Every so often, something blows up in a stamp collecting organization of which I’m an official, and my wife asks, “You do this for fun?”

It’s gotten to the point where she doesn’t even have to be in the room, doesn’t even have to know about the latest flak; I hear her voice in my head. “You do this for fun?”

Oh, it happens in some of the music organizations in which I’m involved, too, but not as often. You’d think with all the pressure involved with performing, there would be more blowups there, but, no, I guess putting stamps away in albums or on envelopes is more stressful than hitting that high A, in tune, with everyone in the band listening to your solo.

It would be easy to blame it on the Internet: After all, any jerk with a computer and an Internet account can go on Facebook and say nasty, untrue things about you. Heck, you don’t even need your own computer and Internet: You can go to the public library and use their computers. But it’s been going on since long before the Internet.

More than 40 years ago, as a high school student, I sat stunned in a band parents meeting as the group’s president and vice president, a lawyer and a doctor, “pillars of the community,” screamed at each other until they were red in the face — and then kept going.

I don’t remember what the issue was, but it wasn’t very important. (In my story for the next day’s local paper, I brushed it off with “After a spirited discussion….”)

We live for our avocations.

About a decade ago, the American Philatelic Society engaged a public relations/advertising agency to promote both the hobby and the organization. It came up with the slogan “We feel your passion.” The agency workers were amazed at how strongly stamp collectors feel about things others consider relatively unimportant.

It’s not even just leadership issues: I’ve seen the passion stoked by plans to change an organization’s logo or whether the group should take PayPal.

I have a theory: For so many of us, our day-to-day lives are mundane, maybe even boring. Ah, but in our hobbies and avocations! There we are important, there we have an opportunity to make a difference, there we are somebody!

Plus, collecting stamps or playing music or raising funds for a high school trip is what we’d really rather be doing, not moving paper from one side of the desk to the other or sweeping out the bus aisle. Our hobbies are also part of our identity: “My son’s soccer coach” or “the lady’s auxiliary president,” rather than “this insurance agent I know.”

Most of us will work for 40 years, often in the same field. While there may be a progression within that profession, after awhile, the job becomes routine. The excitement of going to work wears off.

Most of us accept that. We get our vocational joy in our avocations.

“My day job? That’s just what I do for money. What I really care about, though, is…”

And when something goes wrong or, worse, not as right as it could, that passion turns to anger.

Maybe it’s worse in stamp collecting because so much of what we do has to be precise: The measurements of a perforation, the alignment of a stamp on a cover, the date on which a service was performed. Sometimes the so-called “flyspecks” really do matter.

We philatelists have to learn to lighten up. There are times I want to grab stamp collectors by their throats, shake them, and scream, “IT’S A HOBBY AND IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE FUN, DAMMIT! SO HAVE FUN OR ELSE”!

Then I stop and take a deep breath.

Seven score and 10 years ago, the President of the United States gave a speech that lasted about two minutes. The featured speaker at the cemetery dedication went on for two hours.

“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,” Abraham Lincoln said, but he was wrong: Today, the “Gettysburg Address” is considered one of the greatest in American history. It’s also quoted, and parodied, throughout our history and literature.

On the other hand, maybe Lincoln was thinking of the U.S. Postal Service. We have at least two stamp issues coming out this year on November 19th, the 150th anniversary of the speech, but none is for that event. Instead, we’re getting two crassly commercial issues: Harry Potter and Hanukkah.

Lincoln wasn’t Jewish, and couldn’t play Quidditch worth a darn, so I can’t see servicing Gettysburg Address Sesquicentennial covers with any of those stamps.

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m looking forward to both of those issues, even though I know they’re pandering to specific non-philatelic audiences. Jews will buy the Hanukkah stamps because, well, they’re not Christmas stamps and some send out cards for this minor holiday because Christians send out cards for their holiday. (Has the U.S. Postal Service ever considered stamps for the Jewish High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the major holidays when Jews also send out cards? No, I didn’t think so.)

When I first head of the Harry Potter issue, in a blind listing in a stamp program chart in the Postal Bulletin, I thought, okay, the books spurred adolescents in this country to read voraciously. Since then, I’ve been told the stamps feature the movies, not the books, and I’m finding it harder to justify. At author J.K. Rowling’s insistence, nearly all the actors in the movies are British. The locations are British, too.

