CHUCK IN A BOX

I love my mom, I really do.

Recently, after seeing her lug around a CD Walkman (OMG HOW absolutely archaic is THAT) and those big ole padded headphones for far too long, my father broke down and bought my mom a nice Sony MP3 player.  I guess he got tired of seeing her with that sac purse – yes she bought a sack purse to carry around the house with her to hold her CD walkman in while she cleaned the house – God love her.  So, now she has this thing and doesn’t quite know how to work it.  She asks my ‘never without her iPod’ niece to help her with it.  Amber apparently explains that she doesn’t know how to work anything but an iPod, wow so young and already in that Apple Cult I guess, and cannot help her grandmother.

Mom calls me, the son, Jr. – cause well….I’m kinda a big deal …… in Japan.  Nah, I am the only one in the family that really knows much about technology.  Wait…isn’t that my 13 year old nephew Alex in there on his wirelessly connected laptop surfing MySpace?  And…and….isn’t that my 6 year old nephew Antonio rocking that DS game? Hmmmm I guess she just has more confidence in my…cause…well…I’m the shit….. in my mind.

Back on topic.  So mom wants me to come over because she has this mp3 player but cannot get anyone to help her actually get music onto it (makes for a really swank paperweight I reckon) and can I help her.  SURE!  I’ve had an mp3 player, I know how to read instructions that come with electronic merchandise, I’m sure I can figure it out.  After arriving at moms place, I quickly show her just how fast it is to rip her own CDs onto the laptop that I gave her and then sync her mp3 player to her music library.  Color her stunned.  She’s amazed at how fast it is.  Before long we have all of her Travis Tritt, Elvis, and other music I know nothing about on her mp3 player and she’s THRILLED.

No more going around the house with a bag around your neck holding your CD walkman, the 8 foot cord, and other accessories – just stick the little mp3 player in your pocket and away you go.

I love my mom.  It’s so great seeing her get so amazed at things that I sort of take for granted.  Is this a glimpse of what it will be like as she and dad move further into their golden years – me the parent and they the child marveling at the wonders of … well….stuff?

Who knows – I just know it makes me feel needed by my parents and it’s a way of letting me feel like I’m able to help them out, even if it is only something as silly as loading songs onto a music player.  *shrug*

…to hold me down.  To make me laugh, to make me frown – or to keep me tethered to a cable modem.  I previously had a little Belkin G wireless router to try to share the high speed goodness of Comcast throughout the rest of the house and to my laptop upstairs.  I would frequently have issues with the number of bars and was never able to take my laptop outside on really nice days – as of today (about 30 minutes ago actually) that has ALL CHANGED!

By now, if you are not living under a rock, everyone knows that Circuit City is going out of business (I bet Best Buy is LOVING IT!) and today we stopped in to see what they had on sale.  I had been checking out more powerful wireless routers – I’m kinda partial to Belkin – I guess because they’ve seemed so easy to work with so I had been looking at their N and N+ routers.  I was leaning toward the N+ because it has a USB port so that I could plug in my external hard drive and it has gigabit Ethernet ports.  Circuit City had the N+ on sale – regularly $119.00 with 20% off which ended up being about $95 – I’ll take the $25 thankyouverymuch!  Maybe I’ll give the G one to someone on the Petersburg Freecycle website….I already gave my parents an old Netgear router I had when I set up their network.  Hmmm maybe my aunt might need/want one – I’ll have to check.

This one seemed to take a bit longer to set up than the G originally did BUT after getting it all up and running, I took a tour of the yard with my laptop and was able to get a full 5 bars ANYWHERE in my house OR out in the yard.  This is gonna be so great in summer when I can sit out on the back deck or on the back patio and surf, game, or blog.  YAY TECHNOLOGY!!