What's That , Grampa ?

It's amazing how fast things can change . What's ' in' today can be a museum item next day . Change can overtake you without knowing it . This happened to me several times . Latest is last week , I was looking for the disk holder of my son's laptop . Gone .Today's computers don't have use for disks anymore . Kids use USB now to save their files . It's the ' thingy ' you see hanging on college kids' necks or as key chains. In fact , some colleges including Harvard have their professors do their lectures in podcast . Cool . I want to be a student today . I don't have to take notes or worry about missing a lecture . I just need to be tech savvy.

I'm sure there are more obvious changes that are noticeable to us middle age folks . The ' film ' is definitely one . The popularity of digital camera certainly makes ' film ' obsolete . HDTV will definitely be a regular feature of every TV sets. I remember when ' fax ' was 1st introduced . I was amazed by the technology . It's of course ' passes ' now . You've got to be fast minded to keep track of all these changes or else people , if not your kins , will make fun of you . Like what happened to Pres. Bush lately . Of course , we've heard about him calling the internet , internets ! Now , Bush referred to Google as The Google.

We Live In Very Interesting Times ..

Yup . The other day , my friend was telling me how different today's TV world is with so many channels . ' I don't know what to watch ' he ' complained ' to me over the phone . The reason why is that he lives in Canada and in that country they get the sattelite feeds of all channels without paying for them. Lucky bastard . If you have the right equiptments and dish , you can get Pay Per View , Video On Demand , History channel , Playboy , HBO , MSNBX , Fox News and CNN etc . without paying the monthly fees . It's a TV addict paradise over there .

Me . I am happy watching the 4 major netwoks - ABC , CBS , NBC and Fox and on cable - MCNBC , CNN and Fox News. Interesting how the 3 cable news are all different and competitive. Fox is rightist , while the 2 are left-middle of the road .When Fox' O'Reilly identified Rep. Mark Foley ( delirately or not ) as a Democrat when the scandal 1st broke , MSNBC sure highlighted the mistake in their various shows . Now CNN , featuring the terrorist arms video, is being criticized by Fox .
As far asthe network news battle is concern , it's as heated as before the days of 3 oldtimers - Brokaw, Jennings and Rather -who left news scene . CBS' Katie Couric Evening News , after initial surge in the ratings , is reported to be lagging behind at 3rd . NBC's World Tonight by Brian Williams is at 1st followed by ABC's World News by Charles Gibson . I watched all 3 news at 6:30 PM . I start with Gibson and change to NBC or ABC depending on which is more interesting . The problem is that all 3 networks break for commercials practically at the same time .