 Good afternoon. Welcome to coronavirus and your mental health. Today is May 11th, 2022, and we're still in the pandemic. In fact, we're surging. According to the New York Times that I read from yesterday, our weekly average is now 600 cases, which is 150% increase from the previous week, and a six times increase from March. So we're not doing so well, as is a lot of people around the globe. A lot of people surging, a lot of people not surging. It's back and forth. Uncertainty prevails. And today to talk about all that is my good friend and computer guru, Gary Sudden. He's coming to us from St. Louis. So good evening, Gary, and welcome. Now, Gary's got a lot of things going for him. He's a master in not only computers, but he's also a master in music and humor and a lot of things that I really have enjoyed over the years. Gary and I have enjoyed a 40 year friendship. And Gary, I'd like to start with that idea that we talked about the other night about the fact that we need to to deal with all our problems, all our uncertainties and depressions and anxieties. We need to learn more. We need to learn and to learn, you emphasize that we need to follow our interests. And if we follow what interests us, it will lead to creativity. And I was hoping you could elaborate on that for our audience. Well, let's start with the very idea of from my perspective, everything that I've ever, ever learned was always a function of learning it myself. It's not a function of learning it from an instructor or a teacher. They may give an outline of this or that, but things that you really want to learn, you are going to learn by yourself. And if you really have an interest in it, then you will learn more on your own than that teacher would ever explain. So it doesn't matter what the subject matter might be. And so you'll take it the nth degree. When I was a child, there wasn't the internet, which we have now. There was a public library. And so I used to spend hours at the public library, either with an encyclopedia. Ooh, what's that? Or looking up reference books that would tell me about synapses in the brain or would explain more about chemical reactions or whatever it is that I might have been interested in at the time. And I was interested in a lot of different areas. I've throughout my life, I've had many, many different hobbies, and I've taken all of those hobbies as far as I possibly can. So when I was 11, as an example, my grandfather helped me build darkroom. And that was fantastic, because he was a master of working with stainless steel. And so I was then able to follow what he was doing with stainless steel in terms of welding and metallurgy and forming and shaping this metal, and then making a sink that would be appropriate for the chemicals. And then he was able to guide me through some of that, and then to make the room dark and have something that would allow for a light, a darkroom light to be on at the time. I mean, think about opening up a store today, that would be one hour photo. Would be one what? A one hour photo today. Just you have instant gratification, of course, today. But back then, this was a process. And I needed to learn these processes throughout my education. So it didn't matter if it was photography or or guitar, etc, etc. I, as an example, I really, really wanted to learn a guitar because piano was not really very portable. And so a guitar was and so I could take a guitar with me and make music somewhere else other than my home where the piano was. And so I begged my parents but they couldn't afford it. It was going to be $45. Now $45 then was probably $750 or $800 now, which was a lot of money to spend on an instrument. And then my dad would say, well, once you have a guitar, you're going to need lessons, we can't afford this. And I pledged that I would not need lessons. And I never had a lesson. My mother was kind enough to find the $45 by me that car. And I didn't know even how to tune it. It's not like there was an internet now, even going to the library, how do you, how do you look up how to tune a guitar? And so I, my brain figured out that I should just tune it to an open chord. So I tuned it to an open G chord, which the strings wouldn't break and made sense to me because then I could just go straight across on a fret and it would give me another chord. That worked great. Until a couple of months later, two other guys and Boy Scouts said, you know, you really shouldn't tune it like that. Here's how you tune it. And then you have to manipulate and gnarl your fingers to do this and make it sound like that. So that was a whole different issue. But that was part of the learning curve. But I was anxious to learn how to make music on that guitar. You know, we are so, well, let's go back to school, like you're saying. At school, we're throwing a lot of things that we have to read, a lot of assignments that we have to do, facts to deal with and things to memorize. And most of us, we wonder, well, I'm not really interested in this. And what good is it going to do me in the rest of my life? And you pursued, you know, your interests and your enthousiasms. And I think today, especially with the coronavirus and our news programs, for instance, who are 90% are more filled with negatives that people get watching this thing like they used to listen