My younger self couldn’t even imagine what my current self is living
We have a sign that our dear friend gave us years ago. It says “What happens at the cabin stays at the cabin.” Not anymore!
As I’m writing this, my lovely wife Pam is doing a physiotherapy appointment — via zoom! No need to drive to town, no need to leave the living room. She’s had a bit of a ‘go of it’ for the last little while, but the physio is a much needed step towards better mobility.
I remember when I was in junior high in the mid-’70s. There were no cell phones, no internet — nothing that we all take for granted today. Our phone was mounted on the wall in the kitchen and it was a party line. We shared it with three other families. Each of us had a specific ring pattern to let us know who the call was for.
Of course, sometimes you’d go to make a phone call and the line was in use by one of our neighbours. You could always tell when one of the neighbours decided to ‘listen in’ on our own conversations because there was that tell-tale ‘click’ when they picked up the phone to snoop in.
By the time I was in high school we had graduated to our own private line and didn’t need to limit our phone activity to leave the line free for other folks. At the same time, computers started to become something that were emerging into the scene. Not at home or anything like that, heck — we still only had three channels on our TV and rabbit ears. The TV went off the air usually between midnight and 2 a.m., depending on the station.
Computers would be the next major change in the world, though, so they told us! So much so that my high school electronics class actually ordered a few and ran a course on coding. It was a little redundant as none of us could imagine what to even do with a computer at the time. My Hewlett Packard scientific calculator, (which my parents must have taken out a second mortgage to afford), was far more powerful and useful.
I did learn enough to write a little program to make the computer screen display:
Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you Screw you
Fast forward a few years and I was touring as a full time musician when my parents told me that they had bought a computer and were connected to this new ‘internet thing’ Wow! I had to get out to visit them on Gabriola Island so I could check it out first-hand.
I have to admit it was a little disappointing. Sure, I was ‘on the net,’ but what was on the net? Practically nothing! There was no Google to search for things. Basically, if you knew about a website, you could go and visit it. Mum and Dad had bookmarked a couple of places, but it was a big nothing-burger for me. Back on the road for me — of course with exciting yarns for the rest of the guys in the band about how cool it was to be ‘online’.
When I first moved to the Yukon, one of my first day jobs was working for Andrew and Chris at their website-based business YukonNow.com. I have to admit it was pretty cool. I was hired to do sales but Andrew insisted that I spend the first couple of weeks learning about the internet. He gave me a brand new iMac G3 to use, and showed me this brand new site – Google!
I was hooked. Amazing!
As the years have progressed, so has technology and my understanding and love for it. My first home computer was an older Mac and was connected through a dial-up YK Net account. I spent weeks downloading mp3’s from Limewire, started using email to save on long distance costs and learned how to install new programs and erase my hard drive, re-install my OS and all of my programs from floppy disks.
Then I did an overdubs recording session in Jay’s basement studio, in Riverdale, in the early 2000s. I saw Pro Tools for the first time ever. My life changed forever that day. I currently have a monthly subscription to Pro Tools and quite a fair amount of Pro recording gear for my home studio.
I have access to more powerful and professional tools than we ever could haul in a 5-ton truck back in the road days, and a better recording platform than any of the studios that I ever recorded in back then.
I admit that for a while as I assembled everything, it was a bit of a money pit. But the day that I told Pam that ‘I’m finally done buying stuff,’ she was a very happy camper.
Today, of course, I work online. We get all of our TV online and we have two smartphones that make my old HP scientific calculator — the one my parents paid a small fortune for — absolutely redundant. It’s a free app on the phone!
I have four dedicated computers: one for work, with two extra screens plus the work laptop for doing extra things while my other screens are busy. I have my old iMac dedicated to Pro Tools and the amazing speakers. (There’s something really cool about watching hockey and TV though $1,000 worth of studio reference monitors!). And there’s the little Mac mini that I use to stream the TV shows and sports that we watch. Pam of course, has her own laptop.
The best part is that if the internet goes down, we can use our cell phones as hotspots and if the cell service goes down, we can use the phones through VOIP to make calls through the internet! We have a sign that our dear friend gave us years ago. It says “What happens at the cabin stays at the cabin.” Not anymore!
Oh … sounds like Pam’s physio session is over, so I’ve got to go. But yeah, our little wired cabin, 50 miles from town, out in the bush is something out of Star Trek compared to my youth. Beam me up Scotty. I’ve got a paper to print!
