Z is for Zooming

Who remembers when there was one phone in the house and it was attached to the wall? Does the word “Party line” mean anything to you?? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, roll your walker on over and come sit near me. Whoooaa…back it up there. You’re closer than 6 feet. 

Todays technology can be mind-boggling. Or maybe the older I get, it just seems that way. I stopped trying to keep up when J2 was having to explain the TV remote to me.

Skype, one of the first affordable video-conferencing services, was introduced in 2003. The initial release of FaceTime was in 2010. I used Skype a handful of times and only started using FaceTime last year. And that was by accident.

Zoom was founded in 2011; launched its software in 2013; and first became profitable in 2019. “Zoom’s software increased due to the quarantine measures adopted in response to the 2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic.”

Had it not been for this pandemic, I probably would have stayed away from FaceTime and Zoom. It’s bad enough seeing myself in the mirror let alone on a phone/screen with bad lighting and through a fisheye lens.

But…Zooming we are. Even Riley World is zooming. He wasn’t exactly happy about it the first time...

but now gets quite excited to see and chat with his group. They have even been working on some social interaction skills like making telephone calls. 

My first Zoom experience was with my book club. We have another meeting tonight and even have a guest author joining us. 

We’ve even had a couple of social zoom parties playing games. 

It seems being out of touch with people has affected me more than I thought because I get quite excited when we are zooming. I may have even been put on “mute” a couple of times by the host. That’s ok. I got my own zoom account now.