[caption id="attachment_548" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The Amazing Baby"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/maddie4.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-548" title="maddie4" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/maddie4-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a>[/caption]

For all its negatives, there are some things amazing and wonderful about technology.

Yesterday evening, through the miracle of Skype, my wife and I were able to carry on a 20-minute conversation -- complete with video -- with our daughter Pauline and our granddaughter Maddie from 14 time zones away.

I even did a video capture, but I'm showing you this somewhat older picture instead because I don't want to be the type of grandfather who humiliates his granddaughter by putting a picture of her in a diaper out there on the Internet for all to see.

It took a while for me as an old guy to be able to work out the Skype thing. I had a headset that was a combination of headphones and a microphone, and it took me forever -- or so it seemed -- to realize I had to plug them into two different jacks, one to listen and one to talk.

In the end, though, it was wonderful. I hadn't seen Maddie since Christmas, which is about when this picture was taken. Not only has she grown a lot since then, she has expanded her vocabulary exponentially. When asked how old she is, she responds, "Almost two." She even recognizes me as "grandpa," which is quite an accomplishment since she has three grandfathers in two countries.

I'm really counting on Skype now that Maddie and her parents are in Indonesia for the next two years. It will probably be early 2012 before we get over there to visit, and it's a long way for them to come home for R&amp;R. Maddie might be nearly three and a half before I actually see her in person again.

It's times like this that the world seems larger and larger. In another three weeks, Virgile and his wife Sterling will be in Greece to start their two-year tour there. With our children so many thousands of miles away, and with most of our other living relatives either back East or over in France, things have gotten really spread out.

Moving to Georgia next spring will help a little. For one thing, the 14 time zones that now separate us from Indonesia will go down to 11.

Thank goodness for Skype.