In my other life...

     I am, or have been, (in no particular order) an activist, labor educator, organizer, skilled technician, futurist, negotiator, trouble shooter, girl scout, delegate, gizmo geek, trade unionist, cautious early adopter of technology, person of faith, heretic, coalition builder, trouble maker, college graduate, fan of free public libraries, in a long term committed relationship, community volunteer, lover of letter writing, an Auntie several times over, 8th grade girl's basketball Santa Clara County champion (I think we figured out before everyone else how to effectively play with only 5 players all over the court from 6 restricted the year before), native Californian, voter, dyslexic, godmother, Laney alumni, lobbyist, and life long student of learning.  Well, that isn't a complete list, but it will do for now.

     One of my passions is working with others to bridge the gap between the haves and those who have not of technological divide.  I don't think you have to have the absolute latest version of a gizmo.  Just start somewhere and learn to use it well.

     My first computer set-up was a refurbished Commodore64, an old black & white TV for a monitor and a daisywheel printer.  This arrangement had no spell check, so the proofreading techniques one adapted to included printing out a hard copy on continuous paper, markup errors in pen, and go back to type in the corrections.  You see, I am of an age where the best present one could get when graduating from high school was a high quality portable typewriter. Computers were mainframes at big companies.  Although we did use computer punch cards to register for all our classes and paid $4 for the full term at a community college, but I digress. Yes, this was right after the end of the era when dinosaurs roamed the earth.  My point is that while that bulky Commodore64 set-up seems crazy to bother with by today's standards of slick, compact laptops, it was such an improvement over the era of retyping a paper EVERY time you made a revision.  Word processing on a computer was so liberating and opened the door to so many possibilities to those of use who don't type well.