web logging

I wrote the other day about writing my dissertation.  At the same time I uploaded another large file.  The dissertation is slightly more than 4 mb.  The first year of this blog makes a PDF file, too, and it is slightly more than 2 mb.  Google web sites allow me to upload those files and leave them in a place where I and others can find them if desired.  At one time, files of that size (4 mb = 4 megabytes = 4000 kb.  When I first studied computing on the U. of Maryland campus in 1965, we used a hotshot computer of the day whose memory was something like 132 kb, kilobytes.)  It was just a couple of years ago that files the size of the dissertation or blog were prohibitively large and would jam many transmission systems.  Now, less so.

When I retired, I left an intense schedule behind.  I was used to handling many student emails a day and doing the related marking, commenting and crediting required of online instruction.  The local organization called "Learning Is ForEver" (L.I.F.E.) was of interest even before I retired.  Local people deliver presentations on a wide variety of topics and trips are offered to operas and plays in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.  There are many other types of excursion and adventures, too.  L.I.F.E. offered me a forum and my presentations gave me a chance to again think and speak as I did for my classes.  I often found the fun was in thinking of what to present as well as in delivering it.

Retirement was my first chance to be ok financially and do more or less whatever I wanted with each day.  I still have that opportunity daily and I have found that being my version of a columnist, thinking of whatever I want and figuring a way to say what I am thinking is energizing and valuable.  I read the other day of a columnist who wrote 1000 words every day for 60 years.  I will not last 60 years and I don't write 1000 words for my posts.  But looking over my thoughts, the news, comparing and contrasting this and that turns out to be quite satisfying.  I like to have at least a few readers and I do.  I am grateful to them and for the modern opportunity to get the motivation to churn something out regularly in a 'weB LOG'.

(Copyedited by L.S. Kirby)