In my recent change of cell phones it became a major issue to port over or transition contacts from the IOS model to the Android. My frozen Mac added to this difficulty, along with my PC’s inability to install iTunes in such a manner as to allow me to access the iTunes store, which apparently is a necessity if I want to enable a sync without it being a “return to default settings and lose all your data.” Which operating system do I hate more? These days it is a tie. But I digress.

The end result is that I have had to slowly over time review my thousands of contacts by hand, one by one, and decide which to recode into the Android contacts method. The good news is that I have been able to delete the names, addresses, email and phone numbers of people either I don’t recall, or with whom I had one or two email exchanges many years ago, or people I choose now to drop from the list. I have yet to come upon any who have since passed. I did notate one person’s address by using the “Organization” field to enter “Friend of BTCG” – that being our dear, departed friend “Bob The Computer Guy” whose death 5 years ago still shocks and rattles Mrs. Yankfan and me. Bob’s email and contact information remains on my phones and in my email client.

There are others, too, who remain in there, long gone, but not out of mind. It seems a small honor, a way of keeping their memories with me, to let them persist in my Contacts list. The spirit lingers, and when I happen upon those names when scrolling or seeking some other, it usually sparks a memory, and that makes me feel as though they are yet, in some sense, still with me.

I’ve never had much luck with feed reading. I have no discipline, so my feeds are torrential in their volume. Someone like Jonathon who shares infrequently in the public nets would get buried in there.

Yes, archiving all that past brilliance would be a depressing “business” indeed.

“Business” rules, as we have discovered once again. So, many talented amateurs who don’t care so much about business have returned to their previous lives, one presumes.