Heaven help my grades - I finally broke down and bought "World of Warcraft". That was bad planning. Oh well, all I have to do is make it through the next few weeks. I've always been a lot more responsible about a paying job than about school.

Now I just have to find one of those... :)

Years ago - five at least, maybe 10 - I remember reading a "Family Circus" comic in the newspaper. There was this montage of the kids playing with their toys - remote control car, some kind of game console, talking dolls, all kinds of stuff like that. Their parents were watching them, and one said to the other something like "I wonder what they'll tell their grandchildren they had to do without."

I was thinking about that cartoon Saturday because when I walked past a game store in the mall, I saw a display of some games. They're game controllers like would go with a Playstation or something, but the controllers are the whole thing - no console, no discs or cartridges, just plug the controller into the TV and play. They cost $25. The one that caught my eye was one for the game "Mortal Kombat II," because it was one of the few games I had for my Sega Genesis.

Now, the Sega Genesis came out when I was 10, to make a vague guess. It cost at least $150 retail, probably more but I'm not sure, and most games cost between $25 and $50, I think. For that you got a 16-bit processor with no saved games or anything, a little bigger than a modern laptop. And now just 10 years later you get the same thing small enough to fit in your hand, for a fraction of the price.

I'm every bit as unqualified to predict the future as anyone else, but when I'm telling stories to my grandchildren, it might sound something like this: "When I was a kid, our portable music players were called Walkmen and Discmen, and they could only hold 10 or 15 songs, and you couldn't even choose the order!"