Power up your PC tower. You can hear the hum and clicks from the IDE drive as it boots up. The glow from your CRT monitor illuminates the room.

Kaazaa, Limewire, and/or Napster are running in the background, slowly downloading a new supply of music to add to winamp.

You hop on AIM to see who’s online. Looks like it’s just you for now, so you start browsing Planet Source Code for some ideas for your next project.

You never knew when the last CD would be burned. You never knew when the last floppy disk would be used. You never knew the last time you’d sign on to AIM or ICQ, but it happened.

The nostalgia is real. I look forward to the future, but at the same time I mourn the loss of a past–just out of reach.

Some throwback jams for this post/era: