New Server, New Email, same old internet

As a child of the fifties I will never be one to move within the arcane world of computer code. HTML makes as much sense to me as the squiggles used in Arabic writing. I do, however, know how to use a search engine as well if not better than your average teenager; just don't ask me to program one. As far as I’m concerned, back slash and forward slash are hockey terms.

When I landed my first job as a courtroom artist I was 18 years old, fresh out of High School and art was created with either pen, pencil or paint onto paper and canvas. Computers were massive complexes of tubes and wire and filled entire rooms to create less computing power currently found in a chip smaller than my little fingernail. Wonders such as the LED, CD, DVD, Bluetooth, laser mouse, and the PC did not exist except in science fiction and under different names.

I am writing this while sitting in my home office. To my right is a Sony component stereo system that I turned on by remote control. It plays either over-the-air broadcasts in several formats or a selection of choices from the carousel CD changer; all with the tap of a button on the remote. My computer is a Toshiba laptop. It is nothing fancy and, to be honest, slightly underpowered when compared to this year’s crop. But if I were able to step back in time to when I first began my artistic career, taking either product with me, I would be able to command any price for the wonders they contained. What will I consider commonplace tomorrow?

We take all of this incredible technology for granted now, to the point where, when flying from one city to another, on a trip that would have taken our ancestors weeks of months of hardship, we complain about being served stale peanuts as a snack. I have no idea why Jobs, Wozniak and Gates used the language they did in creating their programs, but I’m glad they did. I am currently illustrating a series of children’s books for a publisher using Adobe Photoshop as the primary program. If I were to do the job using only hand tools, and I could certainly do so, the work would take almost ten times the amount of hours.

The cartoon strip you see below this column was drawn the old fashioned way using pencil, paper, brush and ink. What technology has allowed to happen is to enable me to share it with a vastly larger audience than what its original publisher intended. This is the world of the internet; which brings me to my point. Because I am an artist, I work in files that can easily become not just huge but massive. My old email and DSL server did not have near enough bandwidth to deal with that size. I had to move up, but in doing so I had to get yet another email address. If you want to contact me, comment on this column and I will send you the new listing.

Thanks for reading.

Bankruptcy

I received a call from a Review Journal reporter today, asking about an old bankruptcy.

About 15 years ago I owned a sign shop in Northern California. That shop thrived for eleven years, but when the decade of the nineties came along so did an area wide depression and with it, double-digit unemployment. I spent the last months of my shop's existence designing and painting going out of business signs.

The depression was caused because the general industries of lumber and fishing supported the general economy. When those industries were cut back due to government policy, people lost jobs and the retailers dependant upon those shoppers lost customers. A descending cycle began. For my shop and many others it meant a chapter 7 bankruptcy. To this day that area is still experiencing high unemployment and very low business growth.

It took a long time and a lot of hard work but my credit score was rebuilt and is now listed as excellent. That experience is one I wish my family and I did not have to endure, but it was an important learning experience.

As an Assemblyman, I have been given an opportunity to effect certain changes. One of those changes would be to reenergize Nevada’s economy so people who live and work here will not have to experience what I did. That would be a change for the good.