Mind weakening

I was in CompUSA today. No, it was emphatically not to fondle PDAs (although, unexpectedly, I did see a battery dead HP47--x. Good thing it was dead, then.) I'm writing to tell you something dread has happened to me.

At what point did I lose my sense of all things electronic? There used to be a time when I was certain what memory formats went with which machines. I knew all sorts of media for DVD, CD, and video camcorders. I can list all the specs of every minor variant of PDAs, motherboards, and video cards. Only today, did I find myself befuddled by a wall of digital, 8mm tapes. Good thing I did not randomly pick one up, since the Sony SteadyCam my wife got from her parents accepted MiniDV.

That's not even the worse of it. I visited CompUSA to buy a memory card reader. Straight forward. That Sony camcorder also has a slot for Memory Stick Duo. I had my eye set on a small, keychain card reader. Now, gadget lust runs strong, of course. So I hung around just looking at the other card readers, wondering what shapes engineers think up. Then I noticed on one package, a list and picture of all supported cards. Memory Stick Duo? What's that? Well, I remembered my MemStick card was small, and this picture shows a small card inserted into an adapter, which totaled the size of the MemStickPro. Hmm...

The good news is that I decided to play it safe and bought an 8-in-1 reader instead. At least it's USB2.0. I was left with this vague feeling that as I recede into middle age, I'm going to be more overwhelmed by the flashing lights of new technology. Gack.