Dinosaur Quirks

I won't lie. I am what amounts to a dinosaur in today's world. I hold on to old software, hardware, methods, and terminology. For example...

I still think Photoshop 5.5 is the best version ever released. Bar none.
I use bash instead of a GUI for many commands. Examples are chmod/chown, rm, and touch.
Several of my MP3s are not in my iTunes library. I open them one by one in a separate media player.
I still own and use (religiously) my Powerbook Pismo.
I still own and use (fairly religiously) my Power Mac 8600/200MP
I still favor text-based editors for things such as HTML. In fact, I'm using pico to type this right now, hand-coding all the tags.
Until 2007 I used a CRT monitor.
I have and maintain a dial-up account with Budget Dial Up services. Sometimes you just gotta use a modem.

It's not that I don't embrace change. I love change (ha..). I just don't see the point in obsolesce. Take my 8600. I can still use it to play old games I love (Marathon and Syndicate come to mind, along with SimCity 2000), or I can install Linux on it and use it for a low-cost, low-power server of sorts.

I still see the need for upgrades, however. I ditched my G4 1.25GHz MP for a G5 2.3 GHz Dual Core earlier this year, and I haven't looked back. Sure, the G4 serves most purposes, but some things like WoW it would choke on. Do I miss my Classic booting? You bet. Which is why I hang on to older machines.

As far as the WYSIWYG editors...I never really got the hang of them. I used Page Mill to author my very first website, and it was okay. Soon, however, I found I learned the languages of HTML, PHP, CSS, Java, and PERL faster if I just typed it outright, which made it so much easier to correct mistakes made and diagnose error messages.

I dunno. Perhaps I'll be extinct soon, but perhaps I'll retain one very useless talent for the afterlife. When I reach the gates (of heaven or hell, I haven't decided yet), I'll be able to look at the keeper of those gates and say proudly, "I have come to code your website, close your tags, echo your results in PHP, and do it all using a secure SSH connection remotely."

My theory: Most technology will outlive you. I know if I hang on to my Pismo, I will die before it gets turned into scrap. Old technology cannot die.

Sony is exempt from this theory, however. Dare I say Beta, MiniDisc, and Memory Stick? I'm amazed they won the Blu-Ray vs HDDVD battle.