All I need is a coffee pot.

Current technology had obviously left me far behind. I knew this. I have no idea how to use all the features on my cell phone. The idea of an iPod that plays movies is totally lost on me, "I can't read a book without two pairs of glasses, how the hell am I supposed to watch a movie on a 1 inch by 1 inch screen??" Thus, while almost everyone else in the world moved on with advances in home technology, I stayed happily where I was, in the world of the 80 gigs of computer memory, 8 gig iPods, an office without a fax machine and a land line phone (even though I mostly use my cell).

Elder members of my family would have considered me quite the "geek". There are a few elderly people who still don't have cell phones or computers, but with the passing of my father, that group is even more limited. Geeks, however, look at my cell phone and chortle things like "my god, it's the kind with screws! I didn't think there were any of those left." My cell phone was only 5 years old when it died for pete's sake. It's not like it was an antique. In geekdom, however, technology which is 4 years has hit "classic" status.

Replacing my old computer with this laptop, therefore, has been a really big deal for me. I started a new hobby. Rather, I wanted to start a new hobby. My old computer was failing and even in it's prime wouldn't have served my video editing well. In it's failing state, however, my old computer wouldn't even run the little "Windows Movie Maker" program it came with without freezing every 1 to 3 minutes. The little movie I made of Handsome a few posts ago, took about 8 hours spread over 3 days to get done because I was constantly losing information due to freezes and restarts. The last day of editing I was trying to beat the program to the draw by saving and exiting the program every 2 minutes. I'm not exaggerating.

By the time I replaced the old computer, it had one working USB port, it's cd/dvd wouldn't open, and it had lost 3/4 of it's RAM. I'd log onto the web and feel like I was back on dial up again. Even my email wouldn't open in less than 15 seconds. It was losing it's memory and all of it's abilities. As a friend of mine told me "Sounds like me". Yeah, me too, but let's please not go there.

Another place I really don't wish to go right now is the land of 4 years from now when my spiffy new laptop becomes "a classic". By then the geeks will laugh "Good god, I've never even seen a computer with only 4 gigs of RAM." and "Only 320 gigs of space on the hard drive!? Dang!" or "Dude! No solar panels, do you believe that?"

I was all excited about being able to do away with the rat's nest of cords that ran my old puter, and all the external peripherals I was using to replace all the things that puter wouldn't do anymore. "Hermione" only used two cords. Power and DSL. Bless her. Then our friends Barb and Sean came to dinner and Sean gave me an easy to understand tutorial on setting up a wireless network. I'm down to ONE cord now and can work without that for about 3 to 4 hours. Thus, as behind as I still am in technology, I'm giant leaps from where I was and I'm damned excited about that.

Perhaps if I can manage to save about 500.00 a year, in 4 years I'll be able to afford the 120 gigs of RAM, the 800 gigs of dedicated graphics memory, and the 10 bazillion gig hard drives, all run wirelessly via solar power that will surely be available next week. But, for now, all I need is a wireless, portable, coffee pot.