Parting is SUCH Sweet Sorrow.........

The wife has assigned me the task of clearing out my closets and doing something with the somewhat large assortment of electronics that have piled up over the years which are not being used, either because of obsolescence or some minor malfunctions. For one reason or another, I have not seen fit to rid myself of them, but they ARE taking up space, and she's right, I have to reach a resolution as to their individual fates. But, being a man and all, well, it's so damn HARD!

Women, bless 'em, will hold onto that crotchet doll, souvenir plate from Cincinnati, stored away in the bottom of some chest, never to see the light of day, all due to some sentimental value, and that's fine, to a point. Men, however, will amass an incredible amount of bulky, old, unused mechanical and electronic devices long after they have been actually retired from use. It's almost understandable, from our perspective, especially if these items work just fine, but were replaced by a more up-to-date item. We think we are eventually going to find a new purpose for these obsolete items, but somehow we never get around to finding an alternate use for them. We would like to sell them, but due to their obsolescence, we know we will never get anywhere near the price we paid for them, and that just doesn't sit well with us, and we can't bring ourselves to part with a CD player or receiver that robbed us new of perhaps $300, and the best we might get is $25. We rather it rot in our attics rather than suffer the economic humiliation.
It's stupid, I know, but that's a guy for ya.

Well, my own chickens are coming home to roost, and I have to face up to the fact that these orphans of mine need a new home, even if that new home happens to be the dumpster. This is the one major bone I have to pick with the ever evolving technology that shrinks things the size of small refrigerators to something you can carry in your pocket. It's not so much that I object to this incredible efficiency, just the fact that it can happen so damn fast. If it were up to me, I would mandate that new models of anything manufactured be required to have a useful life of five years before they are updated with all the latest advances in technology, so that we actually get some real use out of them before we toss them away in favor of the new. Then, on the release date of the latest toaster, blender, dishwasher, computer, or iPod, we would have all the best stuff trotted out all at once, and give us a chance to find a fitting use or recycling of the things that served us so well. We could even make a national holiday out of the whole affair, saying goodbye to the old, and welcoming in the new. This could especially be good for automobiles, which rarely change drastically from model year to the next. We tend to try and get a good ten years of use out of a car anyway, considering how much the damn things cost us.

I enjoyed my old Blueberry G3 iMac for a good five years before it finally gave up the ghost on me and I HAD to replace it, which I did with the latest (at the time) G-5 iMac, and this machine is indeed leap years more advanced than the original. But, my original iMac served me well, even though by the time she died she was having a hard time running the latest software, and I had to surgically install a larger hard drive to replace the tiny one she came with. Well, now I have this beautiful new baby with it's incredibly fast G-5 processor, a much larger hard drive, and already, she's obsolete! Oh, she can do just about anything I could possibly need her to do, and can do it for years to come, but already I have to upgrade the hard drive, and the new iMacs with their Intel processors can do things mine just can't do, due to it's older architecture. That's progress for you.

Well, I really have my work cut out for me the next several days, as I weed out those items I simply can't justify keeping any longer, and coming up with excuses to store away the rest. The wife simply won't understand how I can justify keeping the things I do keep, but then again, if I wanted to, I could go straight to her shoe closet and I'd win that argument easily. Hopefully, I won't have to. Wives have a way of making winning an argument a losing proposition, one way or another.