Old... it sure beats dead!

I am definitely not a Luddite but I do feel like one when it comes to Twitter.  I see some tweets that have RT, # or @ in them and have no idea what they mean.  There are 10-year-olds that know how to properly read a tweet but this 30-year-old with ~$100000 of education in him has no clue.  In a year when I got married, bought a house and celebrated my 30th birthday it was not one of those so-called life changing events that made me feel like an old man rather it was a few seemingly innocuous occurrences (such as being unable to read a tweet properly) that helped me realize (to paraphrase the immortal words of Lethal Weapon's Roger Murtagh) I might be getting too old for this shit.

I still love gadgets and computers but over the last few months I started to realize that even technology was starting to pass me by.  In August, Hewett Packard decided to discontinue all hardware devices running webOS which meant that their small tablet computer, HP Touchpad, received a substantial price reduction a mere 48 days after being launched to compete against Apple's iPad. Originally the HP Touchpad was selling for $600 but after the price reduction, if you were lucky enough then you could have grabbed a 16gb Touchpad for $99 or a 32gb version for $150. 

I never understood the appeal of tablet computers as their price tag is close to a generic non-Apple laptop yet they do not offer the functionality of a laptop more less a desktop.  Regardless of my belief, I am a sucker for a good deal and I could not pass up the opportunity to buy a significantly discounted HP Touchpad.  I am typing this column on my laptop with my Touchpad lying on the table in front of me.  After owning a tablet computer for over a week now, my suspicions have been confirmed and the Touchpad has been reduced to an expensive toy to surf the internet with and watch videos on.  Basically the best thing about the Touchpad is that it provides me a bigger screen to play Angry Birds on.

Although I was disappointed to realize that I was not more enthusiastic about the HP Touchpad, I was somewhat depressed to realize that 20-year-old Kenny would have loved one of these things.  Twenty year old Kenny was the guy who bought the original iPod Nano.  That younger version of myself would have spent his university days watching Youtube clips on the Touchpad with the class power-point hidden somewhere in the background behind the Facebook app.  You want to know who the Touchpad is marketed towards; not some 30-year-old who spends most of his waking life at work, goes to sleep before 10pm and has most of his past, present and future earnings invested in dirt (house will hopefully be complete by May 2012 but as of last week, the ground has yet to have been dug so all we have is dirt) but the Touchpad is perfect for a 20-year-old who could routinely pull all-nighters, was academically disinterested with a disposable income and a ton of free time.

Just because I do not like tablet computers does not necessarily make me older than dirt but shopping at Mark's Work Wearhouse surely does.  I remember when I was a teenager that I used to joke with my friends that the day I shopped at Tip Top or Mark's Work Wearhouse for everyday clothes is the day that I am officially old.  The reason I went to Mark's Work Wearhouse last week was to buy wrinkle free khakis.  Twenty-year-old Kenny would not have cared about wrinkles.  Heck 20-year-old Kenny probably did not wear khakis unless the occasion discouraged the wearing of jeans.  Well $70 and one old man dress shirt, wrinkle free khakis and old man hoodie later, I am teenage Kenny's definition of an old man.  

Geez the 20-year-old and teenage Kenny were idiots sometimes.  A lot of things have changed over the last year (definitely for the better) and although I am starting to realize that I am no longer a 20-year-old self described outcast, it really is not a bad thing.  Becoming an old(er) man is a new adventure filled with more responsibilities and different priorities and one that I am hopefully prepared to succeed at.  As time goes on there will definitely be more examples of technology passing me by just as l will be doing more shopping at Mark's Work Wearhouse.  I might be getting too old for some shit but there will always be other new interesting stuff to fill its place.