Leave it to Barney

They used to be beige, now they’re black. All the ports were in back, now some are in front. And by my reckoning, they are still the best ‘bang for the buck,’ in terms of the fastest chip, most memory etc. you can get for a sub-$1,000 price.

I speak of the lowly desktop computer, which if you step into any tech-related store now, like Staples (a personal favorite), you know has quickly become the Rodney Dangerfield no-respect former star of the computing world, now far more attracted to tablets and smartphones and big-for-pocket hybrid “phablets” and desktop all-in-one big-screen wonders.

So it’s with mixed emotions that I am replacing, at a fairly average point, my 3.5-year-old, almost-Windows 7 when I bought it (free upgrade when it came out a month or so later) HP desktop with a Lenovo (have one at work, all-in-one that is, and like it a lot) Intel latest (but not greatest, who can afford that?) Intel Core I5 speedier roomier (huh? A terabyte? I still have 450 of my 600-gig HD free anyway!) black box tower.

To find the formerly starring tower boxes at our friendly neighborhood Staples, look down – below the latest Windows 8 still-too-pricey touchscreen all-in-ones (that have cheaper chips, less memory etc.) — they have at most three black boxes on display, and they are … close to the floor. In fact, the Lenovo H430 I’m getting got primarily nice reviews at their and Best Buy’s site by purchasers – no actual ‘reviews’ out there in Webland, I’ve looked – that’s OK, the trusty PC I’m saying farewell to got bleh reviews in 2009.

I spend so much time kicking out the news in my home office, my wife and I have come to refer to it as the Vortex – a time-suck of the first degree. Escaping it takes some doing.

But things are changing. A lot fewer programs need to move from old PC to new these days, since so much work goes on via browsers, in ‘the cloud,’ as opposed to discrete programs on the PC. Data, sure – when your phone is a good camera, the amount of images grows.

So the computer I got because the power button broke on my last PC – seriously — is one of the first to go when it’s still trundling along. I’ll at least recycle it, though it’d be nice to find someone who wants to make use of it after the hard drive is wiped clean. I bet it’d have a few years of good use left in it.

It’s done me well, and I believe the new one will as well. They are just a tool, but for someone like me, oh so important. I don’t name them or anything. But they connect me the world, in ways unimaginable a few years or decades ago.

Which reminds me – does it ever feel really, really weird to say that we’re in 2013? I mean, shouldn’t we have our Jetson cars-that-fold-into-briefcases by now? And when you can work anywhere at any time, how hard is it for you to stop working? As for me… don’t ask;-)

My employer was kind enough to provide me with an iPad – something I hadn’t exactly drooled over, but had been mighty curious about. (I’d probably have gotten an Android tablet if it were my dollars, since they are tight in the situation of my wife’s unemployment, but even that wasn’t an option, so I’m very grateful).

As I count it, that means I have eight screens I deal with regularly – my smartphone, an HTC Inspire that I still feel closest to, literally, the iPad, my year-old trusty fun Nook Tablet, my home and work PCs, my still-neat Toshiba Netbook , our living room TV and my upstairs home-office TV – oh, and add the 4 TVs on the newsroom wall and we’re up to 12 (though I’m usually more zoned into my work PC there than any of the various channels we tune in at various times – except ours of course;-)

So in this World of Doing More with Less, just how thin can one spread one’s self, screen-wise?

I have to admit, the iPad is one smooth gadget – to use the phrase I prefer to appliance, or even tablet. Gadget is closer to toy, as in fun, and unless I can see that the Website’s content management system really can work on it — so far, I doubt it – it’s more like my phone with a bigger screen, or my PC with a smaller one and no keyboard except the one that has no tactile feedback, something I’ve grown accustomed to.

But it sure feels like a smooth-running high-end device, not the bushel of compromises some other gadgets or toys or tools of my past have felt like. I get why Apple has its ‘walled garden’ – to control quality (and make many dollars in the process) — in nearly 30 years of owning a PC, when asked why I didn’t have anything Apple, I usually said something on the order of, “If I were rich enough I’d have both.” And I would have, if only to, as they say in college, “compare and contrast,” and use each for its strengths.

