MY COMPUTER WON'T LET ME RETIRE

Virus peddlers also keep me alert. Without their continuous threat on my computer, I might get complacent and let my mind stagnate again. I now require all my friends to use secret passwords when sending me email and I never open any attachment -- even those that promise to show me how to make $93,032 per week while working out of my home. Although one week of work at those rates would pay for a backup computer, I don't trust them any more than I would trust my dog to guard a steak on the grill while I took a nap.

During World War II, the word Spam was never spoken in good company. The product it represented was as welcome at chow time as slop on a shingle (SOS). Now, the geeks who have never tasted mouthwatering Spam are proliferating electronic garbage under that name. As a consequence, my mind has new challenges. Each time I activate my spam screener to shred an unwanted message, the author changes his or her name.

FROM LETTERS TO PICTURES

Back in the age of the dinosaurs, computers lacked the memory and software required for storing pictures. Now that the dinosaurs are almost extinct and computers have more memory than a tortoise's brain, pictures of grandkids keep coming by email. Kodak Brownie cameras are being slowly replaced by 3 gig digital cameras. If your kids don't have a digital camera, get one for Christmas.

Why send the kids a digital camera? The answer is simple. If you depend on your offspring to take photos of your favorite grandkids, you'll have a long wait. If you wait for them to develop the pictures and scan them into their computers, the wait's even longer. By the time that happens, the dinosaurs might be staging a comeback thanks to the wonders of cloning.

Digital pictures are simple as long as you have a new computer and a 2003 digital camera. All you do is point, shoot, and then attach your camera to your computer. With my camera, the computer quickly responds with a step-by-step "wizard" that leads me through the reproduction routine.

Computers have kept my mind working so hard that senility and dementia never caught up. Once I get ahead of the game, I'll start teaching other seniors to use them. My latest effort in that arena can be found at http://www.angelfire.com/space/web_class... If you like beta testing, take a good look.

Humorous_sage

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