Artoo!

Hello. My name is Fermicat. I'm 44 years old, and rockin' my new Star Wars phone. Too nerdy? I don't care. Santa brought me the Motorola DROID R2-D2 and I love it. I even got a clear cover so the R2-D2 design on the back surface remains visible.

I developed an obsession with The Empire Strikes Back when I was 14 and apparently never quite got over it. Fast forward thirty years. When I saw that there was an R2-D2 version of the DROID 2, that finally settled the question of which smart phone to go with.

It is almost unbelievable what these phones will do. (Yes, it is my first smart phone. Can you tell?) I've had a blast downloading apps. Compass? Check. GPS tool? Check. Route tracker with offline topo maps? Check. Interactive sky map? Check. Scientific calculator? Check. Barcode scanner? Check. Pandora? Check. Forum reading app? Check. IMDB, movies, sports tap, shazam, twitter, Earth, photoshop, NPR news widget, traffic reporter, trip advisor, navigator? Checkcheckcheck... Hell, I even downloaded a lightsaber. And with a little luck, I could probably shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level. That'll come in handy if I ever need to escape the Death Star.

The Force will be with me, always. Or at least until my contract runs out.

Late Adopters

I've come to the realization that PDM and I are late adopters. It isn't something we aspire to by philosophy -- we are not curmudgeons, and don't have anything against change or new technology. We just don't feel like we need to run out and get every little thing the minute it hits the market. We prefer to see what ends up taking hold and then wait until it has gone through a few bug fixes and becomes a truly useful and robust product or service. And then we procrastinate about getting it for a few years. Somehow this lack of urgency has morphed into full on late adoptership without us consciously choosing to be that way. Maybe we're just getting old. Here is a quick list of newfangled things that have gone mainstream without our participation:

DVRs
online bill paying
texting
IM
Netflix
GPS
Blackberries
HD DVD
Facebook
Twitter
home video game systems
surround sound
satellite radio

Some of these things we have no interest in, but there are a few that are on our short list of stuff to get hooked up. Like the DVR at the top of that list. That would be convenient. And maybe Netflix. But most of it doesn't really seem all that necessary, to be honest. I've been paying bills the same way for 25 years. I don't see that changing unless the postal service decides they aren't gonna deliver mail anymore. I still have a paper road atlas in my car, and manage to find stuff just fine. I didn't get a cell phone until 2002, and I kept that phone for six years before getting a new one (that still isn't a Blackberry, but is much smaller and lighter than the clunky old phone). PDM got his first cell phone in 2008. Our plan doesn't include texting, because we hardly ever do it. I remember people's phone numbers, because I usually dial them manually from my home phone. Which is a land line. That doesn't have call waiting. Hell, we still have a VCR.

Our life isn't entirely stuck in the 1980s. I have an iTouch that I absolutely love. We packed away the CD player a few years ago in favor of using the Mac and our wireless network as a juke box. We only have one television, but it is a wide screen HD LCD that is pretty damn big, and we have a pseudo-surround system with subwoofer. Movies and live sports look and sound very life-like. The Mac also has a large format widescreen LCD monitor. It's pretty. There's not a cathode ray tube in the house.

So, now that I've aired out our list, what do you still have that makes you feel like a dinosaur?

Not just TV, it's HDTV.

WOW! Huge difference.

We got the Big Damn TV two months ago, but just now got HDTV. Holy crap!! Watching 'Galapagos' on the National Geographic Channel right now, and it is just gorgeous. Also caught some NCAA action (not all that good for my bracket, thankyouverymuch, but so crisp and clean), and a movie on HBO. All eye-poppin' good.

We're not early adopters. We wait until the cost is reasonable. But if you are on the fence about it - we say DO IT! Now is a good time.