Cthulhu, Landru, Vaal. And Bender, indirectly. After all, that's what they are.

A slightly more optimistic relative chose DeusExMachina.

Most of mine are film cameras, not digital.

So who counted a camera obscura or even the light-sensitive contact paper used for kids' projects? And did you remember the one in your car facing backward?

And who still has outdated film in a film camera? One of mine does.

... so even it counts as 1! Never mind the surge protector or UPS.

'Nuf said.

several model 500 telephones lying around, a hand-crank generator that the kids used to ring them with, a Mickey phone (TPC actually required removal of the guts (their term) when I moved, and replacement at my new location), a landline phone I built myself, and an old, rusty mine telephone.

Then again, none of the wired phones is operational; we're only mobile now.

He has reviewed cloud backup and other services, yet never mentioned the legal differences between cloud based service storage and storage on your own in-house machine. That indicates that it's not interesting to his audience, which is telling. NPR recently did an article on how the domain holder of your email service is noticed by your potential job interviewer. Their comparison was between Yahoo! and of course AOL on one side (you're a LUser), and GMail on the other. Guess whose privacy actually suffers the most. This is definitely not understood.

the most common use for manual writing is filling in forms... where cursive is undesirable anyway

Wish I could have convinced my last escrow officer that was true! We were moving to a new area and my spouse couldn't make it to the closing on our new house. So she gave me POA for the closing papers. Guess what? My block-letter initials were fine because that's what I've always used, consistently. But they told me I had to use script for my spouse's signature and initials, even though my version would never match. By now, the only cursive I know well is embedded in my signature, and that's illegible. So the first several pages of paperwork was a struggle as I remembered. And it's those capital letters that are least used, too.

I stopped using script just as soon as my elementary school teachers stopped enforcing it; probably 6th grade.

I've got maybe 15 unread books given to me as presents before I need to dip into the library or a bookstore again for pleasure reading. But I do have a library card; do you?

Something old: Buy "Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games" on CD-ROM. Not for them to read (yet) but for you to read and get ideas for things to do with them.

Something new: Since you're Anonymous, I don't know where you are. But take them here. There is so much amazing hands-on stuff here. There may be similar places elsewhere, but this place is just outstanding.

Something personal: Find ways to bring in things Right Now, as they happen. What you show interest and excitement in will be worth 2x the others, or boost their value. On a suitable occasion (birthday, etc.) give them a small unopened geode. Give them a hammer and safety glasses and let them break it open (well, not the 2-year old yet). If someone sends you steaks kept frozen with dry ice, put the meat away. Instead, get a bowl of warm water, gloves, the hammer and glasses again, and make sci-fi effects. If you're ready to retire that old, dead VCR, then get out the screwdrivers and take it apart with them.