Note: I'm still traveling and short on time, so I'm sharing a post from back in May that touched a nerve with many people in the geekspace.

Now, I realize that there are some folks in the geek space who still make use of default apps. Robb Knight's project from the winter of 2023 taught us that. By and large, though, the things that people in tech related fields do with our phones, laptops, and tablets fall far, far outside what normies do with theirs. Even further from the norm is what the professional nerds do. Those folks who make their living from monetized blogs, podcast ads, subscriptions and other forms of content are so far removed from what your Mom does with her phone that they could be living on another planet. I saw many bloggers today venting a little over the vapors the content production machine types are having about the new iPads and the fact that those darn folks at Apple just won't listen to them.

I live at the intersection of normies and tech because I do IT support for a living. I have to talk to your Mom at work in the language she speaks about her computer and her phone. I know, trust me, I really know how much she hates changing her password and how much she really doesn't want to have to download and configure a two-factor authentication app. I know how frustrating it is to search for Microsoft Authenticator in Apple's App Store only to have the number one hit to be a $40 paid app and not the free product from the folks in Redmond. You know what's important to your Mom? That her icons don't move, that's what. Last year, Microsoft had an errant patch Tuesday that ended up removing the Office icons off the desktop of corporate computers.I spent a couple of days explaining to people that, no, we didn't "delete Word off your computer," and talking them through recreating the shortcut. That's a crisis. Not being able to use the Finder on an iPad is not a crisis.

Pete Brown said it well, "the vast majority of iPad owners are using the device to read Kindle books, play Candy Crush, and take bad photos." There are millions of us nerds out there using the best calendar and note-taking apps, but there are tens of millions of people perfectly happy with what Apple or Google gave them. Maybe they have downloaded a few apps (and probably never deleted them) to try out. They might even be pretty good at Instagram, but they are not us. They do not know what version of the operating system they are running on anything. They do not care. They hate updates because they interrupt stuff they'd rather be doing. They don't care about the new features being announced at WWDC because they do not want to learn how to do new things with their already too complicated tech. They are the baseline. We are the outliers.

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I appreciate the people who read this blog. I'm grateful for your attention, your comments and for the great blogs so many of you maintain. I'm currently traveling and spending time with family I haven't seen in 10 years. Tonight's post is from April when I was just getting started. Straight from the heart.

Part of my daily routine is to record three things in my daily journal entry for which I'm grateful. I've been doing it for a long time. I try not to be too repetitive, so I'm always on the lookout for things to identify and add to my list. It helps to ask myself that question multiple times a day. I found a good parking spot? Boom! Grateful. My clothes fit particularly comfortably today? Boom! Grateful. A text from one of my grown kids, a tasty lunch at a familiar restaurant, a good report at the dentist - I'm always on the lookout.

I'm lucky in that I have everything I need even if I don't have everything I want. I learned how to tell the difference between those two things a while back and that skill serves me well. Life is by no means perfect, I weigh too much, some of the people I love the most live too far away to see them as much as I would like. I sometimes regret not getting further along the career path I chose than I did before I retired. All of those things are mitigated by other factors. I've lost weight before. With technology, I can stay in touch with my kids and grandkids fairly easily. I may not have retired as the CIO of a tech company, but I had a solid 8-5, Mon-Fri job that left me plenty of time to do the stuff that really brings me joy.

I battled alcohol for years, sometimes going long stretches without it, years even, only to fall back into bad habits and addiction. I'm forever going to be grateful that things finally clicked one day. I had a moment of clarity that allowed me to see what kind of future I was headed towards and to also see that I could avoid going there. I took my last drink on December 28th, 2008 and have been continuously sober ever since. Being sober isn't my identity. I'm prouder of things I've done than of the simple act of abstaining, but I'm definitely happy not to have that struggle any more.

I've been married since I was 18 - to four different people. Luckily my wife and I have been together a dozen years now and it keeps getting better. I don't suffer from the curse of loneliness or the stress of constant fighting. I didn't go to college. I was a two-time teenage parent, and the workforce was always the place for me. I found the IT field around the age of 30 after having been in the military, working construction and in manufacturing and a stint as a prison guard. Once I got into computers I moved through a couple of different industries before landing in educational technology, the area I made a career. Even post-retirement, I missed it enough to take a low stress job at a local university solving problems for end users.

My wife and I have enough dough that we don't have to worry about the things that used to be terrifying when I was younger: an unexpected car repair bill, medical expenses, the death of a major appliance. We don't have helicopter money but don't have to pinch pennies either. We can afford to help out the kids when they need it. It feels good. I'm not going to lie. At the end of most days, I go to bed pretty happy. I have enough in my life to keep me busy. I still love technology as much as I did when I bought my first computer (on a Sears card in 1993). I have repaired the damage my bad habits caused in my life. I'm fortunate and I'm grateful and I'm glad to make that list every single day.

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Silent Valley Reservoir, County Down, Northern Ireland

I was sitting in a hostel in Maine with multiple other hikers. I asked this good old boy from Tennessee if he'd taken the side trail the day before to see the spectacular overlook from Spaulding Mountain. He looked at me confused and said, "I wouldn't take a side trail to watch a dragon fight a unicorn." He had one thing on his mind, obviously. He was ready to reach Mt. Katahdin and finish the Appalachian Trail.