But technology is a friend that has tested so many friends’ patience of late. Big “upgrades” at the station lately, and for months that has meant a high-wire act for those far more responsible than I am for getting the shows on the air each night. Things work, except when they don’t. We miss features or work flows (or shortcuts) we had and wonder why some new ones exist.

These days, every upgrade, however well-intentioned, feels like 2 steps forward, 3 steps back, 2 steps sideways and twirl until you’re dizzy (or read the manual, or visit the support forum). Know what I mean?

There are those who’d say we’re just resistant to change. I say the world is getting very tired of upgrades that mess with our well-established work paths and habits, and take away or mess up features we depend on in order to add gee-whiz things we never said we wanted.

It often feels like in this Doing More with Less World, everyone is a beta tester, and everyone is a proofreader (magazines and books with typos? Because most likely of fewer editors tasked with doing more — tweet this, Facebook that and proofread this article! — in a shorter period of time. Something has to give, and quite often, alas, it’s a feeling of quality. Every typo – and I make my share, for sure – is a little pebble in the shoe of a reader, a sign that we’re all Doing More with Less and suffering in the end for it.

So as I deck out my new iPad with the right bookmarks (Safari’s not bad!) and apps (free of course, mostly news of course), I definitely feel I’ve reached my Screen Limit. I often have to fight The Vortex, as my wife and I have called my all-consuming job, to stop doing it one place (home or work) so I can take a break before doing some more of it (at work or home).

This year is Deb and my 30th anniversary (she’s put up with me for that long? Is there a Nobel Prize for that?) and while we dream of Hawaii, we will make it to the coast, or to visit some relatives. And yes, 2-3 of those screens will come along, but I will be more relaxed, not less, knowing I can check in when I want to. And then put it away. Deb’s orders.

Some things never change. Decades ago, Deb waited for me to do “one more thing” after “one more thing” at the UPI bureau in Portland so we could head home. But at home – before cell phones (and long before we gave up our land line) – I still was able to turn off work for the most part. Now, there’s always more to do. Always.

Some things never change. I hope I can, just enough to make it to 40 years (or gasp, 50!) with the woman I love.

That’s one reason I call them toys, or gadgets. To put them in their rightful place, at least for the moment – as servants, not masters of my hours and days and life.

Call it a rationalization. We all have them, to get by and stave off insanity, depression etc.

Screening the world on so many screens can screen out life. I have to keep reminding myself of that.

Happy 2013, everybody!

If Friday wasn’t an emotional day for you and those close to you, you weren’t paying attention. And that just might have been a better path to take, all things considered.

There’s no way anyone was indifferent about the awful events in Newton, Conn. The very idea, the mental image of innocent children felled by a madman’s bullets in their rural classroom, less than 2 weeks before Christmas, stokes every type of negative emotion known to man.

As moderator, ringleader, babysitter and bite-my-tongue occasional commenter on KTVZ.COM’s online comments, years of experience gave me a good sense where the comments would go — human nature being what it is.

But as the guy who sometimes castigates those who seem to champion one extreme or the other in the Blame Society of today (2 bumper sticker slogans of mine: ‘To BLAME is to B-LAME,’ or ‘Blame the Blamers — Hate the Haters’) — the rekindled gun control debate, I can understand.

The notion that it’s ‘the media’s fault’ for paying too much attention to the event or for ‘glorifying’ the perpetrator, thus ensuring more such incidents, isn’t just a simple answer — but a simplistic one that fails to hold water when one examines the options as expressed.

So of course I had to ask someone who voiced that view what he would have us media folks do? Ignore such a mass tragedy? Report everything but who did it and his or her background? Really?

The response was a suggestion of leaving that part of the story blank, as the Tour de France list of winners will be forever more for the races won by Lance Armstrong before he was stripped of his titles in that doping scandal.

But talk about apples and oranges! Armstrong is still a household name – rightly famous to his stalwart fans, now infamous to those not so close to the matter who figure where there’s so much smoke…

That’s not the same as “un-covering” (censoring?) a key part of a tremendously awful story that grips the nation’s attention. We search for clues in the madman’s past, in hopes that there will be a clue that can prevent future tragedies  (knowing the odds of finding such magical clues are slim at best). And yes, for some, the details satisfy some morbid curiosity in the celeb-fame world of today. Just try putting THAT genie back in the bottle!

