what made you happy today?

[SubLunar]

making music makes me happy.

I've been kicking around song ideas since high school, some of which I'm only just now getting around to elaborate upon/complete. It's really cool making progress on a vague/abstract musical idea that has been floating around in your subconsciousness for the better part of 2 decades. Actually laying tracks down and making it come to life and hearing it outside of your head for the first time is kind of like magical and shit. Fuck yeah. I don't play video games/watch tv or movies or get on social media very often. I also don't have a smart phone and pay the lowest amount possible for everything. This has allowed me extra time and money for musical endeavors that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

And today is day three of an extended "hobby day" that I've been enforcing on the children. I've arranged a schedule such that two days of the week, they have to read a book or draw or torture each other. I've been disabling the wireless at home and taking all their game stuff for the entire day. They hate it. But they'll probably thank me for it some day. A long, long time from now. MUAHAHAHA!!

[RedRook]

I also don't have a smart phone and pay the lowest amount possible for everything.

Finally, someone else that doesn't have a smart phone. Now if my wife could just agree its unneeded, we could save 100's a year. I agree with the hobby idea. I build AI's, tinker with small robots, polish gemstones, and I want my daughter to have some kind of quirky thing to do even though I expect it to be different than me.

She's really into being outdoors, running around, climbing on things, playing ball, etc.. Surprisingly, that seems to be unusual these days, and it shows in her friends. I swear all except her older friends are smaller than her and bring game devices to the playground. You can see it when they play, my daughter can outrun the lot of them, and I don't think she's that exceptional. My guess is that most of her friends are just too cramped up inside, and its making a difference. We tried to take one of her friends who is a boy that is 3 years older than her out fishing, and the kid sat down and pulled out a game device from his pocket about 20 feet out of the parking lot, because he was tired. My daughter will hike about 3 miles with a light backpack she packed herself withouth complaining and requests to do it the next week. What is happening to kids these days?

[SubLunar]

What is happening to kids these days?

It's not just kids. I grew up in the 90s and was among the last of the pre-cell phone/internet generation. I've retained my sense of adventure and fondness for being offline/dropping out for a while/finding yourself in crazy situations. A feeling that seems to be completely lost on most people now. Maybe I just had an exceptionally crazy handful of years from middle through high school.. But it seemed like most people I knew back then were down for whatever, anything to get outside and roam, do whatever. Now it seems like it's so hard to get anyone to do anything. And everything you do needs to be on social media.

I've stopped talking to friends who are video game junkies because everyone's a video game junkie these days. Why should I go sit on your couch to watch you play Gears of War when I could go to like anyone's house and do the same thing? After doing that over and over again, wasting many afternoons, I had enough. Call me when you actually want to do something. Yes, it could just be me and my shitty friends, maybe I just have a limited pool of lame friends to socialize with.

As for me, I'll play or watch TV occasionally but it's been at least a week since I watched TV and probably about a month since I played a video game. Haven't been on facebook for days either, been too busy with hobbies and life in general. Gimme a dirtbike, some booze and a place to ride and you won't see me the rest of the day...unless you come along. But no-one ever does.

Without a screen to blankly stare at and provide instruction, people seem lost. Kids and a lot of adults. Luckily, I'm awesome and so are my exploring comrades. Normal people just suck. This is why I'm forcing hobby days on the chillens. Because I'll be damned if they turn out like the hordes of mindless/hobbyless zombie robots that society wants them to be.

[RedRook]

It's not just kids. I grew up in the 90s and was among the last of the pre-cell phone/internet generation. I've retained my sense of adventure and fondness for being offline/dropping out for a while/finding yourself in crazy situations. A feeling that seems to be completely lost on most people now.

I think we might be the same generation. I remember the days when kids roved around in packs looking for trouble to get into. You still see that a little at the parks, but it seems the exceptions these days. It isn't common enough my neighbors show up at the park except on rare occasions, and then their kids seem like they just can't wait to get home.

I'm a bit of an oddball though, because I grew up around programmable machines and computers. They've been a part of my life since my first memories, and I had access to the internet before AOL was even a thing. I think that was unusual at the time, because most kids in my generation I think spent about only half of their childhood without computers and game consoles. In my life though, computers were used by people to do things, they didn't have any games on them. It wasn't until the game consoles came out that I even saw them that way. I have a segregated life though. If I'm in a tech mode, I'm making something or breaking something. If I'm not in a tech mood, you don't know where I am unless you are with me, and I'm doing something that involves zero electricity.

