technology was leaving me in the dust

How could this have happened?  I mean, I have an engineering degree and I worked for IBM for 10 years!  Yet here I was, not even able to comprehend some of the things that my 20-something nieces talk about regularly.  It sounded like a foreign language to me.

So I did something about it.

First, I upgraded my internet service.  When DSL first became available in my area, I signed up for the fastest service they provided ... 512 k.  Well, that was probably 6 or 7 years ago.  If any of you have that internet speed, you know that it is torture to watch a youtube video.  The endless pausing was trying my patience and I rarely watched a video all the way through.  Now we have 2 M service and I can comfortably watch videos of all sorts.  Honestly, I don't really notice any other difference.  Maybe I should call my ISP ... and whine a bit.

The next thing I did was get a new cell phone.  Yup, I bought an iphone -- the older 3G one.  That was such a huge leap from the phone I had, which did not even have a camera or texting ability.   Yes, the guy at the iphone store laughed when I showed it to him.  Can I say that I LOVE this phone?  For me, it's like magic.  The other day, a moose ran across the road in front of the car.  I quickly snapped a picture of it and sent it to my brother.  Amazing!  Yes, Rick was driving at the time.  I know better than to drive and text at the same time.

These may not seem like major steps to you, but for me, this is huge.  The ironic part is that truly, I rarely leave the house, and hardly ever use my cell phone, what with working at home and all.  I don't think I've ever used more than 100 cell phone minutes in any given month.  So why did I do this?  So I could understand what the fuss was all about and to be able to talk intelligently about this stuff.  And, I didn't want to fall any further behind.

Now, I must send a text to my darling niece in Las Vegas!