Today I have a post from a guest blogger, my friend and former wonderful client at The Guardian.I know you will enjoy reading Paul's post and his contact information is at the bottom of the page. He is terrific!!
ANALOG/DIGITAL/DIAGONAL
I love the digital age. I hate the digital age. I didn’t know it was the analog age when it was happening and I miss it. It is not that I miss analog so much; it is that there are many things about the digital age that annoy me. Or should I say that I get annoyed by many things digital.
In the digital age everything is converted to bits and bytes; 1’s and 0’s of computer code record and play audio and video, store books, photographs, great and not so great works of art and maintain a record of your personal financial data, social security number and mother’s maiden name.
In the analog age of the 1950’s, I grew up watching television, 19” screen measured diagonally, with black and white images. There were seven television channels in New York City and television reception depended on an antenna attached to the roof or a rabbit-ears antenna on top of the television set.
Today, I have a high definition digital television, HDTV with a 42” screen measured diagonally. There is no antenna. A cable from an underground source connects to a magic box which is connected to my HDTV with a 42” screen measured diagonally. I control the magic box, another digital device, with the click of a button on a remote control device.
My magic box converts digital streams, those 1’s and 0’s, in the cable into new or old movies, soap operas, soccer from England or Italy, the news in French or Korean, XXX-rated programs, or Harold Camping reading the Bible. It is all on my HDTV with a 42” screen measured diagonally. I choose what to watch and when. I can even record programs for future viewing. Everything is in color, except of course for the black and white movies of the analog age.
As a kid, I didn’t miss color television because I had never had it. I also wasn’t subjected to innumerable messages at the top and/or the bottom of the screen, or half a dozen replays of the sports action from various angles showing pitches, catches, strike outs, dunks, passes, putts, drives, serves, volleys, hat-tricks and a drunk fan spoiling a play.
Did you know that the messages moving across your screen from right to left (except in Tel Aviv) are, appropriately, called crawls? Those other messages that are static on the lower part of the screen are called lower-thirds. I have no idea what they call the stuff at the top, probably upper quarters.
The other day I was watching a baseball game on the HDTV with a 42” screen measured diagonally. In one half-inning there were two dozen instant replays, too many static graphs and facts to count in the lower third, a digital strike zone, player statistics in the upper quarter and several commercials digitally superimposed on the screen. If I took a tape measure to it, probably better than a third of the screen, 42” measured diagonally, was occupied by something other than the live action of the ball game.
I guess I’ll have to move up to HDTV with a 60” screen measured diagonally.
Paul Brustowicz blogs as The Retirement Mensch www.retirementmensch.com
With almost forty years of experience in the life insurance industry, Paul is a prime resource for marketing and sales training at the agency or home office level. His career has focused on making producers bigger, brighter and able to leap tall buildings at a single bound!
Love yourself and know that you are deserving and worthy of an abundance of money.
That’s the beauty of retiring. You see things which you don’t normally see during the busy days of your live. And even the smallest thing on earth attracts your attention. You actually learn more when you retire. You learn about the environment and the changes that happen in an instant.
I know people who drink green tea in the afternoon or in the evening and not in the morning. I always wondered why.