If you ever wondered what techies did BEB -- Before eBay -- to find the coolest "used" technologies, widgets and gizmos, they simply traveled to a local Hamfest. A Hamfest, for everyone who missed this rare sub-culture gathering of the Ham amateur radio generation[s], it is a massive second hand technology fair, occurring nearly every weekend during warm weather. My father would travel for miles to attend; anything to be surrounded by the old "junk" that was sold to other hams, engineers, hobbyists, anyone who sought out motherboard key chains or electronics equipment that seemed 100's of years old to me. But to my Dad, this was nirvana. Someone else's adventure and inventions became my Dad's treasures.

To "appease" him I would tag along, but I never knew how much of an impact those fairs and that time with my Dad would have on my life until recently. I can trace back my love for technologies and gizmos to those Sunday mornings basking in the hot sun, hanging out with my Dad and rummaging through the broadcast isles and WWII surplus. I expanded my knowledge of old equipment, hardware, inventing, and my father. Now I truly understand the old adage, one mans junk is another's treasure. When my father found something interesting, perhaps something like a $40,000 spectrum analyzer that needed a bit of work that he could buy for pennies on the dollar, he'd tell everyone about his find, why it was so great and why we lugged it home.

Years later, when I find a product that impresses me I spend all my time in a similar fashion trying to share the good word with all who are interested. For instance, although I LOVE my iPhone, the battery life causes some problems for the executive on the go. As I travel from client to client, appointment to appointment, I am on the move and the last thing I need to go wrong is to loose touch with the world. Therefore, I depend on my iPhone to keep me in touch with work and my family.