to their teachers and just become caught in all this negativity. And I keep saying, do something that you really like to do. And it's not that easy for them. And yet I think there's plenty of opportunities for them to do that. And maybe you could turn us on to some of those opportunities. Part of the difficulty here is that for years we've been, and we had no way of reaching out. Most of us were, many of us were afraid to even walk out the door. I can tell you that a grocery store was a terror. And then bringing those things in from the car, I would wipe everything down. Every day the mail would come, and I would wipe down the mail because I didn't want to be infected by wearing one or two or maybe three masks at times. And yet you need a way to rebound. And so for some of this, I look for creativity. Sitting and playing guitar for me has always been a psychological risk, whether it's a humorous topic or learning a new song or trying to be creative with an existing song and making it sound completely differently. Playing it in a different tuning or a different key and slow or fast, changing it up to be creative with it. And that creativity also is a function of, okay, I need to make myself happier. I want to figure out something else that will do something that I can be accomplished with. And I think the accomplishments are what makes me feel a bit more happy, whether or not that's what it is, or just fixing things. So yes, I went around my home and I fixed everything around my house. It didn't matter if it was dryer or the washing machine or dishwasher, furnace, you name it, humidity systems, etc, etc. I went around the house and fixed pretty much everything. We have an unprecedented opportunity here because we have all of this information now at our fingertips. And we didn't have that before. We had to go to the library. And was I going to be able to find the circuitry for a certain brand furnace to be able to wire in a humidifier that was both on Z-Wave and also that and control the furnace's humidifier within all that. That wouldn't exist at a library even today, but I can go online and I can find it. And then figure out how to do that problem solving. Problem solving for me has always been something that was both creative and an accomplishment for me and makes me happy. Let's go back. Well, first of all, let me clarify. I'm a big library fan. So like you are, libraries today have computers. So you can actually go to libraries and sit on their computers, which is really nice. So we're sort of trying to meld into that future. But what I wanted to follow up on what you were saying is some people have not discovered yet what their interests are. And I know like you're saying there's so many opportunities on the computer and the internet. If for instance you were not sure of what you were interested in and wanted to check things out, where would you go on the computer? How can the computer sort of help you figure that out of what interests you? Well, let's start with the idea that as a child, I had an idea that I'd be a doctor. I didn't know what I was going to do with that. And I kind of leaned toward that idea, but the reality was pretty simple. The reality was that everything I studied had nothing to do with what I ended up doing. And so I think that's very true of many, many of the people that I see now. That the technology or that discipline simply didn't exist. My eldest son, well, when I went to school, computer science, there wasn't a degree. There wasn't anything called that. And so that ended up, computer networking ended up being my forte. And that's what I've done for the last four years. And I was very fortunate to have built a lot of electronics as a young man. And he, at the very start of this computer world, see there in 1975 and build an out here from scratch. And I didn't, this wasn't a class at school. This was an interest of mine. And so if you can find that interest and then go with that, my brother passed away some years ago. He didn't have a good idea of what he wanted to do at all. And all of a sudden computer software came and databases and he understood them. And he got a good job doing that. He never had any coursework on. He learned it on his own and became very good at it. So it's finding that spark, finding that interest and then pursuing it. Some of it's out of necessity. For example, when I turned 16 and I bought a second hand car. And then the clutch went out. There are clutches in some cars, modern cars. Maybe a word that's foreign to some. And the clutch went out. So I was an impoverished college student. I couldn't afford to take it somewhere and have someone else prepare that form. I had to learn how to do it myself. And it was a, let's just say it was a significant exercise and a great learning experience. Learning how not to crush your fingers. How not to have the car fall on you. And then things like changing your own oil or, and some of these things you can't do today because the manufacturers have made it too difficult to do. But back then you could turn your own car and you could work on your own car. Yeah. This day at least you should at least check your tires. So what I'm saying is that these disciplines were born of necessity. And there wasn't anything else I could do except it's like something you