Change is good

Yesterday I saw an old TV someone had left by their trash can. It was the kind with a wood console. Awesome.

Took me back to my childhood. When we had a giant wood surrounded TV. It was like a piece of furniture. We put decorations and junk on it. Dusting it was quite a task. It had knobs instead of buttons and I don't think it had a remote. For as big as it was, I don't remember the screen really being that big.

Now I have a 50 inch TV. Quite different from the TV we had when I was growing up. We don't even have to unplug it when there's thunder and lightning. We've moved up in the world.

We went from this:

To this:

Then in my lifetime I've also witnessed the slow death of the cassette tape. We went from cassette tapes that had to be re-wound and then you'd push play and it would be halfway through your song of choice, so you'd have to keep trying.

Then we moved up to cds. They were slighty better than cassettes. At least the sound quality was better. And you could completely skip songs if you wanted to, or restart the song from the beginning with minimal effort. But if it got scratched it was over. And if you only liked one song you would never listen to it. And they were so bulky. David used to have so many cds and they were so annoying. He'd pay $15 for it and it only had one or two songs he liked. And storing the cases was such a headache.

Now we've moved on to Ipods. I'm an ipod convert myself. Its sleek, its compact, its pink. All points for the ipod. You can get them with video, you can play games, they don't skip and if they get scratched its merely cosmetic. And they don't skip when you hit a bump, like discmans. And you can buy individual songs, instead of entire albums of crappy songs for one good one. I love my ipod.

We went from this:

To this:

(By the way that's not my ipod. I don't listen to Nelly Furtado. No offense to anyone who does.)

Everything is made to be more convenient these days. We need to save time and energy. So even broccoli has been streamlined for our convenience.

We went from this:

To this:

The last thing that has changed drastically compared to the way I remember it is road trips.

We used to have to rough it on long cross country trips. Fighting with each other and kicking the back of the seat till we got yelled at was our entertainment.

Now everyone has portable dvd players. You can watch Ratatouille in the backseat when you're driving to Disneyland.

I personally love that there is something to keep my kids entertained on long drives. Saves me from getting a giant headache.