Then we were told the location for the first-day ceremony, and the light dawned: It’s in Orlando. No location within that city was mentioned, but “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter” at Universal Orlando Resort is there. What a coincidence!

Universal has already announced a major expansion of the Harry Potter attraction for some time in 2014. Although the USPS is rushing out the stamps on November 19th — a date apparently set by the Potter people — they won’t be universally available (sorry) until January, when there will be another big media push for the stamps. Another coincidence!

So what’s on November 19th? Just a wild guess, but a press release on the Universal Orlando Resort media website says the Hogwarts Express locomotive is now in place, and will carry patrons between different parts of the Harry Potter attraction. Perhaps November 19th is the day that train service begins.

However, that the Postal Service seems almost desperate to sell stamps isn’t the point of this essay. The stamp that it’s not issuing is: The Sesquicentennial of the “Gettysburg Address.”

Amid the 16 varieties of flag stamps, more than a dozen flower stamps, 12 construction stamps and the rest of this year’s bloated issue program, wasn’t there room for one more historical issue? I count six this year (Battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Rosa Parks, Battle of Lake Erie, West Virginia Statehood, March on Washington), six if you throw in the Grand Central Terminal Express Mail stamp (it opened in 1913).

Unfortunately, there is precedent for a lack of respect for the “Gettysburg Address:” The only other stamp the U.S. has ever issued for the speech was in 1948, the 85thanniversary. That was a year in which even chickens got a stamp, so it was no big honor. There was no stamp for the centennial in 1963.

That year, and this year, we had stamps for the Battle of Gettysburg, a turning point of the Civil War. But those stamps commemorate death and destruction. Why no stamps for great public speaking? Great statesmanship? Great leadership?

I hate to sound like one of those fuddy-duddies 16 years ago who began every complaint about stamps that weren’t issued with, “We have a stamp for Bugs Bunny, but not :” And I’m looking forward to the Hanukkah and Harry Potter stamps. I plan to service my Dragon Cards first day cover cards for both issues.

But I’m also going to service Dragon Cards for the Gettysburg Address. They just won’t be first day covers of a stamp commemorating the speech.

That may sound like a strange declaration from a guy who’s made his name using computers, but it’s true. It’s a love-hate relationship.

Nothing does a better job of making me feel stupid than a computer — not my sons, my bosses, not even my cars.

“Computers,” of course, covers a wide range of subjects. No one does everything related to computers well. I think I do some really well, others about average, but then there are the ones that drive me crazy.

Software upgrades fall in the latter category, and that includes changing servers for this website. I don’t think I’ve ever upgrade an operating system on a computer or smartphone without complications. I know the recent move of this site from one hosting company to another didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped. My e-mail system is still a mess, and I just don’t have the time right now to clean it up.

It’s not just me: Hardware intended for consumer Windows machines 10-15 years ago used to be called “Plug ‘n Play,” meaning all you had to do was plug in the new board or device, and mirabile dictu, it would work. The computer techs, however, called it “Plug ‘n Pray,” because it rarely was that easy.

My wife once asked me how I became so good at using the computer. (She said it, not me.) I told her I wasn’t afraid to try something, then reboot the machine after it crashed, and try something else.

On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., by way of Appomattox, the navigation app on my iPhone stopped talking to me, so I had to keep picking it up and looking at the screen to see what my next turn would be. Since the app overrides the screensaver function, it quickly drains the device’s battery, and I had the phone plugged into a USB port. The cord became wrapped around the emergency brake lever, and at one point, I dropped the phone into my cup of Diet Dr. Pepper.

(I imagine several of you are wiping off your own computer monitors right now.)

I quickly fished the phone out of the drink (pun intended), but for the next day or so, I could only talk on it using the Bluetooth earpiece or the speakerphone.

I think I’m a pretty good computer-aided cachet designer, but twice recently, I’ve used the wrong version of a design for the master I submit to the printer: The .psd (PhotoShop) layered version versus the flattened .tif. The result was no text on the printed card, and the need to reprint the cards.

Luckily, or perhaps prudently, as I’m designing my Dragon Cards, I save all the intermediate steps. When I screw something up (and I do, I do), I go back to an earlier version.

No one understands everything about computers, or the Internet. We all have strengths and weaknesses, even the IT professionals.

“Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.” Or, in my case, the computer.