I was always the vocal luddite who advocated for paper books and damned the e-reader. Then, in June, my birthday came on the heels of a week spent traveling around Colorado, my shoulder bag loaded with three library books. I came home from Colorado with a pinched nerve in my neck, from carrying around three big library books in my shoulder bag. Two weeks later, my husband presented me with my birthday gift, a Nook! (He’s an excellent gift giver, noticing my subtle hints, such as “My neck hurts sooo bad from travelling with books. You should get me a Nook for my birthday.”) When I flew back to Colorado in August, the Nook took the place of all books. My carry-on felt about one thousand times lighter. I loved my Nook! I loaded it up with library books and a few purchases from the BN.com site. An availability of titles at our local library was the reason I chose a Nook over the Kindle, they didn’t have Kindle ready files (then, they do now.) I just wanted the simple e-reader, (not the ostentatious tablet) so that saved us the expense of possibly considering an iPad. The Nook rocked my reading life. It went everywhere with me, especially to bed. I loved it so much, I tossed the original packaging, just to show how committed we were to each other. Then, for Christmas, I got the surprise of the decade when I opened a present to discover an iPad2 (3G no less). “Are you Freaking KIDDING me?” I stammered about 8 times. Just so you get the full effect, the present came via delivery about 3 days prior to the holiday, while I was on a very contentious conference call for work. You know...

My smart phone officially and irrevocably became too smart for its own good on Thursday night at 2:30 AM.  I woke to a light beep and blinking indicator.  I picked up my phone where it sat, functioning as an alarm clock, on my bedside crate.  Instead of the clock I expected to see glowing on the LCD capacitive touch screen, a picture of a smiling green gingerbread man stared back at me. Gingerbread, Android’s new operating system, had arrived.  And he was ready to move in.  Very exciting for the faintly closeted tech fetishist. A few quick button presses, a brief wait, and my phone had become a Gingerbread house.  Casting the remnants of sleep aside, I plunged into my upgraded phone with abandon.  The keyboard had gained the ability to adapt to the maladroit proddings of my chubby fingers, the new app store lived up to expectations, the maps loaded faster, power management was much improved, the refreshed icons with their eerie green glow gave me a sense of comfort, reassuring me that technology was marching forward, filling old shells with new power and capacity.  Gingerbread had seamlessly integrated, my existing configurations and applications were unaffected apart from running more efficiently. “Gingerbread,” I said, lightly caressing the burnished silver phone, “You are amazing.” Just as I spoke, my phone buzzed.  Not in response to my words, of course.  Just a coincidence.  Surely. I cradled my Gingerbread and drifted off to sleep for another hour. When I woke up, I discovered that Gingerbread had made a small, almost unnoticeable change to one of my widgets.  I have several traffic widgets installed on my homescreen.  They’re kind of awesome.  I press the button and the widget tells me how long it will take me to...