{"id":2563,"date":"2008-12-28T14:35:34","date_gmt":"2008-12-28T19:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=2563"},"modified":"2008-12-28T14:35:51","modified_gmt":"2008-12-28T19:35:51","slug":"smile-after-smile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/smile-after-smile\/","title":{"rendered":"Smile After Smile"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JES,They say old habits die hard, and I guess it’s true.<\/p>\n

But traditions are a sort of shared old habit, and traditions don’t die hard at all — although they don’t flat-out die, either. Traditions evolve. People come and go. What’s possible replaces what you could never do, and what you used to do all the time gets a lot harder as the muscle aches and stray indecisions of age set in.<\/p>\n

So all right, I know: the “Christmas traditions” I remember from my four decades in New Jersey are probably long gone.<\/p>\n

(Early in the week, I asked my mother what she’d be making for Christmas dinner — feeling all nostalgic, y’know, for turkey and pies and fruit cake and all that, to say nothing of the many-voiced family sit-down conversation around the table. “Meatball sandwiches,” she said. “What?!?<\/em>” “Well,” she explained, “it was just getting too complicated trying to get everybody here at the same time, for the same length of time. This way they can drop in whenever they want and stay as long as they want.”)<\/p>\n

But the one tradition that lives on — one that I haven’t been able to take part in, not for many years — is just seeing<\/em> everyone at Christmas.<\/p>\n

This year, a few weeks ago, I had one of those Duh<\/em>, slap-yourself-in-the-forehead moments.<\/p>\n

Webcams<\/em>, I thought. Video chats…<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, this was aided by Google’s recent introduction to Gmail of a video chat feature. All three of my siblings, as well as I myself, have Gmail accounts.<\/p>\n

To make a long story short, I picked up a well-reviewed webcam<\/a> and ran a few tests with The Brother. And yesterday, for the first time ever<\/em>, I was “there” at his place for his annual family holiday gathering — together with The Sisters, The Mother and Stepdad, The Niece and Nephews, and many of the assorted hangers-on we’ve managed to accumulate over the years.<\/p>\n

The Brother and I being the eternally mischievous boys we are, we of course had to initiate this as a prank.<\/p>\n

We told Mom that I’d made a video and uploaded it to the Web. At a prearranged time, The Brother took her into the back room to a household computer to play it for her. In the video, I explained that I’d made it on Christmas Day so that they all could see me even if I couldn’t see them.<\/p>\n

I made small talk for a moment or two, but then there was a problem with the camera. The image froze, went all scratchy and then had a sort of tiled look (as at the top of this post). Finally I figured out what was wrong and fixed the problem, and the rest of the video went smoothly.<\/p>\n

Especially the part when I started to compliment my mother on her clothes, and her hairdo, and her earrings.<\/p>\n

Because, of course, it wasn’t a pre-recorded video at all. It was live. Heh.<\/p>\n

It ended up being probably a 90-minute conversation, with family member after family member getting into the chair up in NJ. Not quite<\/em> the same as being there, but a heck of a lot better than not seeing them at all.<\/p>\n

P.S. Only downside, for someone who for two years has been trying hard to break the Windows habit: see the image below. Grrrrrr<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Grrrrrr.\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They say old habits die hard, and I guess it’s true. But traditions are a sort of shared old habit, and traditions don’t die hard at all — although they don’t flat-out die, either. Traditions evolve. People come and go. What’s possible replaces what you could never do, and what you used to do all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,15,17,22,23,19],"tags":[27,839,854,855,856,857],"class_list":{"0":"post-2563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-01_intheblood","7":"category-family","8":"category-04_technology","9":"category-windows","10":"category-linux","11":"category-internet","12":"tag-christmas","13":"tag-tradition","14":"tag-the-brother","15":"tag-webcams","16":"tag-video-chat","17":"tag-gmail","18":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-Fl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2563"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2578,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563\/revisions\/2578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}