Wired

My kids have come and, for the most part, gone, leaving in their wake a slew of discarded technology. One got a new laptop, and wondered whether or not I would like his cast off. Another informed me that his laptop was hopelessly outdated, so perhaps I would like his when he got a new one, but he was waiting for the new and improved model promised to arrive after the first of the year.

I seem to be the inheritor of all used gizmos, from computers, to digital cameras to i-pods. For some reason, I feel compelled to breathe life back into these rejected piles of circuitry, only to end up spending more money to upgrade, reconfigure and connect them to my wired world. If they still work, it is hard for me to justify tossing them.

The only time I trumped my kids was last summer when I snagged one of the new i-phones hot off the press. I had coveted this device since I had first read about it and held off buying a new cell phone even while mine was dying before my eyes. I did not wait in line, I might add. I made a civilized appointment with the APPLE store concierge and purchased the phone calmly and quietly about two days after the lines had disappeared.

I'm happy to report that the phone has changed my life. I really think I should do a commercial for it I love it so much and despite the warnings from my offspring's predictions of doom and gloom for the first generation of any APPLE product, I have had absolutely NO problems.

In fact, I just cashed in the rebate for some stocking stuffers for them. Dare I ask whose smiling now?

I'm not sure whether the answer is to make do or bite the bullet and go for the new, but I have a feeling I'll be upgrading that old laptop when I upgrade this cast-off desktop and somehow making everything work just fine, as long as they all talk to my phone!

There are some areas, however, where my expertise is still sought out. My daughter asked me just the other day, how to load staples in a stapler.