Best use of an airport delay, first steemit post

So please bear with me as I am not exactly an extrovert. Perfect until my first post so might as well get it out of the way!

I have never felt much of a need to jump in to social media. I've browsed Reddit for years - never posted never joined. I joined Facebook earlier this year and now I'm 'friends' with people I haven't spoken with in years. I have hundreds of people in my LinkedIn network -- but I don't know who they are! Why did we connect again?

Third day on steemit and already feeling guilty that I have not contributed. So here I am. I will try to use this post to

• tell you all a little about me
• explain why I feel compelled to contribute
• explain what I do for a living
• set up my second post, which will be about how I believe steem (or steemit, not sure where to draw the line) can be a watershed event in the evolution of ecommerce.

So, me. Fortysomething. Which got autocorrected to 'flirty something' but I recorrected the correction. Married to a wonderful woman for thirteen years so far. Father of the most wonderful daughter one could hope for. She just got braces last week and I'm sad that her teeth still hurt, the wax only helps so much.

I live and work in the same town, so with virtually no commute I feel like I start and end my day with two bonus hours to be home with my family. The morning bonus hour is Coffee Time for me and my wife, and Minecraft time for my daughter. The evening bonus hour is Ball Time for my dog and garden time for all of us. The garden will be the subject of another post. Then food. Then food problems/opportunities/solutions.

What is it about this community that makes me feel compelled to pen this while stuck delayed at MDW trying to get home for the weekend? A strange combination of events in a small period of time. A mentee at work was trying to explain th blockchain to me just ten days ago, and I couldn't get interested. I want to be interested in Bitcoin but can't get myself there. I wish 'social media' made me feel more social but in reality it has had the opposite effect (so far).

I downloaded a white paper that I came across after reading an article that came across my flipboard (during Coffee Time).

The white paper was like an oyster knife that somehow popped open this uninviting, inscrutable oyster that was in my hand. Muddy barnacled mess opened to reveal crisp brininess, tinny flesh with hints of cucumber and borage. And pearls.

Social for the sake of sharing with others as opposed to propping one's self up. Blockchain slightly demystified. Bitcoin (or cryptocurrency) with no barrier to entry. And letting people earn a little something for sharing what they know -- a buck(steem) here, a buck(steem) there. I'm not interested in the possibility of big bucks or in speculation or cryptocurrency for crypto currency's sake or making a living as a writer.

So for work. I work in an old-fashioned industry that distributes products (food) to customers (restaurants). And my job includes bringing this old-fashioned industry online. It's going to be a slam dunk -- make the user experience better than it was. But what if -- what if there was a way to actually compensate our customers for adding value to our experience? What if a great chef (as in much steem power) was duly rewarded for sharing her knowledge with her peers?

Why do ecommerce websites (currently) get away with stealing value created by their users? Why are users okay with this? And how can we take what @ned and @dan built to turn this on its head, reward the people who create value with value, and bring the world of ecommerce onto the blockchain? I'll make that the topic of my next post, if anyone's listening.