Pictures of Dad on Vacation

June has been insanely busy for me. The month started out with my youngest son graduating from high school. I gave him a choice to go anywhere in the United States to celebrate and he opted to head to Yellowstone National Park. He likes the outdoors and would rather spend time hiking around in nature as opposed to waiting in line at an overcrowded amusement park. So as soon as graduation was over, we jumped in the car and made the 5 hour drive to our nation's first national park.

If you have not been to Yellowstone National Park, it is huge. Plan on spending some time in your car as you visit the various places in the park. We entered from West Yellowstone and had to get to Grant's Village on the southeast corner of the park. We tried to take the lower loop going counter-clockwise but got stuck in an insane wildlife traffic-jam. There was a bison walking in the road and nobody could go around it. After going a quarter of a mile in a half-hour, we turned around and headed in a clockwise direction around the lower loop. Fortunately we made our 6pm dinner reservations in Grant's Village. I knew I was in trouble when my son pulled out his camera to take a picture of me at the same time I pulled out my Android phone to check e-mail.

We did a lot of hiking and seeing wonderful sites over the next 3 days and my son always had his camera ready. Did he ever bother to take pictures of the beautiful scenery around us? Nope, he waited until I had a quiet and uneventful moment to check e-mail. We came back from vacation and the only pictures my son took were of me on my phone. Fortunately my wife had her camera on the trip and she actually paid attention to the scenery and wildlife.

I love my son and he makes me laugh as he managed to get some pretty funny pictures. He also reminded me that sometimes it is just fine to let go of the office and relax on a vacation.

Direct Mail vs. SPAM E-mail

One of the first things I do in the morning is to check my e-mail. I have two primary e-mail accounts with an additional three e-mail accounts that get forwarded to my primary personal e-mail. That means I have a total of five e-mail accounts for just one person. I have a pretty good SPAM filter that eliminates a lot of junk e-mail but I still have to go through about 25 to 30 junk e-mails every morning. I never even read them. I look at who sent them and maybe the title or subject before clicking the delete button. When I do bother to look at what is in my SPAM folder, there are generally 200 to 300 daily messages that I don't ever even see.

As this week is my son's high school graduation, I am working from home for a couple of days. I just got the mail from the mailbox and noticed there was some junk mail there as well. Unlike my e-mail, I at least looked at the pictures and glanced over the postcards and letters. I also went through every page of a department store catalog advertising Father's Day gifts.

I'm sure that I am not unique. There is an added value to something tangible even if it is a printed piece of paper or postcard. Now did I purchase anything based off SPAM e-mail or junk mail from my physical mailbox? No, but at least with physical mail, I got some piece of the message that was sent.

Technology is like a pendulum in that one year everyone is looking at technology as a huge benefit. Then the pendulum swings and we realize that the original technology wasn't as huge a benefit as we all thought it would be and either move to a new technology or go back to how we were doing things before. Judging from my physical mailbox today, direct mail is making a comeback.