This has been a very hectic week for Kay, Gavin and me. Ike came through here. Yep, what was Hurricane Ike ripped through here on Sunday evening. It took out our electricity until this evening as it destroyed trees and who knows what all. We lost every bit of the food in our refrigerators. My office still has no electricity. No phone. No Internet. No Email. It could not have come at a worse time with our national conference this week. But we all survived. We did not lose our roof or have sea water on the second floor of the house like the folks in Texas. At least there was food in the fridge and more at the store one half mile away.
As we lived without electricity, I was reminded of just how much we get hooked on these modern marvels. I was one of the very early Internet surfers while living in TN. I remember in the late 1980s (or was it early 1990s) getting online via Prodigy dial up at a speed about one quarter as fast as 14.4. I watched the screen paint line by line when I would connect. I was a part of an early Duke Basketball Bulletin Board that ultimately morphed into the Duke Basketball Report, the number one college fan site of any sport in the nation. I remember purchasing a PC that had a 40 MB hard drive and thinking, "I will never need more than this." It had a menu program that had Windows 3.1 as one of its options. I used it for a game or two. That was about all. I did all of my work with DOS commands. YIKES! (What does DOS stand for anyway?) Was I ever a prophet! That machine cost more than the laptop I am now using that has 3 GB of memory! A good friend of mine then, Ken Hill helped me immensely. Wow, Ken. Look at me now!
Anyway, life was so different when it was dark and there was no electricity. The other night as I tried to read by candle light . . . then flash light . . . then cell phone light, I thought, "Man, Abe Lincoln was tough!" I then said, "Wow, God. Thanks for the conveniences (and that is what they are) that make my life, easy and enjoyable."
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