We're Gonna Party Like Its 1999

I have never been a gadget guy, but the past ten years have seen a particularly widening gap between what's out there and what I use. Circa 2010, I still use a dumb phone (i.e. all it does is make calls. I believe I'm the only person in the world that still uses a dumb PDA (i.e. it doesn't make calls or connect to the Internet). In our house, there is but one desktop, a hulking Dell that still has wires hanging out of it: no wirelessness, no laptops.

And when, in San Jose, I recently asked my cousin's wife to tape last weekend's football games for me, she chuckled, graciously told me she'd be happy to burn the games onto a DVD via her DVR, and then very correctly informed me that no one tapes stuff anymore. Well, she's not quite correct: I still do, using a VCR and a TV so old I need a government-subsidized converter box to get my six non-cable channels. (That's right: I don't have cable, either.)

So to summarize. Dumb phone: check. Dumb PDA: check. Hulking desktop: check. VCR and non-digital, non-cable TV: check and mate. Forget the latest stuff: I still need to get myself into this millennium.