Confessions of a Starbucks addict

I used to be really smart. I used to have rather high-thinking jobs. In the last 10 years, I've not done a thing to keep up with the times. I'm a mom. I'm a stay-at-home-mom. What's worse is that I'm a stay-at-home-mom that literally stays at home. I don't go anywhere and I don't do anything. I stay. That's my life.

I've come to realize that I've really let technology pass me by. I used to be the person that everyone came to when they didn't know how to use some new program at work. I once taught an entire division (of a company I worked for) how to use PCs, since the company decided to migrate away from Macs. I knew how to use the entire MS Office suite. I knew Lotus inside and out. I kept up with stuff like that because I *had* to, or they'd find someone else to hire who knew more than me.

I guess I haven't totally let technology pass me by. I mean, I know how to use a DVR with the best of them. I know how do download mp3s and how to load them onto an mp3 player (never mind that I don't actually own an mp3 player, but my kids and my parents do). I can figure out a new cell phone within minutes of powering it on.

I once worked for IBM. This was back in the day, pre-MS Office, pre-OS/2 Warp. Heh, we were lucky if the computer we were given was actually a computer and not a terminal. Back then, when I first started there, I was unlucky and had a terminal. This wasn't so bad because for two weeks before actually starting work there, they put me in a class to learn Script. I learned two other programs while I was in that class, but Script is the one I used most. Script was what we used to type up simple letters and documents. Think of it as HTML for the MS-DOS generation. Scary! No, not really. It was just a ton of tags to put in front of your words. Make sure you close out the tags and your document will look fine. Like I said, it was HTML...sort of. It didn't have commands that didn't make sense.

My point is, I knew Script. It was coding for secretaries. Years later I moved beyond being *just* a secretary. I kept up with the times. MS Word made my life much easier. Give me a GUI over anything else, thanks.

When I left the workforce, I was working for Visa. I was in the international fraud department. I helped track perpetrators of fraud. I also helped everyone in the department with their computer issues, because I knew how to fix them, and I did it quickly and efficiently.

Then I became a stay-at-home-mom. I used to keep current with the new releases of MS Office, only because my husband's company used to buy the Developer's Suite from Microsoft, and he got one of the licenses. I used to get all the new MS stuff. The last MS Office I had was 2003. It's just too expensive to buy anymore.

All of this stagnation became quite obvious when I was trying to "freshen up" my blog by changing its template. I wanted to find something that someone else had done, tweak a few things, and have a nice, new, pretty page. This did not work out so well. What the heck is CSS? Who decided that HTML wasn't enough? Why would someone make it so that I cannot resize the column widths by making the header have part of the columns start in the header? Who decided to make my life difficult?

I'm sitting here, pondering going to the community college to learn all this *new* stuff. I know, CSS has been around awhile...but I didn't pay attention. I'm thinking that I'm about 10 years behind everyone because I've been at home. I haven't been a tax-paying member of society for that long (in case you're worried, I don't pay taxes but my husband sure does!) I'm almost afraid to admit that I have become exactly like my parents, calling on my husband to figure things out for me because I just don't get it anymore.

Do I really need all this stress over a blog?