Some do more than others but I, like all guys, am interested in all gadgets electronic. I’m not throwing myself a pity party or anything, I’m just making an observation: for the last seven years I’ve been sitting here (literally!) on the sidelines with Locked-In Syndrome watching all kinds of breakthroughs in technology and really cool major inventions become available to regular, everyday people like me.

Before my stroke in 2006, Facebook was getting pretty big but it was competing neck and neck and duking it out with MySpace. My what? Never heard of it. Maybe it’s not in Webster’s Dictionary but everyone knows what it means to “unfriend” someone. Twitter wasn’t even invented yet but we all know what it means to send out a “Tweet”. One of my favorite late-night talk show hosts is Jimmy Fallon, I think he’s hilarious. One of his routines is Late Night Hashtags. What he does is set up a funny hashtag like, #mymostembarrassingbreakup or #worstroommateever, and people send in Tweets that fall into those categories. I don’t fully understand how to set up and use hashtags or how they actually work, but I get the general concept of them. So basically, my knowledge of modern technology comes from commercials and late night TV!

Tons of people have smart phones nowadays, they’re high powered miniature computers people carry around with them that they can call, or more likely – text*, people with. When Jen first got her phone a couple years ago, I convinced her that it would be fun for both of us if she downloaded and played Angry Birds while I watched. I was wrong. You know what’s pretty fun to actually do but not all that fun to watch? Probably a lot of things but playing video games has to be way up there on the list. That little experiment lasted about 5 minutes.

Smart phones are great, I’m still amazed that we can look up movie times and buy tickets, check email and get directions to where we’re going – all without leaving the van. The last time I personally used a cell phone was right before my stroke on the one I had had for about a week. At the time my Nokia flip phone with the optional sport fun pack was a fairly nice phone. It probably wasn’t at the top of the line, but I bet it was pretty close. Now, I’m sure I couldn’t give it away.

Jen, my Dad, even my 14 year old nephew all have tablets and know how to get around on them pretty good. Speaking of tablets, a friend of ours sent us this video. It’s hilarious:

http://www.snotr.com/video/8965/

I hope I’m still around in 2030, or even 2040, because I’m really curious to see what cool stuff we’ll all probably have by then!

* I can actually get my hand on and do that one. Jen helped me set up an account (phone #) on Google Voice. From there I can send and receive text messages by myself. On top of that, we forwarded my “phone” to my email account so all of my incoming texts go right in my inbox. It’s how I stay in touch with my nephews. Like almost all teenagers, the text message is their primary form of communication.