Tribute to my Dad

Tis my Dad's birthday on the 7th of Feb, he died back in 2000 yesterday, the 5th, he didn't want a bloody photo licence, and would have had to get one on that birthday, not that that had anything to do with his death, I spoke to him the night before on the phone, and he was his old usual self, had a few to many of his own brewed whiskey, but still talking without slurring his words. I had met my yank online by the 1st anniversary of his death, and have never taken the time to really think about him too much, until this year. 
I'm determined to remember the good things about him this year, and this particular part is about how his death, got me here, writing this post on facebook notes. A note right here. I have just noticed this part of facebook doesn't have a spellcheck, so whats left of my dyslexia with writing will show itself.   
The old Bugger, my Dad, Ken Bishop

Dad never wanted a funeral, but I had to go to his house when he died, to clean up, on his table were pamphlets for computers, I so wished he had have brought one, he would have loved it. My dad worked for years as a relief milker for a place called Marvin farms, so he would load his clothes, work boots into the back of his ute, and head to some farm around the top dairy half on New Zealand, and just take over milking and running the farm, often of some farmer who had had a heart attack, or got sick or once died suddenly, went on holiday whatever reason, and stayed there anything from a few days to a few months until the he wasn't needed anymore. 

The smallest herd he milked in that job was 89, the largest herd was about 800 in a rotary shed. But where ever he landed to work, he often lived in the farm owners house. And once the working day was over, he'd often search their bookcase, find a set of Encyclopedias, pick one volume, and start reading... he just adsorbed information like a sponge. 

So if Dad did get a computer, he would never had time to die, he would be bugging me on skype, telling me about this and that he had learnt, he would probably be an editor on Wikipedia, fixing up other peoples mistakes, and sharing his vast knowledge, he would have hated facebook, bloody trashy, mind numbing crap, he would have thought when he first started looking at facebook, but I would have shown him, that facebook can be used in so many ways... he still would have stopped my posts where I share other people posts, the jokes etc, and only let the posts I write onto his wall... or more likely I would use facebook different if he had of brought a computer and still been alive.

First digital photo taken of me, on a very cheap kids digi camera 
The thing is, he didn't buy a computer, but when he died, I got a small inheritance only $450, with which, I brought a computer, my first internet ready second hand computer. I had been interested in computers, but could never justify buying one, but I brought that first one as a tribute to Dad. Dad also loved to write, but could never quite get together a book, but he did hand write some stories, I typed them up eventually, I put on a permanent blog here. When I did that, I didn't remember exactly when he died, I always thought thought it was before 2000, but apart from that, they are all his http://kennethgeorgebishopstories.blogspot.co.nz/

Anyway that first computer, windows 98, had 4 gigs of harddrive, and each month, it would crash, and I would have to get it reformatted, used to cost $20... I used to say that computer was premenstrual, and ended up making an auto payment to the guy that reformatted it of $5 a week, it was so regular crashing. I was on a very slow dailup internet connection as well. 
So every month I would start with a fresh computer, and before it crashed I would have filled that harddrive with pictures, I quickly joined a yahoo group, that shared pictures of interesting stuff found around the web, these pictures where big ones, I loved wizards, dragons and those sort of fantasy pictures then, I just searched google images for one particular image, the first one I found and LOVED  wizard telescope 

The first photo I ever found online, loved it.


That first year, I met my yank Kym online, and she brought me a 2 mexapixel camera, I brought myself a 40 gig hard-drive, for Valentines Day and

so began my affair with the yank, and taking photos of many parts of the South Island of New Zealand, I have about 3-400 photos on facebook, but lost the rest when hardrives failed, I had about 80,000 good photos once, almost a terabyte hardrive, full of photos. 

The only lesson I have had in computers, was how to turn it on, and open internet explorer in those days, and do a yahoo search. 
The rest I have learnt myself, I have an uncanny ability to learn computer programs, and for many years, I would download prgrams someone had that they couldn't use, and within a few hours or days, sometimes a week,
 I would have learned how to use the program, enough for whatever the persons needs were, and then teach them, I'd often delete the program afterwards, it wouldn't interest me, I would astound people at how quickly, a women how left school thinking she was a dummy at 15, could learn things on a computer. 

I have learnt to use photoshop very well, microsoft office especially word to a darn high level, excel and all those other office programs, they would be the only ones I would bother with now, I don't have any of those programs now, hardrive failed and i lost everything about a year ago now, 2 terabytes of stuff gone... and I still don't backup anything. Again, that's another story. 

So, in a way, my dad lives through me, and some of what would have been if he lived, but maybe not, because if I couldn't get a computer, to learn how to use. to teach Dad how to find info online, in the early days of search engines, he wouldn't have been very impressed. So who know what may have been. Or what still could be for that matter.