Whew.
Now that I'm a member of the older generation, it's a little sad to see the rapid transformation between a tree full of brightly-wrapped boxes and a naked tree with paper scattered everywhere. On the other hand, people are off in their own little zones, playing with the shiny new stuff.
I bought my wife a portable DVD player (Emprex, $88 at Fry's, very cool) and to my amazement she sat in her favorite chair for two hours straight, watching a baseball movie ("The Rookie") on the 7" screen. Meanwhile, my teen daughter is listening through her new Sennheiser earbuds to a new CD of some music group totally alien to me and my knowledgebase.
I got two toys--one, a PDA-wristwatch that would rank 9.99 on the Nerd Scale. You know you're in for something completely different when you open the thick manual and it refers to "booting" the wristwatch. Cool.
The other toy is something called 20Q, or something like that (haven't opened it yet, but played with one at a party a few weeks ago). You think of something, anything, and then it tries to guess it by asking various questions ("Is is animal, vegatable, or mineral?"..."Is is shiny?"). At least my feeble mind is amazed that it is able to zero in on the correct answer most of the time, with just a few questions asked. It reminds me a bit of that parlor game "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon" (see here).
Anyway, Merry Christmas to you all, and I hope you have a peaceful and successful 2006!
Now that I'm a member of the older generation, it's a little sad to see the rapid transformation between a tree full of brightly-wrapped boxes and a naked tree with paper scattered everywhere. On the other hand, people are off in their own little zones, playing with the shiny new stuff.
I bought my wife a portable DVD player (Emprex, $88 at Fry's, very cool) and to my amazement she sat in her favorite chair for two hours straight, watching a baseball movie ("The Rookie") on the 7" screen. Meanwhile, my teen daughter is listening through her new Sennheiser earbuds to a new CD of some music group totally alien to me and my knowledgebase.
I got two toys--one, a PDA-wristwatch that would rank 9.99 on the Nerd Scale. You know you're in for something completely different when you open the thick manual and it refers to "booting" the wristwatch. Cool.
The other toy is something called 20Q, or something like that (haven't opened it yet, but played with one at a party a few weeks ago). You think of something, anything, and then it tries to guess it by asking various questions ("Is is animal, vegatable, or mineral?"..."Is is shiny?"). At least my feeble mind is amazed that it is able to zero in on the correct answer most of the time, with just a few questions asked. It reminds me a bit of that parlor game "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon" (see here).
Anyway, Merry Christmas to you all, and I hope you have a peaceful and successful 2006!