First Blog Entry – Live Spaces
Thoughts of my very humble beginnings in the world of computers now give me a bit of a giggle when I realize how far we’ve come in just the past thirty years. The first time I ever laid eyes on a real computer was in 1973, as a young soldier in training in Massachusetts. The U.S. Army had a monstrous thing as big as a room which they were using for training purposes and all the lights and wires were pretty impressive to someone who had hardly been out of his backyard.
When I arrived at my job in West Germany in 1975, the equipment was even more impressive, especially as it sat side-by-side with the gradually outmoded teletype-style stuff still being used.
Once I became a civilian again, and started raising my family, I bought my first personal computer–a Commodore 64. Once I began using it, there was no turning back. I was hooked. I belonged to several local "bulletin boards" and exchanged files over a phone line with friends. It was only just the beginning.
When the WebTV phenomenon hit the market, I took a chance and was amazed at what was possible on the world of the internet. I could finally send "electronic mail" and visit far away places right there on the TV.
As the years passed, and the technology accelerated, (and the prices came down enough) I eventually was able to acquire my first HP personal computer, an early Pavilion model, and before long, I had become a bit of a geek, although not as knowledgeable as many of the other geeks I knew. That took more time.
After several years, I began to accumulate computers, and started taking the older ones apart to see what made them tick. I talked with other geeks and did online research, and started to buy components and install them myself. When Windows XP appeared, I bought an upgrade disk, and learned more about computers than I ever imagined I would.
Before long, people who knew me were asking ME about computers, and I established my online presence at several websites, including ThirdAge.com, and my own webpage on MySpace.com.
Recently, I signed up for the Microsoft Live Beta program and was impressed with what I could do for free. This whole program being sponsored by Microsoft is capitalizing on everything that is worthwhile on the internet, and expanding the global internet community in innovative ways.
If I can manage to spend enough time here, it may just be one of the most interesting of any of the different attempts at sites that I’ve constructed. We’ll see. JJH – (8-25-06)
John's Consciousness 
Hi Mi name s Eduardo Espejo (Mirror) I’m from Venezuela, I saw your space and I think that it’s great. My English is very bad but I wanna try to write any thing here. Well you have a very interesting live, I could see that you have a great family, my family is nice too. I would like visit your country, because I want to get post degree. I’m studying in college now, in 2 years I’m gonna be an accountant. Well I take leave, hoping that also you happen through my space and you leave commentary…Take care.
I think that was a tremendous beginning.
Hello, John ~ After a hiatus in our promising and, to me, unexpectedly portentous encounter — my first, as a new arrival to WordPress and its prodigious pages — I am happy to be able to return now, pick up the skein again right where we left it, and this time unravel it back to its sources. Which brings me here, to the very start of your blog. In letting the strand fully unravel, I see its traces its way over five-and-a-half years. That’s a lot of reading to do. And though it will undoubtedly be some time for me to make my way to the distant reaches you and the others have long since made your way to in sharing your undoubtedly artful articulations, I have, at least, begun to move toward that far off place where you now find yourselves.
Looking forward to eventually joining in the company and companionship of this cluster’s conversations, I am, in perseverance and growing proximity, your faithful fellow traveler coming from way behind . . .
Gene
Gene,
Thanks for being so courageous in reviewing the writing from the beginning of my blog, and while I admire your tenacity, from my point of view, your own accomplishments exceed those represented by the labyrinthine path on my blog. We both have been persistent in our determined pursuit of knowledge, and have attained our individual perspectives along the way. but it feels more like we may have a great deal in common already, and your thoughts on the subjects discussed here already have sufficient authority and potency to share them.
There is a path to be discerned here, and it clearly isn’t exactly the same as any other, but we are more like neighbors in this neighborhood than passing ships in the night.
Looking forward to the conversation ahead…….John H.
John ~
I might have known you’d be so gracious and accommodating! Actually, I take it to be an expression of your character — a most loaded word, and the only one we have today that most closely approximates everything our forebears once meant by ‘soul’. And that, of course, is what we two, in our somewhat differing yet remarkably similar ways, have both given ourselves to the non-stop, full-time, ongoing investigation of since the middle of the 1970s. Clearly, you and I eat, sleep, think, feel, dream, reflect on, and most assuredly ACT on this overarching pursuit of ours, as much as any charge ever given a knight or calling that has ever grasped a saint, stirred a scientist, inspired an artist, empowered a political reformer, molded a metaphysician, or transformed at the core the most humble and genuine human being, Plainly, it and whatever it leads to, is ours to reckon with, in our DNA, and makes us what we end up being.
So, how about this: instead of a Kierkegaardian Either/Or, let’s aim for the stars at achieving a Both/And? I’ll proceed from here to cover the entire path you’ve traversed, with its many twists and turns (leaving any comments in postings as I make my way forward), while at the same time continue with the full-scale launching of my own online sites and blogs into as much of a unified whole as I am capable of forming both into. As I see it, that’s really what we’re already doing anyway.
Let what’s been begun between us continue . . . and let the grand venture unfold, and with it, our lives — and that of any others who may choose to join in this — as well.
Galloping on and intermingling our encounters amidst our missives,
Gene