The New Face of Family Life

[karrie]

I'm 33 years old. I grew up on a cattle farm with a party line and one tv channel, two if the clouds were just right. My mom was working at my grandpa's electronics store when microwaves first started really creeping into local homes.

Now tonight, my husband phoned me from his voice activated Bluetooth to tell me he was stuck in gridlock and would be late for dinner. I looked up the traffic map online and told him exactly what street the traffic snag would clear up at. I put his plate into the microwave to stay relatively warm and then left the kids to eat and do homework while I chatter away online. My daughter is completing her homework on her iPod, she uses Google docs so that her work is accessible no matter where she's at, even though the iPod is an encouraged to go with her to school so that she has constant online resource access at her desk.


It's interesting how quickly we forget that this level of tech is really really new. It's changed so many facets of our lives so drastically.

 

[petros]

Some of it I embrace but the majority of it is a nightmare to me.

 

[eh1eh]

It's great. My daughter s away at university and while she calls home regularly (when she is homesick) having something as simple as e-mail allows me to send her a little note when I think of something even if it's just one of my silly puns. I wanted to buy an old French castle but I'm baroque.
Even at work I rarely talk on the phone, most customers e-mail or text me. Things really have changed, my first cell phone was bolted under the seat of my truck. Now if my phone is under the seat it's a real hassle. lol.
Sometimes I don't even think about the change at all and bitch about my 3 year old Blackberry.

 

[In Between Man]

I'm 33 years old.

Me too!

I grew up on a cattle farm with ...

I'm jealous. My Grandpappy sold his cattle farm (along with the family pride) so our family never got the chance to live there.

It's interesting how quickly we forget that this level of tech is really really new. It's changed so many facets of our lives so drastically.

Amazing isn't it? I remember when our school got its first IBM machine, and we'd all huddle around a glorified calculator with amazement. Now my cell phone has thousands of times more power. Imagine if you transported and ancestor from just 50 years ago to modern times, and showed them around? That would be fun...

 

[karrie]

It's great. My daughter s away at university and while she calls home regularly (when she is homesick) having something as simple as e-mail allows me to send her a little note when I think of something even if it's just one of my silly puns. I wanted to buy an old French castle but I'm baroque.
Even at work I rarely talk on the phone, most customers e-mail or text me. Things really have changed, my first cell phone was bolted under the seat of my truck. Now if my phone is under the seat it's a real hassle. lol.
Sometimes I don't even think about the change at all and bitch about my 3 year old Blackberry.

lol, since my mom started working full time again, we can't chat for an hour a day like we used to. Thank god for text messages. And currently, going through a week long bout of laryngitis, I'm doubly thankful!

Me too!



I'm jealous. My Grandpappy sold his cattle farm (along with the family pride) so our family never got the chance to live there.



Amazing isn't it? I remember when our school got its first IBM machine, and we'd all huddle around a glorified calculator with amazement. Now my cell phone has thousands of times more power. Imagine if you transported and ancestor from just 50 years ago to modern times, and showed them around? That would be fun...

Imagine if you transported even your highschool self to now. It would have blown my mind.

And your grandpappy sold the farm because he loved you guys. Cattle farming was brutal. Dad had to work the oilpatch to pay for the farm. He was endlessly angry and stressed. We're lucky our family didn't fall apart through it. I wouldn't recommend it, even though I miss it sometimes. Hubby's parents told him from a young age to find a career because they loved him too much to pass on the farm.

 

[JLM]

I'm 33 years old. I grew up on a cattle farm with a party line and one tv channel, two if the clouds were just right. My mom was working at my grandpa's electronics store when microwaves first started really creeping into local homes.

Now tonight, my husband phoned me from his voice activated Bluetooth to tell me he was stuck in gridlock and would be late for dinner. I looked up the traffic map online and told him exactly what street the traffic snag would clear up at. I put his plate into the microwave to stay relatively warm and then left the kids to eat and do homework while I chatter away online. My daughter is completing her homework on her iPod, she uses Google docs so that her work is accessible no matter where she's at, even though the iPod is an encouraged to go with her to school so that she has constant online resource access at her desk.


It's interesting how quickly we forget that this level of tech is really really new. It's changed so many facets of our lives so drastically.

You want to know what it was like 35 years before that? Nah, don't ask me! LOL (I can still remember that smell of lime in the outhouse)

 

[In Between Man]

Imagine if you transported even your highschool self to now. It would have blown my mind.

And your grandpappy sold the farm because he loved you guys. Cattle farming was brutal. Dad had to work the oilpatch to pay for the farm. He was endlessly angry and stressed. We're lucky our family didn't fall apart through it. I wouldn't recommend it, even though I miss it sometimes. Hubby's parents told him from a young age to find a career because they loved him too much to pass on the farm.

Never realized it could be like that. When I think of cattle farming, I usually have the mental image of just the benefits - like steak for dinner.

 

[karrie]

You want to know what it was like 35 years before that? Nah, don't ask me! LOL (I can still remember that smell of lime in the outhouse)

My grandma literally rode to and from the one room school house on horseback. And we were in the museum this summer with my mother-in-law when the kids started laughing at a horse drawn caboose with a little stove in it to warm it. "Who would ride in something like that?" To which my m.i.l. pointed out it's how her family had traveled in the winter when she was a child. She recounted her tale of theirs tipping over on the way to church when it fell through the crust of an especially deep snow. She told them of her fear as her father jumped atop it, flung the door open, and yanked them all out to get them free of the coals spilling out of the stove. My kids were dumbstruck. Frankly, I was dumbstruck.

