When Did I Become Old School?
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I’m only 35, but in the past few weeks I’ve noticed more and more that in some aspects of my life, I’m a bit old school. Some might call it being a fuddy duddy, old fart, or even a stick in the mud. Call it what you will, but in my book, I’m simply old school.

What strikes me as funny about this is that I’m a computer consultant by trade so I’m always involved with new technology on a consistent basis. Everyone has heard of the cutting edge, but in most things related to technology, I’m considered on the bleeding edge. For example, I have close to 30 handheld devices and typically carry at least 3 with me at all times. In my office I’m running Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless networks. The 802.11b network has been up for over a year and the bluetooth network for close to 6 months. Both my main workstation and my laptop both dual boot to Windows XP Professional and Red Hat Linux and as I type this I’m downloading Red Hat 9.0.

And yet with all this technology in my life, the keyboard that I use and love oh so dearly is an IBM 101-key keyboard circa 1990. In computer years, we’re talking about a keyboard that came with a x486. What is most distinctive about the keyboard though is it’s response when typing and the volume that is generated when typing. This is a LOUD keyboard, but I absolutely love this keyboard. In fact, it was reading this article explaining that they are still making them and that I can get this one repaired should it ever die (heaven forbid), that prompted me to write this entry.

But it doesn’t stop there, I’ve found that there’s old school in all parts of my life. When it comes to bicycling, I’m very old school. I prefer steel bikes made with lugs, Brooks leather saddles and friction shifting. My favorite pen is a fountain pen, which I carry almost every day. And I still use a simple text editor in all of my web design, regardless of the size of the project. What scaring me right now as I type this is that I could go on.

Maybe this is simply the yang to my yin of technology. That is certainly an easy explanation, but what I’m finding is that as I grow older, there’s more “old school” in my life. What the hell is going to happen when I’m in my 40’s? From my perspective, I’ve simply found things that work for me and I don’t see a need to change them, however, just saying that out loud makes me sound like an old fart. What’s next hair in me ears?

1. Craig said...

I hear ya, Mashby. I was just thinking the other day about how much more likely I am to buy multiple of something as soon as I determine that it fits my needs really well. I do this to avoid having to change how I do things and/or research a new purchase. This holds true for clothes (I buy 2-3 pairs of the same pants when I find some I like) and for technology in some cases (I have a spare digital camera, since they stopped making mine, and I'm not even tempted to migrate to Ogg Vorbis or MP3Pro since I now have everything in MP3). Old school isn't always bad when there's no compelling reason to update.