I’m chatting with a naked senior citizen shortly after 7am.
No, really. I’m in the locker room at the gym (a bit of masochism that I have been avoiding for years due to sheer laziness) and I’ve just gotten out of the shower. As usual (can you consider a pattern that’s precisely 11 days old a "usual" thing?) I got there when they opened at 6, did my 50 minutes on a painfully inclined treadmill, then stumbled toward the showers. One thing I’ve discovered in the past couple weeks is that the people most comfortable with their bodies are old men. And you know, that’s a good thing. Most of us could learn a lesson from these guys.
That said, I wouldn’t mind if this particular gentleman didn’t make a habit of hovering about a foot from me when there’s MORE than enough space to have a bit of privacy, but that’s a story for another day.
We cross paths most mornings – he comes in about 20 minutes after me to do his maintenance workout while I endeavor to change my shape to something less round. We wrap up within 5 minutes of one another, both of us focused on our respective morning routines. Our conversations to this point have been limited to talking idly about the weather or one of the local baseball teams, then wishing each other a good day.
Today, I’m combing my hair when he comes out of the shower and starts talking about his neighbor. Apparently the guy in question is a real grump, always in a lousy mood no matter what happens. Old Man trims the guy’s yard in the summer and clears snow from his sidewalk in the winter, and the neighbor even complains about THAT. He goes out of his way to find things to complain about, bitches about the volume of televisions across the street that noone else can seem to hear, threatens to call the cops at a moment’s notice.
"Geez," I say, a little distractedly, "what a jackass."
There’s a moment’s pause, and I glance over at Old Man. He’s looking at me quizzically and perhaps a little sadly. "No," he says slowly, "he’s just lonely. His wife died a year or so back, and he’s not the sort to get past it."
I blink for a moment, no intelligent words coming to mind. "Yeah," I say quietly.
I’m thinking suddenly about my grandfather. My mom’s mother died of cancer when I was about 10, and was followed by my grandfather almost exactly a year later. He, too, wasn’t the sort to get past it. I suspect the obituary when grandma died said that she was survived by her husband, Dan, but she wasn’t. He existed for another year, but he didn’t survive.
My eyes sting for a moment, and I clear my throat. "Yeah," I repeat, and both of us stand there in silence for a few seconds.
The door opens, another old guy in far better shape than I walking in after his morning constitutional around the track above the basketball courts. Old Man smiles and says, "Have a good day, son," and walks out ahead of me.
"You too, sir," I call out, then return my attention to buttoning my shirt.
"You too."
It doesn”t get any simpler than this. The Linutop is a small form factor PC that comes pre-installed with Linux, and, well, that’’s about it. The PC has no hard drive, video card, or other components as it’’s meant specifically for Web surfing only and comes with just enough ports/connections for all the essential peripherals. A number of other pre-installed apps (Firefox being one of them) are also included. Cost and availability are still unknown, but if you”re looking for a cheap, bare bones PC, I can”t picture anyone topping this. – Louis Ramirez
I love lots of heavy Ajax stuff as much as the next guy, but this is crazy. It’s essentially a web-based OS with lots of little sub-prgrams and all kinds of UI cred. It’s such a good idea you can almost smell Google’s heady musk wafting under the door. Just signed up for a full account—password didn’t come yet—but the demo is very compelling. It was created by some nerds at MIT, Stanford, and CalTech so you just know it’s going to have 
