We were cleaning house the other day and came across some picture frames in a box that never got used. We also found several canisters of film that never got developed as well. It got me to thinking about the changes in photography in the last few years. We went from digital photography being completely unreachable by most people because digital cameras were so expensive to film cameras being almost completely obsolete.

Do I have any idea what’s on that film we found? No. Most, if not all, of them are Rob’s and were taken before he and I met. That’s been over 8 years now, so god only knows what it is. I found several packages of negatives, negatives for pictures that I’m not sure I even have any more. It makes me wonder if that’s what the future is going to be like? What are future generations going to say when they find a digital frame from 2008?

In a way I can’t wait to see what the next 10 years bring because the last 10 years have been interesting.

Now, I’ve had computers since the early 1990’s and most of them have come to me used. Either via someone giving me a hand me down or via computer rentals. There’s nothing wrong with this and to be honest, I’m starting to think that it’s the best way to go.

I bought my computer through Dell, had problems with it being DOA. They replaced it, but now the new one seems to be having driver conflicts. Easy enough to fix, but still frustrating because I shouldn’t be having problems. It seems like when I rented, I had no problems to use the full service contracts, but now that I have limited service, I have problems.

So yeah.

Ah, one of the greatest inventions there has been in years, MP3 players. Why do I think they’re such a great invention? Because the personal tape player and cd player was as well, when their formats were popular. They kept you from having to hear the music that others are listening to while in the same space and what could be better than that? I mean, do you want to listen to someone’s offensive lyrics or want to expose a child to that? I know I sure don’t. I respect others when I play music and with an MP3 player, I can keep my music to myself.

So I’m in a technological overload lately, it seems. I bought a new computer, but it ended up not working. So effectively, I’m on my laptop that is reserved for working, trying to do the little things that I do every day. That doesn’t always work, since they take some pretty hefty chunks of memory. So then there’s this discussion I was involved in about whether a used cisco router was worth the money or not. I say yes, others say no, buy new. While I agree with them in most cases, I don’t understand why they seem to think that new is better. If it works, if it’s guaranteed, and even if it only lasts a few months, you’ve saved money trying out a piece of equipment you may not like in the end.

I thought I’d be able to get a new computer without it having any sort of issues. How wrong I was about that. Suck Suck Suck. Maybe I should have just bought an HD TV so that all I had to worry about is whether I need an HDMI splitter or not. I am starting to technology, but at least my laptop still works properly. That’s all I need right now.

So, we have a laptop, but it only has 512MB of RAM and Vista on it. It works great, it’s barely over a year old and it’s a bit sluggish. I need to find some good laptop memory and upgrade it when I have the extra money. I love having a laptop, I just wish I had thought ahead and realized that I would need to have more RAM. I know I am glad this desktop has more than the bare minimum.

I swear, I need to do something about my cell phone service. I live in the middle of nowhere and get no signal in the house. In fact, I don’t get signal until we’re well into town. Where as, my husband gets fairly decent signal no matter where we are. I might have to get one of the cell phone amplifiers to boost my signal at home so that I can check my texts more than once a week. I keep missing fairly important texts because I have no signal. It sucks.

So, a month ago, I ordered myself a 1GB stick of RAM for my desktop computer, thinking that as long as I got the right speed and such, it would take any off the shelf brand. But being a Dell, my computer has to be contrary. I received the memory and put it in. Booted and the machine and it only saw the one stick. Not good.

So after fiddling with it a bit, it still didn’t work. I learned later that my particular Dell takes special memory. Yeah. Twice the price of what I bought. So, I’m sticking with what the system has. I’ll eventually upgrade to a new, non-Dell, computer. But for now, it does what I want, so it’s all good. It just serves as a reminder to research harder before buying RAM again.

So one of the weird things about technological advances is that often, you have to live in a major city in order to take advantage of the newest technology. In fact, quite often you don’t even know about the latest technology unless you are tech savvy and read up a lot on the Internet. For instance, the latest technological advance for home computer users is fiber optic cables for networking. I didn’t know that they were an option for home networking yet.

It’s definitely an odd world that we live in when you have to rely on the Internet to learn about the latest technology. Unfortunately, there are too many unreliable sites that provide false information, so people never really know what is true and what isn’t. Perhaps the news needs to start covering technology again, like it did before the Internet blew up.

They keep saying that by February of 2009, which is one year and one month from now, television will all be digital and high definition. What does this mean? This means that if you live in a rural area like I do and rely on a set-top or outdoor antennae for local networks, you’re going to be screwed.

There will no longer be analog signal, which is what is picked up by these antennae setups. This means that you won’t be able to pick up the local stations that you’re used to getting unless they are a part of the satellite network that you use. For me? The local channels are not part of DirecTV yet.

This means that it’s time to start thinking about television upgrades, getting a high def television. That means it’s also time to look into HDMI splitters too. It’s going to be a year of expensive television upgrades for people. A lot of people won’t be able to do these upgrades. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way technology goes.