Never realized it could be like that. When I think of cattle farming, I usually have the mental image of just the benefits - like steak for dinner.

Oh my gawd, that would have been so cool, to be able to afford steak. We didn't often keep our cows. And if we did, steak was a rare luxury, as butchering is cheaper done into roasts, and sliced roast stretches further for a family than steak does per ounce. Plus the meat we did keep was usually from downed cows, so the meat wasn't as good. Broken legs, frozen hooves, stuff like that stresses the steer or cow and makes for tougher meat that you need to slow cook.

 

[JLM]

Sometimes I don't even think about the change at all and bitch about my 3 year old Blackberry.

Now there is one thing in common, they grew wild and we spent hours picking them so Mum could make jam for the winter. LOL (And we bitched about it too)

. And if we did, steak was a rare luxury, as butchering is cheaper done into roasts, and sliced roast stretches further for a family than steak does per ounce. Plus the meat we did keep was usually from downed cows, so the meat wasn't as good. Broken legs, frozen hooves, stuff like that stresses the steer or cow and makes for tougher meat that you need to slow cook.

Absolutely- If you want to eat steak buy a roast and cut your own steaks (and you can get the exact thickness you want too)

 

[PoliticalNick]

Amazing isn't it? I remember when our school got its first IBM machine, and we'd all huddle around a glorified calculator with amazement. Now my cell phone has thousands of times more power. Imagine if you transported and ancestor from just 50 years ago to modern times, and showed them around? That would be fun...

I am over a decade older. My high school was a pilot program for computer labs. In Grade 8 we got 5 Apple II computers with 64k of ram and 5 1/4" floppy drives. The next year we got a shared hard drive the size of a flat of beer, amazing to us we could connect all 5 computers to it, even more amazing at the time was the 2mb of storage it offered.

My sisters and I also made the neighbor's kids jealous when we got a Pong game for christmas one year. That was darn high-tech at the time.

Absolutely- If you want to eat steak buy a roast and cut your own steaks (and you can get the exact thickness you want too)

I buy whole loins of pork & beef at costco....cut a bunch of steaks & chops and a roast or 2 out of each one.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Heh.... the year karrie and In Between Man were born I bought a computer for my employer. Half a meg of RAM, a 1 MHz processor, 65 Mb disk drive, it was the size of a washing machine and cost over $100K, and needed its own specially air conditioned room to keep it cool. And it was connected to nothing. A year later we bought an external disk drive, 400 Mb, also the size of a washing machine, $25K, and if we didn't tie it down properly it would vibrate itself across the floor doing heavy I/O activity. Right now I have in my hand a little USB memory stick with 80 times that storage capacity that cost me $20. Imagine if cars had improved that much in 33 years. You could buy a Porsche 911 for $100 that got 2000 miles per gallon and could break the sound barrier...

 

[karrie]

One of the things that made me feel 'old' this year was the iPod issue. I said, "You're not allowed to take your iPod to school." She said, "But mom, the teachers have asked that we bring them, and they'll give us the wifi passcode and everything." Holy crap.... my kids are going to school in a Star Trek episode, with their own online computer resources in the palms of their hands. What a revolution for the education system.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Just wait 'til they get the Holodeck. Can't be more than a few years away...

 

[PoliticalNick]

One of the things that made me feel 'old' this year was the iPod issue. I said, "You're not allowed to take your iPod to school." She said, "But mom, the teachers have asked that we bring them, and they'll give us the wifi passcode and everything." Holy crap.... my kids are going to school in a Star Trek episode, with their own online computer resources in the palms of their hands. What a revolution for the education system.

My oldest watches his university lectures on webcasts, collaborates on projects with his classmates through his phone and hasn't submitted an assignment using pen & paper in 2 years. I sometimes wonder why I pay for him to be in dorms on the other side of the USA when he could do it all from his bedroom at home.

 

[karrie]

My oldest watches his university lectures on webcasts, collaborates on projects with his classmates through his phone and hasn't submitted an assignment using pen & paper in 2 years. I sometimes wonder why I pay for him to be in dorms on the other side of the USA when he could do it all from his bedroom at home.

My sister is working on her masters via a program in Regina despite living an hour and a half away. She still has to run to Regina on occasion but she does much of her work remotely in the same fashion.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Glad to know that even some of you youngsters are feeling old. None of the jobs I've ever had even existed when I started high school, and the pace of change seems to me has been accelerating my whole life. And I still want the flying car Popular Mechanics promised me way back when my age was still in single digits.

 

[karrie]

Youngsters... ha! I'm old enough to be grandma now, as my mom likes to remind me with an evil cackle.

 

[PoliticalNick]

My sister is working on her masters via a program in Regina despite living an hour and a half away. She still has to run to Regina on occasion but she does much of her work remotely in the same fashion.

If it wasn't for the fact he is at MIT I would make him do it remotely too.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

...as my mom likes to remind me with an evil cackle.

So was she a grandma at 33? I'm a few years short of being twice your age, so yeah, you're a youngster (and far wiser than I was at that age), and your mother probably is too if she was a grandma at 33.

 

[karrie]

So was she a grandma at 33? I'm a few years short of being twice your age, so yeah, you're a youngster (and far wiser than I was at that age), and your mother probably is too if she was a grandma at 33.

lol, no, she wasn't thank god, but my daughter is twelve now and it's their sinister way of pointing out both that it means I'm getting old, and, I need to keep a close eye on my daughter. I do retort with the fact that it means she's now, at 57, old enough to be a great grandmother.