Hot Topics 2012

Four-letter words

Photo taken with iPad Photo Booth App - Thermal image

"Blog" is a four-letter word.

So is "post", so is "iPad", so is "%@#$".

I've been known to cuss like a sailor in certain situations.  Social media and technology is one of them.  Yet, adopting technical skills in social media is something that I am slowly accepting as a reality, and my potty mouth is gearing down to an exasperated sigh. 

I was sitting at an Arizona Diamondbacks game at Chase Field in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, watching the Chicago Cubs get beat (I was rooting for them - I always root for the underdog), when the old ad campaign from Rolling Stone Magazine popped into my head... perception vs. reality.

I had a subscription to Rolling Stone my senior year in high school.  That was 1985.

In 1985 we had four computers in my high school.  I took a computer programming class and learned DOS on an Apple 2E.

Then, in 1986 my beloved record albums were kicked to the curb by compact disks.  They were so expensive, but they were supposed to be indestructible, so we used them as coasters and parties and threw them around like frisbees.  We learned that you can scratch a CD, just like a record.  And that was an expensive lesson.

I still listen to CD's and I do not have an iPod.  I am also embarrassed to say that I own an iPad that I never use.  I can hear the gasps coming from you readers right now.  Why haven't I used it?  Because I haven't made the time.  By the way, the iPad was a gift.   Time to get with the program.

I am reluctantly adding my humble contribution to the Hot Topics Blog.  For what it's worth, I will adopt the reality and change my perception.  I need to make the time to explore this stuff.  Because otherwise, I might as well become a blacksmith at Living History Farm.  

Paula Wolfe
Dubuque Senior High School
Dubuque, Iowa