Wired and Weird

There are at least sixty people, some of which I don’t even know, want me to join them on LinkedIn. The same goes for others enraptured with Facebook.

With my book The Oy Way —www.theoyway.com — on the way, some wired in friends and family members are pushing me to use Facebook, saying that it is safe and no one could possibly hack into my account unless I let them. But I am wary of the security problems that could occur and today’s business section story about Facebook’s leader headlined “Zuck’s private photos slip out.” The subhead read, “CEO, girlfriend in G-rated shots, but security issues arise.” Look, if a crook can get Zuck, I, too, can get “tooked.”

Shoppers at Lucky markets in Northern California got “tooked” when some scam artists fixed the self-service line, and debit card numbers along with their personal IDs were captured, and their bank accounts tampered with.

Some of my wired in friends and family are very excited about having electronic communication devices that allow them to send emails, surf the net and find visual images of their houses online. This is all well and good, but if they don’t know where they are living without this enhancement, they are in real trouble.

My computer and the Internet are valuable for I am able to go online and do research, get forms for copyrighting my book, send out emails to family and friends here, there, and everywhere.

However, I use my iMac primarily as a writing instrument, and have spent an inordinately large amount of time in front of its screen lately as I try to finish the book. I also used it to write this blog entry and pieces for the Huffington Post, like the one just published on meaningful post-season football games. www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-gotliffe-phd/obama-vs-newt-or-mitt-can_b_1130317.html.

A forty-year-old Royal typewriter sits three-feet away to my right, www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_17315030, and each day I longingly look at it and think of all of the pre-computer writing I did on it. I even bought two small bottles of White Out Correction Fluid, just in case my yearning gets strong to move further into what seemed to be a simpler past.

Before that happens, I am going to go outside and try and find my house.

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