didn't necessarily want to learn, but you had to learn because it was necessity. I didn't have the funds to be able to do it. Yeah. Yeah, well I certainly wasn't the same position with my cars. But I didn't have any money when I was young. I had to, I didn't learn it as extensively as you did or was able to fix as many problems as you did. But I did learn the basics and to keep my old cars running in that. But aside from necessities, you know what I ran into in college was, I had no idea again and maybe this is where I'm coming from. It's a personal thing. I had no idea where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do. So I went up to the counselor. I was, I went to UCLA and as a young freshman I went up to the counselor and I said, I have no idea what I should major in. And he said, well look, take political science because that's the major that is most widely applicable to everything. You can be a lawyer, you can be a politician, you can be a businessman. Political science will help you in all these degrees. So you don't know what you want to do. You should do this. So I started off as a political science major and figured out very quickly that this was not me. This was far from me. But I had no idea where I wanted to go. And in those days you had to, you know, it was a four-year run. And I certainly didn't want to go five years. So not knowing where to go, I stayed with political science, got my degree in political science. In the meantime, doing everything but political science, which played havoc with my grade point average, but that was not my interest. So I was out there trying to find my interest and it was real difficult because I was interested in a lot of things, but for a life's work, I didn't know, you know. And one of the lucky things for me was that military service was required at the time. So when I got my bachelor's degree, I had to go into the military. And so I thought, well, I don't have to worry about my life's work until I served my four years for my country. And it was only after a long haul in college and then in the military that I finally was able to figure out that I belonged in psychology that that was my interest and became my passion and helping people. But it was a long haul. And I was hoping maybe you could give us some ideas. If I was back and I'd love to be back being 17, God grant me, that would be great to time travel back there, 17 and wondering what to do, how I could sort of go on the internet and sort of find something without all that angst and wasted years of going to political science classes. Any suggestions on that? Sometimes it's just a part of maturity to start with the, I started in electrical engineering and found that, okay, this is electrical engineering, but no one can explain to me how the electrons go down a wire. And does one push the next one or does one go all the way through? No one's ever been able to tell me that. And by the way, if I do spill some electrons on the floor, I'll clean them up later, they're really high. The point being that, okay, well, what do I know, maybe academics? I am not sure. And then biomedical engineering. My master's in using biomedical engineering. And then I was a doctor. All of a sudden there was an opportunity where I could combine many of my other interests. Oh, by the way, when I was working on that electrical engineering degree, I wanted to take music classes. And my counselor told me, absolutely not, you cannot take music classes because that's not part of the electrical engineering curriculum, and you will not be given credit for it. I took them anyway. So, how did that feel? How did that feel? It was, why not? Why can't you have more than one, understand more than one discipline? I don't understand why you can't. So, for the PhD program then, I combined chemistry and physics and electronics and everything I've learned to make what was new then, integrated circuits, little tiny bunches of not just one transistor, but many transistors all together in different layers of boron and phosphorus and silicon, and making it at a certain temperature, which was just like my dark room days. And it was, it was a nice combination of all of the same. Yes, I used an in-hole camera because it had the highest resolution. So, that was another thing. And then after that, now you've finished this and you've just had your first child. And so, what are you going to do? And so, computers were the big thing. This was 1978 at this point. And computers were the big thing. So, I started what became a chain of computer stores, and learned a lot, and failed a lot, and upwashed a lot, and that sent me on the path to where I met you. Which was in a computer class, that you came all the way to Hawaii to teach, which was- But at that point, I was traveling the world and lecturing on these emerging technologies. Wow. And computer- For 15 years, I lectured on computer networks. And yes, I can still spell TCPIP. I like it. And it was very fortunate to me to be able to take your classes, and because it opened up a whole new thing in teaching for me. And my career has been counseling and teaching. And so, it was invaluable. I'm not only teaching, because I want to give back what some of the best teachers ever gave me. Yeah. And part of what I consider to be good teaching is not just