What's Write Today Book Reviews and Short Essays

I just read a column from a very popular and well-read columnist in one of our local newspapers about tipping those people who assist us in everything from getting a good meal to hanging up our coats.

My philosophy on tipping has always been, if I get good service -- I give a good tip. My son bases his tips on whether or not the waiter or waitress keeps his ice-tea glass full. My husband only really wants to tip when my son or myself guilt him into tipping.

My almost-daughter-in-law used to do hair for a living and relied on her tips to help make her car payment. She felt that all of us should tip 20% no matter the service, no matter the empty glass or the cold meal or the forgotten eating utensils. She used to tell us, "These people depend on tips to live on" and we should all appreciate that fact.

The local columnist believes that we should always show our appreciation for service -- be it good or bad -- because all people have bad days now and again. My own thoughts are that…

We have all been living and playing in the ultimate virtual technology world for well over 20 years now. In that time, the one thing we know for sure about our technology world is that it has always been fast moving. You gotta keep the latest and greatest on the drawing board or you'll get left behind in the technology world.

At the ripe and overly experienced age of 49, I have become somewhat complacent about technology. I have bragging rights in this virtual world because I enthusiastically started using computers with the very first Commodore 64 and the Radio Shack's in the early 1980s and have continually progressed to using the close-to super-computers of today.

I didn't think it could get more exciting than when computers came with internal hard drives, or you could put more than 256K of memory in the computer (and the operating system would actually access that memory) or when I logged onto the Internet for the first time using AOL.

As of today, the most exciting prod…