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I’ve seen a lot of ads on TV lately for HPE, so I went to their website and found this:

HPE Storage and data protection

One intelligent data foundation for hybrid cloud and AI

Unify, prepare, and protect your data to simplify operations, accelerate AI outcomes, and strengthen cyber resilience across hybrid cloud

I had no idea what that meant, so I dug a little deeper. On the second page I discovered that it will enable the user to “Move data freely across platforms, evolve virtualization, cloud, and AI strategies without disruptive migrations or new operational silos,” that it will also allow a user to “prepare data as it is stored so AI, analytics, and applications consume trusted, enriched data without costly custom pipelines.”

As a brand-new eighty year old I’ve become acutely aware that the world is moving along quite well without my input. Buses run on time, the sun rises as predicted, gravity hasn’t decided to give up its grip on making things go down. I don’t have much say about any of this, and even if I tried to engage, no one would notice; it wouldn’t change anything. I’m increasingly aware that technology, insofar as I can understand what it does, affects me without my understanding it at all. My watch records the quality of my sleep, measures my heartbeat, looks at me more thoroughly than my childhood physician, Dr. Hunting and his stethoscope, ever did. I understand less and less. I’ve given up trying to learn. HPE not only does things I don’t understand, but it talks about them in words I don’t understand, either. I really wouldn’t want anyone who does know to explain those words to me.

Some years ago I took a course called “A Year to Live.” We met once a month for twelve months, and each month were tasked with activities that reminded us that we’re all here temporarily. One month we were asked to give another member of the group something of great meaning to ourselves, something that couldn’t be duplicated or saved. It was to remind us that when we pass we give up everything. I gave up a clock that I had resurrected from my uncle’s estate, one that I had bought and given to him years earlier. On the last day of the class we officially “died',” and we were directed to go down Solano Avenue and simply observe life as it went on, keeping in mind that all that we saw and witnessed would take place whether we were there or not. I sat in a Starbucks in the corner. No one paid me any attention. I saw the customers lined up for their lattes, some on laptops, couples enjoying the time together, but no one looked at me. My absence from Starbucks or Earth wouldn’t mean anything to any of them. I was invisible.

This is how being eighty feels. This isn’t to say that my absence wouldn’t be felt by others, but as George Harrison sang, “Life goes on within you and without you.” It’s the “within” part that matters, that which I can control, the part I wrote about in my previous blog entry about “In-N-Out.” Life for all of us is the “in” part. We have little, if anything, to do with the “out” part. HPE should know however, that my “operational silo” is still operating, and since I can stand up straight I am occasionally mistaken for a real silo.

I may not understand the changes that take place beyond me, but I am changing. I’m less affected by negativity. I’m more patient. I think about others more. I’m less demanding. I have fewer wants, especially in material things. I’m more confident and self-assured. We’re on the cusp of the mid-term elections, and the people who continue to support Donald Trump still mystify me, but I no longer allow their behavior to affect me. I’m finding increased pleasure in the company of my friends, many of who are following a parallel course. I treasure those relationships, knowing that they, too, only last as long as we do.

A New Yorker Cartoon shows Death with his scythe walking down the hallway while the wife of the man he’s accompanying yells out the apartment door to the two of them, “Change is Good!” Indeed.