to open up that creativity in those ideas, but also to make it interesting and humorous, if possible, so that they'll remember it by the interest. And that's really my try to lecture. I used to set up- Well, you may remember, I used to set up delivered humorous escapades that might take a few days for it to gel, and have it come together at the end, something that was humorous, so that people would remember it. Yeah. And a lot of students were mystified by the whole thing. But most of us caught on very early and said, this is a different instructor. This is a person who can really teach us something. And that was really incredibly helpful to learn that and be able to add it to my teaching repertoire, as far as using things like PowerPoint and Excel in my teachings and in my research. Unfortunately, I didn't stay up with everything. I'm still sort of in the 20th century and I need to take another class from you to catch up to the 21st century. Well, part of really what I'm trying to say is, it all has to do with communication. And talk about wanting to be happy. Talk about wanting to really, you need, humans need to be able to communicate with people. And we must have good communication skills in order to do that. We must be literate in at least a language. We must not fill that verbalization with filler words like, ah, and you know, like, which I don't think that I enjoy whatsoever. I like people that are literate that can. And that's really important. So during the pandemic, one of the things that will make you happy, perhaps it's finding a friend, call them up on the phone. Use your video phone that you have available now. Everyone has. And so you can see the other people. You can talk to them. Don't just text them. Absolutely. Let's go to the dark side for a minute, though. The Darth Vader side or whatever. But you know, a lot of people that I talked to a lot of patients, people who are having trouble are getting too much communication. They're on the internet all the time. And they're drawn to all the negativity. And the internet is telling them how things are bad and how things are getting worse. And I'm not saying that that's not true. We have problems. That's clear that we have problems. But being addicted to negativity and being stuck in front of that screen, sometimes people find it very, very difficult to switch over to get. And that's what the news does to you. They want to shock because then you'll watch more of the news. Yes, exactly. And it becomes an economic thing. So tell us what to do or what can people do not to get so stuck on that, that they have all this negativity just coming at them and coming at them. And it's hard to put that remote down. Well, there are several things for me. One of my primary psychological reasons. And or being creative, working with photography, working on one of my cars, et cetera, et cetera. So that's something for me that gives me happiness. Also, I don't watch a lot of television. I do watch the news from time to time, but I won't say that I'm addicted to it because it does depress. How can you not be depressed by so much of what's going on now? And then if you were to say to me right now, okay, what was something that happened during the pandemic or even now that really brought you joy? It was the birth of our seventh grandchild. And so that brought us joy. However, all of our grandchildren don't live anywhere near us. So that's something that's not, as to my liking, necessarily. At least now we're starting to visit them. They're starting to visit us again. But because of technology, I can see them as you see me now with some kind of a video chat. Yeah. And that's one, Gary and I have talked about this before. And that's one of the advantages I have, because I only have two grandsons, as opposed to Gary's seven, but they live on Oahu. So I can travel down from the North Shore to Kailua, where they're living and see them on the average of at least every other week. And it certainly is a joy. But what you were saying earlier, Gary, about seeing people that are important to you that you haven't seen in a long time, one of the things that happened to me was I was able to reconnect in the pandemic with my cousin. So I hadn't talked to for 30 or 40 years. Yeah, call your friends. Yeah, absolutely. Call them up. People you haven't talked to in years, call them. And that's what we did with the cousins. And now we're, since the pandemic started, we've been in Zoom contact every single month. And it's been a joy. And like you say, the friends that you can contact is amazing stuff. So, well, Gary, we're running a little short. So any chance we could get you to play a little something to take it back into the good things and the good times? Thank you. That was marvelous. You know, it's just nothing lifts me like music does. It's just, it's a spirit lifter. Absolutely. And you lift me up, my friend. Thank you so much for being on this show. Thank you so much for having me as a guest. And I want to thank everybody in the audience and to tuned in. And I want to thank Think Tech Hawaii and Jay and Haley and Michael and everybody who's been such great support for us. I look forward to seeing you all again in two weeks. Same time, same station. Have a good day. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.