Man, we’ve covered a lot of ground this week

Man, we’ve covered a lot of ground this week. We’ve posted more Linux tweaks and core functions than any other Penguin newsletter on the ‘Net. We’ve looked at five great sites, found five cool programs, and listened to the voice of the real backbone of Penguin Shell - you, the readers. Along the way, we’ve also started to uncover a real sleeper of a Linux distribution in Libranet. I’ve seen nothing about this distro that I haven’t liked, though we’ve still got yet another week with it. And, as always, your email has been challenging, entertaining, lighthearted, complimentary, and focused. Thanks for keeping the week moving forward.

I’ve drifted a bit from talking about the personal side of this Penguin. Once I quit traveling for the telescope company and fell into the normal day-to-day, it really just seemed a bit less interesting. Well, not for me, but for you. However, another monumental event this week begs for description here. It’s a personal account of the power of this incredible medium at our fingertips. It’s probably not the first time you’ve heard a story like this (Oprah’s made bijillions on them), but it’s a personal touch from the Internet that’s just begging to be told.

Even in the 60s, I was a bit of an oddity. I came from a divorced family long before the divorce rate was half of all marriages. My parents split when I was just shy of three. With a lot of odd circumstances in between, I never really knew my biological father. With the advent and growth of the Internet, my curiosity got the best of me more than once. I’ve searched for him for several years now, excited at the prospect of finding him, frightened that I might not, and wary of any response I might get.

A week ago, I received an email from my mom. She’s an AOL user with maybe a grand total of a year on the ‘Net. Even with that inexperience, she’d found a rather crafty way to track down an email address for my father while undeniably confirming that the person who responded to her was, indeed, the person I’ve spent no small part of my life looking for. She passed the address along to me with the story of how she’d found it. He didn’t know he was responding to her. I was, to say the least, a bit humbled by her creativity. More importantly, I was moved that she’d been thinking of my interests so unselfishly and that the medium we all love had provided a clear and unobstructed bridge to a past I’ve wondered so much about.

Without hesitation, I dashed off an email to the address she’d provided. I filled it with details that would prove beyond doubt that I was, in fact, who I was claiming to be. Without the expectation of a response, I pressed the send button. I’d composed the note in relative calm, but the act of sending it and the uncertainty about what, if any reply I’d receive left me completely unnerved.

The next day, I got my response. The next, another followed by an e-card from Yahoo. The two-way flow of email increased and led, by the end of the week, to a live phone conversation. If it’s possible to summarize 41 years in an hour, we gave it a great shot, hanging up with so much said and still so much yet to be told. And we started making plans to meet face to face in the next few months.

There’s a lot of grime on the Internet. Sometimes I could swear that the cloudiness in my monitor is the direct result of the spam in my inbox. It’s easy to get disgusted, to write it off and turn away. I have to remember the value of a phrase that’s currently de rigeur. If we do, in fact, turn away from this incredible medium, ” … they win.” Here you’ll find knowledge, power, understanding, answers, and caring. Most of all, at the other end of every email transmission, you’ll find a human. It surprises me in the oddest ways, at the most unexpected moments.

Have a great weekend.

Tony
Steidler-Dennison