Chapter 94 ~ The Christmas Season

The blog has been quiet since the 9^th but there has been lots going on and much more activity will occur in the New Year. I have been very busy at the store and this was the busiest week of the year so I have not had much time to write. I will post correspondence that has taken place after Christmas.

I'm a pretty tired person tonight and so I decided to just "veg" out and re-watch the movie "Ghost" with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. It is one of my all time favourite love stories from the cinema. I think I've watched it 3 or four times now since it first came out in 1990. It's hard to believe that was 17 years ago. I am a serious sceptic when it comes to religion but watching movies like Ghost makes me want to believe there is a hereafter and that we can do things as spirits. That is the magic of movies. My Mother, who was very religious, would say I had little faith and she would be right. If it were true then I could watch over my children from a pretty good vantage point and help guide them throughout their lives. Perhaps I could also guide the ex into making the right judgements with respect to the youngest girls. If only it were so!

It is nice to see the passion and love that the main characters had for each other. Would you believe my ex and I had that same passion once? We were good for each other for a long time but our love, passion, friendship and marriage slid away under our very noses. We were too busy with our separate lives to care I guess. It is a shame that two people who once had such zeal for one another's company now face a new year of continuing court battles and acrimony. Where is that movie magic for our lives? Could we create several different endings for our own drama with some more positive than others. If I could have a Christmas wish it would be that we could earn our own Academy Award for best efforts at looking after the happiness and well being for the rest of the lives of our children instead of metaphorically "beating" each other up.

If you are reading this my old friend, lover, companion, life partner and wife lets give ourselves some counselling for each other as a Christmas present and give our wonderful girls the best present they could possibly imagine.

I'll be back after Christmas with more. All the best and for you readers who are not Christian may the spirit and message arising from Christmas - peace on earth and good will toward humankind - bless you and your family and your God.

Mike Murphy

Chapter 92 ~ The Future our Children Face

I built a computer for Peigi for her first birthday. She, of course, couldn't type but could use a mouse to click on things and get a reaction. She already had a plus 50 word vocabulary by then and I had a sense she was gifted with language skills. She loved this action-reaction stuff and I will never forget her first mouse click at age 1. I think Explorapedia was one of the first interactive educational programs she used on the computer and her first click moved a frog from one location to another and it was wonderful to watch her truly explore this new world of computers. I did the same for Delia on her first birthday. They both have literally grown up with computers as tools. Why did I do this and not have them share one machine. It was because the "personal" computer (PC) for me changed the way I worked and learned fundamentally. It was "mine" and not controlled by a central IT department who dictated what I could and could not load on it and use. It changed my life for the better. I built my first Sinclair ZX machine from a kit in the late 70's or early 80's. It wouldn't be until a short time later that the Apple and IBM PC would catch on as mass market devices and change computing forever. Did you know that a 10 MB winchester hard drive in 1983 cost at least $1,000.00? Now you can get a half terrabyte (500GB) for $110.00 CDN. The first Apple 1 came out in 1976 for nearly $700.00 US but was only for the hard core geek community and its ease of use was clearly not a selling point then. That was similar to the Altair which used one of the very first Intel 8080 micro-processors which kick started the whole PC industry. I also had the technical know-how to build them and for the girls I could use old parts considered obsolete for everyday business use or high intensity graphics and cobble them together so they could use the many children's learning programs available. This has clearly given them a "head start" with the technology. I ran across the video below today through my subscription to the "This is True" newsletter by Randy Cassingham and what it indicates is quite startling in terms of the education of our children and the rapid advance of new knowledge, new careers, and the number of job changes our children will need to go through in their lives. Are we preparing our children well for the future. Have a look. It is just over 8 minutes but is an eye opener and information worthwhile to know. Given my children are going through incredible emotional stress on top of everything else it is concerning. But armed with the knowledge we can play a direct role in their preparation for a future far different than the one we experienced at the same age. For the printed version of this blog, when re-written as a book, this is the Link to the video on You Tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U To watch it without leaving this blog, click on the play button below.