Madmen (and women) have existed since practically when we stepped out of the Garden of Eden. Long before guns, many died on the battlefields, and elsewhere. We have no corner on insanity, but for some reason we have cloaked the Five Stages of Grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — in the dubious twin cloaks of ‘who can we blame?’ and its corollary, ‘how can we prevent it from ever happening again (or so much)?”

And if we can’t solve/fix it, today, then we must blame … the gun, the reporter (don’t shoot the messenger?), somebody! I really, truly believe that most of us know better, but lashing out or trying to “fix” the problem, striking when the iron’s hot, feels too good to resist.

I spent much of my younger life trying to “fix” a broken family, foolishly (hey, born on April Fool’s Day). I’m lucky I don’t have an ulcer to show for it (though my older brother did;-/

The answers, I’m afraid, are, there’s really only one person to blame — and he’s dead — and there’s only so much society can do to prevent such tragedies. (Metal detectors in every school? Police in every hallway? Schools turned into what airports have become? Really?)

I do fear today’s more-connected, yet less-connected at the same time society leaves more people feeling alone than in the days of nuclear families and neighbors you knew. But again, to look for some sweeping movement, law, policy or groupthink that could reverse that trend is a fool’s game — and again, wouldn’t ‘fix’ the problem, prevent the tragedies.

The extremes and those who live there play us, the truth-, solution- and peace-seeking folks in the middle, and all too often we go along and get spun (or just simply disengage, give up on the debate out of frustration).

Anyone who dares suggest that maybe it should be a bit harder to get a gun is quickly branded by some as an unpatriotic rube who wants to rip every firearm out of Americans’ hands so the jack-booted thugs can have their way with us.

And those who believe, for example, that the answer is more people with guns in public places, or having every youngster learn responsible use of a firearm — again, those would seem to be simple, even simplistic answers that seem at best unworkable, at worst ludicrous. If only because a sizable chunk of parents would rebel at the very notion. But the notion of “doing away with the NRA”) (or unions, or the party you don’t like) also feels like spleen-venting rather than actual workable proposals or a starting point for rational discussion.

I think those who believe we don’t direct enough attention and dollars toward mental health treatment are on a far more promising tack — though again, there’s no such thing as a 100 percent “solution” to the mind that can snap, without any signs of it before to the outside world. (Not unless we enter a world of “Minority Report” pre-cognition and enlist folks to prevent crimes before they happen. A horror film come to life.)

I bet most reporters involved in covering Friday’s awful events were conflicted — the adrenaline pumps over “the big story,” but I seriously doubt any of the people involved ever expected to be interviewing children — at their parents’ sides, of course — about “bullets whizzing by.” No mind can insulate itself fully from the sick feeling at the pit of one’s stomach over not just the awful events, but how familiar — even, ugh, routine — they have become.

We take daily routines and life for granted because we are a resilient species and most of us don’t, thank God, spend every day of our lives fighting for survival — though with my wife still seeking work, at what’s supposed to be a joyous time of year, I also know how the economic woes we have fallen into remove much of the … lubrication from the gears of society, causing them to grind, spark and occasionally burst into flame.

(Speaking of the economy and tight, tough times, the fiscal cliff — now there’s something to “fix” that shows just how hard it can be to “fix” obvious problems, when the best “solution” to those directly involved is to never give in and blame the other side for being childish, stubborn and 100 percent wrong. Sigh.)

So the “how many children have to die before we…(fill in the blank)” crowd can be seen as using an awful tragedy to make their point, in a way that frustrates all but probably sways few if any minds troubled by the horrifying events.

In my job as a reporter, I often tell people I rarely if ever have the answers — I just try very hard to come up with the right questions — and to know who to ask. (I also tell folks I have no memory, only Google and archives – and they only go so far. But that’s a topic for a different, happier day.)

But on days like this, I believe we should excuse each other for asking the chief unanswerable question — why?? — because that’s what we imperfect humans do.

