30 Days Of Thanks - Technology

I'm taking a break from online Christmas browsing to write this post.  My children do not know what they want for Christmas.  This is a good thing, yet this could also be a bad thing.  When they get in this "don't know what I want mood" it tells me they really don't care what we get them. This is good.  It also means I have to dig deep in my memory bank (or my photo archives) to figure out if they have mentioned anything (or took a picture of something) in the past year as a possible gift.  This is bad, because it requires effort on my part lol.

It's amazing how much technology has progressed in my lifetime. I have a background in information technology and despite being rusty, I can still appreciate some of these new things that were not even in our radar when I worked in the industry.  Or at least, in my line of work, it wasn't.  I remember one of the instructors in my computing class who was the first one to own a wireless laptop.  We were so thrilled as she demonstrated how she can print from her laptop without wires to the printer across the room. This was in the late 90's. Touch-technology back then, I believe, was limited to military and government use. What was so amazing, pricey, and unavailable to the common man in my early adulthood is now the norm for my children.

Speaking of pricey, our long-distance bill back then was ridiculous! With my then boyfriend (now husband) in the US, British Columbia Telephone (now Rogers) owned my bank account.  I got somewhat smart and started buying phone cards.  Not sure how much I really saved but knowing we can only chat for so long on the phone card helped control the poor student budget. If Messenger, Hangouts, or Skype was available then, the only thing I would be losing is sleep.

I'm not up to date on technology the way I was in my student/working days.  Sometimes I have to ask my kids to do things for me.  But consuming is not the same as proficiency.  As much as my kids can consume these technologies I can run circles around them in how to troubleshoot and fix issues. And for that, I still claim bragging rights.  

For technology and how it has made my Christmas shopping easier, my long-distance bill non-existent, and tech-mom credibility in the eyes of my kids, today I am really thankful.

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