One of the things--and there seem to always be more--that make my children's lives different than mine is their perception of computers and the internet.  This may be a minor difference in the eyes of some; I'm not saying it's an important thing, but it's there, nevertheless.  To my kids, the internet is an established fact.  They were both born several years after I first began using it.  To them, there is an internet, and there always has been.  I suppose it could be considered the same phenomenon with myself, my own parents, and television.

I first began logging on to local area BBS's in the early 90's, and was using the internet regularly, although with much more restricted access than now due to cost of service and long-distance phone bills, in 1994.  (The service was called Novalink, and I got 5 hours per month for $9.95).  A metro phone line in to San Antonio and the beginning of unlimited access services in the mid 90's marked the real beginning of my internet access.  Back then I used Mosaic, after installing Win32S so it would run on Windows 3.1.

In the early days I "surfed the web," what little there was of it, with a 2400 baud modem.  I remember waiting and waiting to download all the thumbnails of Rush album covers for their current complete discography at that time.  Heh.  I once even surfed in DOS.  It was a piece of software called Arachnoid, I think.  It worked great, but it only worked on systems native to DOS.  I later tried it, just for kicks, in a fake DOS window under Win98, but it didn't work there.

Anyway, tonight I was going through some old directories that I have transferred from computer to computer since the old days of my first hard drive and looking at some pictures I had collected.  I found a bunch of odd bogus award buttons that I thought were humorous enough to save.  I don't remember where these came from.  The creator didn't put his website or email on the graphics and I just don't remember.

Does anyone remember what specifically was going on 10 years ago that would have had internet users concerned that their freedom of speech on the internet would be limited?  I don't remember what it was exactly, but I found some of these:

A take-off on an old Netscape button.


A couple of others.
  

And my favorite, due to its sarcastic nature.



The rest are just silly icons, like this one from the early "you aren't using the right version of html" wars.



This one I think would still be appropriate for my current blog.




One that no longer seems quite so funny.



And some other miscellaneous ones.

     

And one that I created myself, which is easy to tell because it's so primitive.



But my favorite of them all is the "William S. Burroughs would approve if he saw it" award.

Since it's a beautifully sunny yet cool day today, and it will undoubtedly start getting hot pretty soon, I'm going to get one last barbecue in today before summer comes down on us like a molten anvil.

Although I have an enormous amount of wood (oak and hickory) on my property, I don't use it.  Making good barbecue wood is just too much work.  The best wood must be debarked, and then it has to be checked to make sure it doesn't have any weird molds or fungi in it.  I'd rather just buy it.  Also I prefer the flavor of mesquite to oak.

I buy big hunks and usually mix it about 2/3 mesquite to 1/3 hickory.  However, today they had some pecan wood at the H.E.B.  I've heard good things about it, but have never tried it, so today I'm replacing the hickory with pecan (well, I might have some hickory left from last time, so who knows).  I'm also doing a brisket today, which is unusual.  I usually prefer to smoke a large shoulder roast, but I haven't done brisket in a long time, so I thought I'd do that instead.

So, I'm probably going to be a full day behind my usual weekend catchup of reading other blogs. Today I'm going to be a barbecuing baby-sitter instead of a blogging baby-sitter.

I was going to try a take a few more gun pictures today, but the light is so bright and glaring outside I don't know it they'd work out well.  Maybe if I hang a sheet in front of the door or something to create more diffused light.  Anyway, I'm working on a three-part (at least) set of pictures called "A Collection of Shiny Objects."

In this movie review, V for Vendetta is ultimately a failure because:

Ultimately, “V for Vendetta” is a confounding exercise that has no trouble getting people to think, but it’s far less successful at getting them to feel.

And there you have it, folks.  It's more important that you feel something than that you actually go to the effort to think.