Obsolete. A word that has one meaning in the technology world: useless. Lately this is how I have been feeling about my life and my computer, video camera, digital camera, iPod, cell phone, and basically everything else I own that has a circuit board in it. My gaming rig that I built last year never actually began to serve its constucted purpose. It bever took me to any Counter-Strike tournaments. It was never used to host a game of CS either, nor was it used to even connect to the internet. No, my aspirations for that computer completely fell apart within hours of building it. My tyrannous parents informed me that it would never see any kind of internet connection, meaning no games. My life carried on, but much more low-spirited. The fact that my dreams for that computer were now dashed meant that the non-returnable parts had cost me about $800 USD--more than enough to buy a Mac mini. As I said, I trudged on, despite having missed my first chance to buy a Mac.

The frustration of becoming obsolete continued when an incident with a hardware review caused an uproar, a personal attack on me. I won’t go into the details, all I will say is that going through that experience greatly hurt me and my trust in others. That incident stole the joy away from reveiwing hardware. I felt as if all the time I had spent reading hardware reviews by other reviews on sites like Toms Hardware and Hard OPC had been wasted. The thing that I had but so much effort and time and joy into had been torn from me.  So it left me an empty shell of a geek, my joy receptors stolen by a person who I never even met. As you may have guessed, that incedent has the large amount of the force behind my lessend activity on Deep Thought in recent months. I was really damaged by it and don’t think I will ever trust the system again. My tech life grew became further obsolete with the release of Windows Vista. Before the release of Vista i was at the top of things, with Windows XP Pro. However, I still have not upgraded to Vista and highly doubt I will because of the complete insanity that Microsoft is charging for it.

This feeling was only accelerated by my lack of any modern gaming system since the Nintendo 64. I am two generations behind in console games and dont plan to rejoin that movement ever. Despite making me feel obsolete, the current generation of consoles cost far too much. The PS3 is a large paperweight, the XBox 360 is behind in graphical technology, and the Nintendo Wii is simply just missing something appealing. I simply dont see a need to pay $500USD for a new game system. Many of my frineds do, and then rub their technical status in my face. It does not really help me at all.

When I wrote this article, I was stuck with a PC that lacked internet. I couldn’t play games like Counter Strike and i couldn’t even check my email without big brother (my parents) looking over my shoulder. To a geek like me this was the ultimate form of repression. It depressed me and lead me to forcing myself into solitary. I felt like I was the 6600 NVIDIA graphics card inside of my PC. This is to say that I felt obsolete, I felt dusty and unwanted because I could not offer the skills to be used. The thing is that you shouldn’t let others having a better computer, or a Mac get you down. You will always have the chance to work for it. You will always be able to make yourself feel up to date. It will just take a little work.