[SubLunar]

Class of 2000 here. I'm weird like that too. I've been fucking around with computers on and off most of my life as well. But since I didn't have any money they were usually obsolete/throwaways by the time I got em. I still have a laptop that was still running WIN95 before the stupid CMOS battery died and killed the whole thing. In this case, it was a specialty sort of battery that was soldered on. I took it apart and found that to be the case and never got any further with it, poor old chap is still sitting in a fishing tackle box in a million pieces I'll never be able to remember how to put back together. But damn it, the thing still worked fine until the battery died.

I never owned a video game console until high school when I bought a super nintendo. Thing about video games to me is yeah they're cool (at first) and fun but 2 years later they're dated and lame. So why chase this empty entertainment that so quickly loses its appeal? Next game comes out, have to have it, then the next one makes the old one look dumb. It's an endless cycle. My guitar is still as awesome as the day I bought it and I may suck at it but damnit, I'm making my own noise. I don't care how nerdy or uncool a hobby is, if it's something you are doing in real life, something with substance, it's always more worthwhile than games/tv/movies. That's what I want the chillens to learn from these hobby days.

And I do like shiny new technology but smartphones don't do it for me. If I could afford to throw money away then maybe I'd get one but they really still kinda suck. Tablets/chromebooks/etc that shit is all useless to me. I like stuff that enables productivity and creativity. I am currently lusting after a Mackie Onyx Blackbird and a copy of Propellerhead's Reason 8. That's some technology I'd like to get my hands on..

[RedRook]

Yeah, we're about the same generation. My sister and I are +-3 years from your class. Her husband is awesome from the same generation. The guy's a mechanical engineer that builds the coolest stuff. Yeah, I totally agree, doing stuff in the real world is the best way to live. It makes me confident though that my kids are going to be at least above average, if nothing else, because I look at the lowering average bar all around me. If you are capable of making anything, anything at all, from music to art to writing to machines, and you have even a mild amount of athleticism, it seems like you have advantages our current culture doesn't cultivate as much anymore.

[RedRook]

I just got keys to my 30th something new address. I lost track a while back. This time I have room for a new tree. I can't decide what type of tree I'm going to plant.

[crazydrummerdude]

I just got keys to my 30th something new address.

Either my next move, or the move after, I plan on buying and not moving for a long while.

I've moved like 9 times in the past 7 years. It gets real old.

[BROUSER]

I just got keys to my 30th something new address. I lost track a while back. This time I have room for a new tree. I can't decide what type of tree I'm going to plant.

Ginkgo or golden raintree.

[RedRook]

Great, I had it down to a short list.

Hazelnut
Apple
Catalpa
Sassafras
Magnolia

Now I have two more. Kid wants Apple. Wife leaning toward Magnolia. Too many choices.

[BROUSER]

Hazelnut is more a bush than a tree. Apple is an iffy proposition, and bees. Catalpa is a junk tree. Pretty, but soft wood. Fall apart. Sassafras I like. Magnolia: leaves are a huge pain in the ass.

[RedRook]

The benefit to Hazel Nuts is that I can fit two in the yard, which is what you need for nuts right?

You seem to know about these things. So is there a nut or fruit tree that also provides shade, likely to have a mate around here, and won't split in two on the first ice? How far away can the mating tree be to still get anything? Otherwise I might as well just go with the Magnolia to make my wife happy. I'm just now realizing a Catalpa probably dumps far more stuff onto the ground than almost any other tree.

[BROUSER]

I've never really considered putting a fruit tree in the yard. I do like the idea of hazelnut. You might consider peach or apple. Either one. Of course, all the bees are dying, so it doesn't matter anyway: in China, they are doing all the pollinating by hand. https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/s ... te-by-hand

[RedRook]

Well, I saw bees in my front yard on the dandelions, so apparently I live in a miracle zone. They have this twisty red leafed Hazelnut called Red Dragon that gets about 6-8 feet tall. I'm thinking about putting one of those with a some kind of Yamhill Hazelnut that grows up 10 12 feet right behind it in front of the kid's rooms, because the sun shines directly in their bedroom in the morning, and they've started waking at the crack of dawn, figuratively.

[paul06660]

Was actually last Tuesday, but I finally got to conquer my fear of heights by climbing that flimsy-ass Razorback Fire Lookout Tower in Eureka Springs.