Happily Imperfect‎‎ January 2000

The internet is a wonderful thing, it has removed boundaries, and connected the world. Three cheers for Tim Berners Lee!!

Or perhaps not…

I was looking through some of my rants on here, and was quite shocked to find how quickly I had forgotten the incidents and issues I was so vehemently spouting about. Well, forgotten isn’t really the right word, but the issues had certainly slipped to the back of my mind (which I must clear out soon).

So what is this an indication of? My lack of integrity and true morals? Probably. But I think, or maybe want to believe, that there is another answer.

How many emails do you READ a day? How many news sites do you visit, on whatever topic? Information overload? The internet moves so fast, with new information coming so fast you feel cheated in your favourite “obscure 70’s Arcade games” website hasn’t updated it’s news for one day. I’m conscious that I spend too much time on the PC, and far too much time on the Internet – which is costing me a fortune, let me tell you Americans, you’ve got it easy! – and I am beginning to realise that my attention span is, well, is it decreasing? or is it ravenous for more?

The thought of sitting down to read a book seems almost prehistoric. Novels don’t contain the latest version of the wonderful shell you’ve been raving about, do they?

Pretty soon, something you thought about last week, seems like last month, and events creep past you, barely registering. Yesterday’s news is now last hour’s news. Scary.

I hope that future generations will remember to interact with the world outside their PCs (yes, there is one), keep a good sense of right and wrong, and remember past mistakes. I’m part of the first generation not affected by World War 2, and it seems so long ago now, especially in a new century, but we mustn’t forget. Now what we need is a global repository, that can be accessed from anywhere in the world, listing the atrocities, and reminding future generations of what can happen.

Dammit, I hate it when my brain does that to me…

And I think I’ll leave the back of my mind alone, I had a quick look and, frankly, I don’t want to go back…

8th January 2000 – a Saturday night.

It was raining, cold, and miserable. We decide on the Balloch Hotel, it has that cosy, homily feel that pubs seem to lack these days. It also DOESN’T have music pumping at 200 decibels (oh god, I’m getting old).

So we sat, drank beer, and talked. It was great.

We covered recent events in our lifes, discussed what we hoped the future would hold, told crap jokes, and finally, as we always do, started reminiscing.

There aren’t many people that I consider as good friends, but on Saturday night, mine were all there. We have been through a lot, laughed, cried, argued and fought. No doubt we will go through more, and remain friends.

The true testament was how easy it was. We are different people to when we first met, almost 7 years ago, and our life’s have all taken twists and turns (you should know about mine by now). Without slipping into old personas, we did slip into a comfortable routine, OK, so some of the jokes are getting old (like IC! tee hee), and a lot of the stories weren’t funny at the time, but SB and I are talking now ;), but it was still a good night.

We will have others, but as it was the first get together of the ‘old class’ in a long time, it seems to have kicked started my year. Hopefully we will all stick to the resolutions we made, for some of us it will be easier than for others. The advantage is that we all have each other to lean on.