And when we watch and read the heart-wrenching tales of heroes and lives cut short, not to mention reams of analysis that are no doubt coming our way in coming days about the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, it seems to me the best way we can honor, respect and salute the innocent children lost, and the bereaved parents, families and friends, is to think before we vent or blame, to resist those who would use this tragedy for their own political ends, to better balance the pain in our hearts with the logic in our heads that says grasping at simple answers in the frustration-born, all too human desire to “do something!” is a shortcoming that really, deep down inside … we know is never, ever that simple.

Neil Armstrong died today. A man who didn’t seek out the hero’s mantle, and surely didn’t cash it in as some have.

I grew up to be quite a space nut – and not just because my father, an engineer who worked for Boeing, actually got to work on the space program. It was just … the promise of the future and all that entailed.

I built a LEM (lunar lander) from a cutout cardboard sheet, more tape than paper when I was done. I built a Saturn 5 from a plastic kit of pieces, probably more glue than plastic when I was done (never was much for hand-eye coordination). In junior high, we did rockets, and my awfully painted lil red one must have flown, I suppose. I don’t remember it that much.

We — my father Paul, stepmother Jeannie, and two older brothers Pete and Rick (well he was Larry then) – moved to Cocoa, Fla., on the mainland near Cape Kennedy, in 1966. We left in 1968 for Kent, Wash., where my father – starting to show the signs of the bulbular palsy that would take his life within a few years – was to work for Boeing on the SST. Until Congress killed it.

Darn it.

Anyway, we’ve always been masters of timing. We moved to Cocoa after Gemini, left before Apollo — we were there for the deadly fire. (And we left as Disney World just began taking shape.) And my father worked, after the fire, on the guy-wire system that was going to get those astronauts out of the frickin capsule if another fire happened.

I used to read the Boeing newsletters he brought home avidly – though they were full of acronyms and jargon and I never quite understood them. I was already hit by the writing/journalism bug.

More than a billion folks watched man land on the moon, watched Armstrong’s first step.

I wasn’t one of them.

Alas, that’s the week my Boy Scout troop in Kent, Wash., decided to finish the 50-mile hike, from Stevens Pass to Sonoqualmie Pass, that was aborted the year earlier when one of them got lost. (That was before we moved there.)

I remember two things about that hike – one when we were roped together and a fat kid named Wally Schneider (fitting right?) didn’t follow the guy ahead of his footsteps in the still-present high-Cascades snow – so he started to slip down the hill (mountain?) — dragging us with him.

Then there was Mr. No Coordination, walking on a log with a pack on my back, and of course I fell in the water. I was dry – the backpack and sleeping bag got soaked.

Or so I recall.

So yeah, I wasn’t able to see man land on the moon — remember, there were no VCRs, much less DVRs then. (Though a few years later, a now-missing HS friend, Gene Tichy, and I would watch the moon landings, the Lunar Rover etc. – and he’d record them on a huge reel-to-reel video recorder.)

I know Neil Armstrong felt all the thousands of people who put him and Buzz Aldrin on the moon were just as much heroes as he was. (Decades later, I came up with the winning Progress edition theme for The Bulletin — ‘Everyday Heroes.’ We had trouble getting folks to agree to be called that. The best heroes are those so modest they don’t want or need the spotlight. They just do their jobs, or what needs to be done.)

Anyway, I don’t know if I ever told my dad he was a hero to me. He passed away in 1975 of a truly scary disease, bulbular palsy – as scary as the Alzheimer’s plague of today. He became very emotional, crying and … it was hard to see or take.

But today, as we remember a hero from the old school, a self-professed ‘white shoes pocket protector nerd’ who made history with a footstep that still sits on the moon’s airless plains, I have to offer a public salute to my father, Paul Lerten, one of the many folks who were part of a grand effort that almost seems impossible in retrospect, from today’s divisive, deep-in-red-ink Blame Society.

Both were heroes, and I’m sure my dad would have shunned the title just as Neil Armstrong did.

But both deserved it, richly, for what they did and what they stood for — doing right by family, doing a job to make something big and grand happen. But doing so without fanfare, just … because it needed to be done.

We miss that. We need more of that.