In this age of advanced electronics and geeked out high techy stuff, I'm sure I will encourage some snickering and possibly disgust and pity from some readers.

I write this blog on a PC that's about 8 years old. I bought it for fifty bucks. The little Intel inside sticker doesn't say Pentium 4 or III or even II, but "Pentium Pro", whatever the fuck that means. There is another sticker next to it that says Windows 95.

Have you finished bracing yourselves on the furniture from shock? Maybe you'll find some relief in knowing that the PC has been upgraded to Windows 98 and has some more RAM or memory or some kind of add on.

It's loud. I think it used to be housed in its own air-conditioned room before coming to stay here. Like most octogenarians, it needs to stop and rest for a while, usually while I'm in the middle of IM'ing someone or writing a wicked clever (or so I think) blog post. And of course sometimes, it just crashes for the hell of it. (A zen approach to my computer would be that it's teaching me patience.)

I'm also on dial up. I'm not even sure this thing could handle a cable modem, but I paid fifty dollars for the computer...do you think I'm going to shell out more than that each month for high speed internet?

I'm not completely in the dark with technology. I have a Pocket PC that is newer than my computer. Of course, I bought it on clearance and it's discontinued. I also can't connect it to my PC. But I can my work computer. It can play MP3s and shit, but since the battery is not meant to do that regularly, I rarely listen to it.

Time for further ridicule: I don't have a CD player in my car. It's a cassette player. I meant to get a CD player at some point, but do I need to remind you I only paid fifty bucks for the PC. Do you think my frugal purse strings are going to loosen for my car?

Before you jump to conclusions, I'm not cheap, just broke. I live on a very tight budget. So tight you could make a diamond out of a lump of coal, but obviously not really or else I wouldn't be broke because I'd be living off diamond sales.

So if you see the lights dim when I turn on my computer at night, know it's just me. Keeping it real. Circa 1996.