Happy Birthday Dad

It's not quite midnight so I can still say that today would have been my Dad's birthday.

He died a little over four years ago from cancer.

You think in four years the loss would get easier.  But a day doesn't go by that I don't think of him in some way.  To be honest it didn't seem like four years had already gone by.  The amount of time was reinforced recently to me.  I was at Best Buy picking something up that I had ordered online.  They asked for my drivers license for identification purposes.  When the clerk handed it back to me I gave a glance at the expiration date, wondering when it was coming due.  In Louisiana a drivers license is good for four years and expires on your birthday.  This was back in July, a few weeks after my birthday.  When I looked I saw that my license had expried that year.

The last time I had renewed it was four years ago, just weeks before my Dad died.  I had to take a trip for work to Texas and my license was expiring and had to get it renewed before I flew.  The week I came back from Texas was the week my Mom called to tell me to get up there, my Dad was not doing good.

So it had been four years.

Four years.  I thought at first that couldn't be right.  He hasn't been dead that long, it wasn't that long ago.  Was it?  But I guess it was.  Time continues to pass and his death recedes into the past, if not in my memories.

One last thought of him I had recently.  Last month I had to drive to Alabama for a meeting for work.  Coming back I passed by the turn off from the highway that would have brought me to their old house when they lived in Mississippi before Katrina.  When I lived in Florida and came back to visit that was where I turned to go to their house.  A brief thought went through my mind of turning off and stopping by to say hi on my way home.  My Dad would have appreciated the unannounced visit and insisted I get something to eat and sit and rest before I continued on my way home.

Damn.

I still miss him.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs died today.  Few people in the last quarter century left such a mark.  Like Apple or not, the product that came from that company changed the world.  ITunes changed the way music is sold.  The Iphone changed the way we use our phones.  And who knows what the IPad will change.

I don't have an IPhone.  If Sprint had been an original carrier of the phone I probably would have made the plunge, but I've always liked Sprint and the people I knew that had AT&T weren't too happy with their services so I stayed where I was.  A brief side trip to the Pre WedOS, but it's been Android and Google as the phones for me.  Even now with the IPhone coming to Sprint I don't think I'll change.  I have a Nexus S and if anything I'll probably update to the Nexus Prime.  

But I do have an Ipod and an Ipad.  Both are devices that I love.  The Ipod for my money is one of the greatest inventions ever, I have over 40,000 songs downloaded on it and I can carry my music anywhere I go.  The Ipad is something I'm learning to use more and more.  I'll go a few months and use it almost everyday and than put it down and not pick it up for another few months.  

Still whatever you think of Apple you have to admit that Steve Jobs left an impression.

Bert Jansch Dies

With the news of Steve Jobs' death his passing will go mostly unnoticed but Bert Jansch died today also.  According to Wikipedia Mr. Jansch was:

Jansch was a leading figure in the British folk music revival of the 1960s, touring folk clubs and recording several solo albums, as well as collaborating with other musicians such as John Renbourn and Anne Briggs. In 1968, he joined the band Pentangle, touring and recording with them until their break-up in 1972. He then took a few years' break from music, returning in the late 1970s to work on a series of projects with other musicians. He joined a reformed Pentangle in the early 1980s and remained with them as they evolved through various changes of personnel until 1995.

Bravo!