Although there are a seeming countless number of beautiful views along what is, after all, called a national scenic trail, most of the journey is spent in what hikers call the green tunnel. You see nothing but trees, rocks and a never-ending footpath. In many places, towering rhododendrons form a literal tunnel, blocking out the sky and any view up or down the mountain you're hiking on.

I'm from the south and I love the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but we can't hold a candle to the beauty one experiences in northern New England. Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are breathtaking over and over. Going above the tree line in the White Mountains is unforgettable. The hundreds of lakes scattered through the dense woods of southern Maine allow you to snap photos every couple of miles worthy of being made into post cards.

I'm partial to mountains when it comes to looking for landscapes to appreciate. One of the most beautiful days of my life was spent driving the high road to Taos, New Mexico from Santa Fe. There is little to no humidity, unlike what we have in the eastern mountains. So there is no haze. The sky is crystal clear and a clear blue that abruptly changes to many shades of green as your eye moves down to the peaks of the mountains. The mountains are taller than what I'm used to. After all, it is ski country. You can return to Santa Fe along the low road which skirts the Rio Grande in high walled canyons.

Fans of America's mountains should visit Colorado Springs. From anywhere in town, you can see Pikes Peak. A train ride to the top is only a few doors and is something to put on your bucket list. Also in there are, the Garden of the Gods provides ample opportunities to capture photographs of the landscape and of the big horned sheep who live there.

For a different kind of beauty, the Mourne Mountains, located in County Down in Northern Ireland are a mostly treeless expanse of grasslands divided by stone fences and few man-made structures. There are a couple high mountain reservoirs that catch the water they need down in Belfast. The few people who do live there are friendly. If you're lucky, you can find a tea shop where you can get a cuppa with a couple of biscuits to sip while you sit beside a peat fire and just take in the wonderful Irishness of it all.

My bucket list includes seeing the Alps in France, Italy, and Switzerland. Recently, as Internet friend told me that there is a trans-alpine railroad journey from east to west on the South Island of New Zealand that provides some of the best views to be seen on planet Earth, and now I want to go there too. I have no great desire to see Kilimanjaro or the Himalayas, even though the beauty of those places in undeniable. I think the altitudes would do me in.

What about you? What mountains have you loved?

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I remember vividly when I was finally able to go grocery shopping without having to constantly calculate the cumulative cost of the items in my basket. On more than one occasion I had to reluctantly tell the cashier that I'd decided not to get an item or two when my math was bad, and I ended up short while standing at the register. I remember, too, the inability to afford a full tank of gas in the beaters I drove in my early adulthood. I rarely had more than $10 at a time when to buy fuel. When the day came that I could fill up the tank whenever I needed to, I felt like I'd reached a new level in the game of life.

One of the best mental health practices anyone can adopt is what 12-steppers call an attitude of gratitude. I've been makinga three-bullet list in my journal for well over a decade. Many days I record nothing but the little luxuries life offers. I'd rather have a whole basket of the little things than a big, fancy car.

I lived in a 100-year-old farm house in high school. For air conditioning, we had a couple of window units in the house, but none of them reached my bedroom. Our heat was a wood stove. My first adult jobs were mostly of the outdoor type. When I finally scored employment with the state, it was at a prison constructed decades ago. There was no AC, just giant floor fans to blow the hot air around. Subsequently, I moved to a giant Westinghouse factory with a massive machine shop, high ceilings and shipping bay doors open to the summer weather. I'd already turned 30 before I finally made my way into the white-collar world where I could work at a desk, sitting down in air conditioning.

We didn't eat out much when I was a kid. I'd use my money from whatever little hustles I had going on to occasionally treat myself to some fast food. We lived for a while in Jacksonville, NC and there was a place on the outskirts of town selling three hot dogs for a dollar. I loved that place! To this day, I get more excited than I probably should by the prospect of restaurant food, I don't care how mundane. I'm super happy if I get to go to a taco trailer, and on top of the world if we go to a real sit-down Mexican place with chips and salsa. We could conceivable afford to eat out for every meal, and it's only Wonder Woman's sensibilities that keep from indulging in that.

I've only slept a new mattress a couple of times in my life. One of those times was just a few years ago when we got one of those foam jobs that comes in a box and expands when you take it out. After relying on cheap hand-me-downs, actually having a quality place to sleep was a luxury I didn't know I needed. It's a rare night when I don't feel incredibly lucky climbing beneath the sheets. My super-power is being able to sleep anywhere at any time under just about any conditions. I can now save that skill for when I really require it.

There are plenty of other things that make me feel a little like a Rockefeller:

• Never, ever going on a road trip without a stop by the Circle K for soda and a snack
• That first trip to a bathroom with porcelain after spending days upon days on a hiking trip
• Owning and using fleece lined slippers
• Being able to get the fastest Internet you can get to a residential building
• Car repairs that don't go on a credit card
• Rarely saying no to our favorite charities
• Every pair of Levis blue jeans I've ever owned

I'm not a perfect gratitude machine by any means. I despise flying. I am almost always glad to be traveling somewhere, but the miraculous act of hurtling across the country miles up in the sky leaves me singularly unimpressed and grouchy. I also thought email was cool for a while until I realized it was a way other people could add items to my to-do list. Then I didn't like it as much. Still, though, there is enough of that poor kid left in me that any time I buy something and I don't feel forced into getting the cheapest model of whatever it is, I'm amazed on the inside. I feel like I've arrived.

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