I asked for it and now I'm horrorstruck. As soon as I suggested "The Boomer" as my Yahoo! Tech persona, I wanted to take it back. Who in their right mind wants to confess to having used a typewriter? And remembering when going online meant wedging my analog phone into its 2,400-baud acoustic coupler (often while pumping a phone booth full of change)?

I instantly ran to the mirror, did my wrinkle check, performed a few of those lion-faced chin strengthening exercises, sucked in my gut and said to the mirror, "You can do this; because you've seen enough to pick what's worth the effort and leave the rest to rot."

Never mind me!  We can do this.

There are tons of us; we use tech like nobody's brother, we've got disposable income, and we're not exactly going gently into that goodnight. We can look at an idea like the Chatterbug, a little dongle that turns any analog phone into a VOIP phone for $9.99 a month and recognize that there's a whole group of folks who'd rather use VOIP this way than sit in front of their computer and Skype. We can use a service bureau that loads up your iPod (at 62 cents a CD) and then make a decision about whether we'd like to pay for the service or futz around with moving tunes first to our PC and then to our iPods. We can use our Bluetooth headsets and look as Secret Servicey as the best of them, or we can decide that we don't want another device to charge up every 60 hours.

We've seen enough and know ourselves well enough to transcend the lemming approach to tech. We've got the courage of our convictions. So – let it all out, let the sun shine in,  and let your hair down. This is our place to celebrate what works and damn the rest.