Author Archives: Steve Mays

50th high school class reunion

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In a few weeks I’ll make the five hour drive to the little town where I grew up for the 50 year reunion of the Kennett High School Class of 1966. I attended the 10 year reunion and vowed I’d never go to another. And didn’t. But there’s a strange (morbid?) appeal to the 50th. Like stumbling across the finish line of a marathon, throwing up and crapping your pants, yet elated to have completed the race.

I suppose this qualifies as a “right of passage,” and there won’t be that many more. Of the approximately 150 people in our class, 33 (22%) have been called to the office of The Great Principal’s Office in the Sky.

I’ve been fantasizing ways to make this event more fun: A prize for the most marriages/divorces? A little trophy for most number of times arrested/years served? Or a plaque for Best (and Worst) Cosmetic Surgery?

I’m not on Facebook so I have not kept up with most of my classmates. I don’t remember much about the 10 year reunion. I think that is the one where you show off your second/trophy wife and hand out business cards with titles of success. Those vanities will, I’m sure, have faded. Replaced by… what? The unspoken reality that this is the last time we’ll see most of these people. A bon voyage party for the Great Beyond.

William Gibson interview

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William Gibson fans will want to read this short interview by Business Insider. Mr. Gibson talks about ‘The Peripheral,’ the power of Twitter, and his next book set in today’s Silicon Valley.

“I am able to wake up, open Twitter, and sort of glance across the psychic state of the planet.”

What does a writer do when the world gets weirder faster than you can write about it?

“…he world is already that much weirder than it was when I started writing the book. You know the level of freakiness we have experienced in 2016 is so far off the charts, I am having to go back and crank up the weirdness in parts of the book I have already written.”

And it’s only August. Worried about the Middle East? Don’t be.

“And then I see NASA’s climate projection for the Middle East in 2050 or so, when they say none of it will be livable by human beings who don’t have space suits.”

1966: “rock ‘n’ roll” became “rock”

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“But 50 years down the line, a case can be made that 1966 may have been the single most creatively expansive year of all. That was the year that “rock ’n’ roll” morphed into “rock,” the year that the 45 rpm single yielded to the 33 1/3 rpm long-playing album as the dominant medium for the music and the year that social and political issues became a regular topic of exploration among musicians looking beyond the next hit and aiming to exert a real impact on the world around them.”

— 1966: Rock ‘n’ roll’s most revolutionary year (Los Angeles Times)

Tiny House Hell! This fall on HGTV.

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I have a hard time believing very many people continue living in these tiny houses for as long as a year (6 months?). The HGTV producers show the design, construction, a reveal and — maybe — a real short “now that they’ve been in for a month…” at the end of the segment.

Screen Shot 2016-08-13 at 5.17.50 PM

What I want to see is two people actually living in one of these shoe boxes. You want some reality TV? Set it up like this: We’ll build your tiny home and give it to you on the condition you let us put cameras in and record continuously for three months. If you live in the house for one year, it’s yours, free and clear. If you can’t make it for 12 months, you have to pay back the cost of the house (let’s $50,000). This would work even better if it was a live stream on the net. We could tune in 24/7, just like The Truman Show.

How I use Google+

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I’ve been making a lot of screencasts lately. (Sort of like the guy with a new table saw can’t stop cutting up 2x4s and sheets of plywood) I’ve done a bunch for a friend with a new Chromebook, but this one is just me cutting up 2x4s. It runs 15 minutes which is too long for a screencasts but once I realized nobody was going to watch this anyway I figured, why not? My imaginary audience is made up of people who insist Google+ is a dying ghost town.

CORRECTION: I was wrong in saying the “All” circle was posts from everyone using Google+. It is everyone in any of your circles.