!

In high school I had several buddies but one in particular kept me laughing and hanging in there.  We shared a love of 80s tunes and a passion for Dungeons & Dragons . After high school graduation we even worked together at local McDonald’s for a while.  We drifted,  as friends tend to do, but once we got settled with our families we reconnected and still talk and hang today.  He now has a wonderful wife and a gaggle of kids that are a hoot to hang out with.

    Speaking of the golden arches, that is where I met my young adult to mid life pal of pals.  We met working a burger prep table laughing at the odd songs of the mid nineties.  I will forever remember the way we first got introduced.  He asked if I knew what the strange chorus of the enigma song return to innocence meant when the old Indian sang.  “I like Sheep big and small he said”.  I laugh my ass off about that even today.  We both work in the same industry today and still hang out often.  He and his Sweetheart of a wife, have a daughter that calls me Uncle Jay.  Its like the Daughter I never had.

  And so we come to my latest job, where I have met a new com padre, someone that I am only starting to really get to know personally after almost 10 years of working together.  He is an accounting and numbers whiz, so I hang out with him mostly hoping that his logic powers will rub off on me.  Just kidding!  Really, he and his Adorable wife have have teenage boys also so we share teenage angst stories all the time.

    As you can see I am an undeservedly lucky human being to be surrounded with such great friends.  I hope you have a circle of friends that you cherish also as I cherish mine.

see ya!

   I live for my family and friends and I view my free time as precious, but latey it feels like computers are my life.  I

ME AT HOME!

 work on them and with them all day long, then I work on them when I come home. Then on the weekends, I go round to my friends homes and work on their computers. 

    I am a member of the GEEK SQUAD but I get paid in pizza lunches and traded componets.  Don’t get me wrong I LOVE IT!  Just today I got to spend nearly the whole day with one of my best friends Jamie and his family while working on his systems.  Frankly, being a computer jockey has opened so many doors for me over the years that I look at it as a real boon and not a bummer. 

    Its a happy frustration to have that it seems I cannot escape the personal computer.  Cheers!

     I was just introduced to the most brain stimulating debate I have had in while and I thought I would share it with you.  It is not a new debate, certainly not when you’re dealing with millennia.  Late last night I sat at the old computer gathering info about the last ten years for my end-of-year blog post and I came to the frustrating realization that there is actually a great deal of debate about this subject.  It seems there is general confusion regarding how the decades and millennia are interpreted by the average Joe.

     I must admit that I fell into the trap of believing the hype and had it embedded in my mind that the end of the first decade of the new millennium is about to end.  Many people call this decade The Oughts or The ’00s. Clearly, then, the decade includes years that have zero as the third digit. Next year, that third digit turns to a 1, so the end of the decade obviously is at hand right?  Consider also the popular terms affixed to decades.  Since I am a child of the ’80s that would mean that can only years that include some derivative of 80 should be included.  In no way can 1979 be considered part of the ’80s. Using that logic, 2010 must mark the beginning of the next decade.   Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines a decade as “in common usage, a ten-year period beginning with a year 0, as 1920-1929.”  All of these factors prove that this decade will end on Dec. 31, 2009, Right?

     Another school of thought says that as we age, we are not said to be 1 until after living 12 months, and we do not celebrate a 10th birthday until after living 10 years. Logical conclusion: The next decade won’t begin until after 2010 concludes. If you think about millennia the first one thousand years started with the number 1 and thus ended with 1000.  This means those years 1001 through 2001 would equal the second millennium.  Following this logic the first decade of this millennium began with the year 2001, and the last year of the first decade of this millennium will be next year, 2010. This is a very compelling argument.

     Does that mean Webster’s dictionary is wrong? No, the definition mentioned earlier, pertained to the “common usage” of the word. The same dictionary also defines a decade as “officially, a ten-year period beginning with the year 1, as 1921-1930.” Webster apparently wants to make everyone happy.

   It seems like the debate itself will be lost in the sea of media outlets and emotional minds ready for this decade to be over.  I for one am happy, since it gives me two years to consider and be respectful of all the wonderful, wondrous and sad things that have occurred in the last ten years.

Happy new year all!