Closing out the Decade

December 31, 2009

Useless Update

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As the decade comes to a close, here is a quick recap of whatever. We’ve come a long way, considering I had dialup internet until 2001 and analog cable until 2005. These are in no particular order and are completely random. I didn’t cover everything and may have missed stuff. I apologize for this book of a post.


Things that didn’t exist in the 1990s that I can’t live without today:

  • Google Everything: (GMail, YouTube, Maps, Talk, Voice, Docs, Chrome)
  • Verizon FiOS (and broadband in general)
  • Digital Television & HD (haha remember those fuzzy assed analog signals)
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Web 2.0
  • Apple iPod
  • Curb Your Enthusiasm
  • Entourage
  • portfolioso.com (launched 5/31/2004)
  • Android OS – This will be the next big thing of the next decade, especially when Google launches their Nexus One phone.

Things that didn’t last very long

  • Anyone remember Cybiko back in 2000? I never had one but it was a huge ass handheld wireless text messager. It was all the rage. I remember checking one out when the Ravens beat the crap out of the Giants during that horrid Super Bowl. Complete fad.
  • CD-RWs – Ha. back in 2001 my new computer had a CD burner. I thought I was the man because I could burn a mix CD and then erase it and make a new one when new music came out. Clearly, the iPod hadn’t made its mark yet.
  • DVDs – Well that was a short lived technology (ish – it still exists but many have moved on). The first DVD players were like $500 and I don’t think I owned one until 2001. Shit, the 1980s TV I owned back then didn’t even have RCA inputs for it. Nah, but DVDs are useless now. Blu-Ray is in. Be careful though: any kind of optical media is a dying breed, as people are just loading up HD movies on huge harddrives.
  • Probably a lot more, but I either forgot about them or couldn’t care less

Things that were really shitty

  • This Moron
  • Accounting (AC11 and AC12). Way to fuck up my GPA, asshole. I haven’t struggled that hard since I learned to walk.
  • The wonderful luck and success I’ve had in a particular area. My boys from home know all about it.
  • The recession(s). Shouts October 2008 when… yeah… I am poor now because of that. F*in stock market.
  • 2008 in general
  • Windows Vista
  • The 2004 and 2007 World Series Champions
  • 9/11, useless wars and politics

Things that were really good

  • Yankees defeat Los Mess in 2000 World Series/ Defeat Phillies in 2009
  • Giants Win Superbowl XLII
  • Google
  • Wi-Fi
  • Apps! (whether it’s Apple’s App Store or the Android Market) There’s an app for that!
  • Droid (even though I only owned it for 8 out of the 3652 days this decade)

Remember these from high school?

  • Senior prank day 2003 (absolute chaos before Prin. Jeffery arrived and calmed things down). I was a teensy freshman.
  • Yearbook
  • The library
  • Playing a little Doom in Borys’ class senior year
  • Paulie P’s programming class, and how we just played LAN games the whole time and all got As
  • Remember when the football field wasn’t covered by toxic waste landfill?
  • The senior buddy auction
  • Gedge’s class from 2000 to 2006. That guy is the man!

And you know what the scariest thing is? Maybe it’s just because I was a child in the 1990s and grew up then. When I think of the 1990s, I still think of them as modern. In my head the 1980s aren’t even that far off. But they are. And looking back at the 1990s, technology sucked. I mean come on – in 1995 my computer sported a 75MHZ processor, 8MB of RAM and a whole GB of disk space. The microsd caes in my Droid holds sixteen times more and it’s like 1 centimeter. Cell phones were like $3 per minute. Shit, in 2001 I thought that my desktop was ballin’ – a 1.9GHZ P4 with 256MB of RAM and an 80GB harddrive. Now it’s useless. Hell, my 2006 laptop even sucks ass, I mean come on – what kind of wimpy ass processors only have one core?

And portfolioso.com’s bold predictions for the future:

  1. Pay attention to the cloud -Applications, storage and data will be storied on third party servers, rather than on personal harddrives or corporate server rooms. It will be cheaper than paying an in house IT department. Organizations don’t have to worry about aging hardware and technical problems. Google has started doing this with its GMail for domains. This could potentially put me out of work. Ha. Unless Google hires me (You hear that Google? Love ya.)
  2. 4G What the hell is 4G? It’s one better than 3G, DUH! Nah in all seriousness, 3G defines cellular data plans and such. It’s not really that fast, but 4G is the next generation of that. In the future, everyone will hop on to the wireless data connection bandwagon. By the way, remember IPv6? Whatever happened to that – didn’t we run out of IP addresses yet? Well that will happen next decade.
  3. Google will become evil – Just kidding. I certainly hope not, but at the rate they’re growing, you’re going to start getting some haters.

I’ll check back in a decade and let you know how I did. Maybe we’ll laugh, because something I haven’t mentioned and wasn’t invented yet will be the next best thing. Oh yeah, one minor setback: the Mayan calendar ends in 2012 – and they haven’t been wrong much so maybe we’re screwed. Who knows.

PS – surprise 2-4 inch snowstorm to end the decade

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