At some point (probably 1990), video games passed me by

Good old Atari 2600 "Combat."

Back in The Day™ (1982-85), I played a lot of video games.

Arcade games, Atari games, Commodore 64 games, etc. The term "gamer" didn't exist back then, but I was one.

We always knew that computer technology was going to advance and that the games we played would soon seem primitive compared with what was to come. But that didn't make them any less fun.

Once gaming systems and the games themselves started taking their expected quantum leaps forward in terms of graphics, sound and general sophistication, that's when I fell off the cutting edge.

Soon, I feel behind even the trailing edge.

After not too many years, I couldn't even see the edge.

It's not that I didn't like video games anymore. It's just that school, marriage, my career, kids and a host of other things got in the way. The spare time I once had available for gaming simply evaporated.

I never realized how behind the times I was until my kids started getting older and we bought them Xboxes.

The games were amazingly realistic. And often (to me, anyway) confusing.

The controllers went from the simple one joystick, one button approach of the Atari 2600 to the sort of thing you would use to pilot an F-16. One button? Try six. Or eight. And two joystick-like thumb controllers.

Then they all became multi-player games in which you wear a headset and talk to your friends (and total strangers) in the middle of the game.

That's when I knew I would never, ever catch up.

One of my favorite things to do on the laptop Terry got me for Christmas is play many of my old, classic games. You can download emulators that allow you to play the arcade and home video games of your youth, which is wonderful.

These aren't reproductions or close facsimiles of the games I loved in the 80s. These are the actual games. The ROMs (as they're called) for each one contain the exact computer code as the originals. There's no difference at all between the Ms. Pac-Man I play on my laptop and the Ms. Pac-Man I played at Galaxy Gardens game room in 1983.

It's mind blowing. And fun.

It also, like so many things these days, reminds me of a simpler time. I am an early GenXer, born in 1969. We are Baby Boomers in all but birth year. We straddled the analog and digital ages. We know what it's like to have one corded telephone in the house AND for everyone in the family to have their own phones, own numbers, etc.

We've seen both sides of the revolution. Some of us are equally adept living in either time period. I like to think of myself that way, but when it comes to video games, I am irrevocably stuck in the 80s.

And I like it that way.

Yes, I still read a newspaper every day

Every morning I follow essentially the same routine: I get up, I feed the cats, I go downstairs and clean out their litter boxes, and then I go outside and get the newspaper. Only one of these things truly makes me happy.

The getting up part I don't mind but I don't love. The cat-related jobs are necessary evils, the kind of thing you do because over the years it has become your job and there's no real need to change. But the newspaper...that's one of the highlights of my day.

Seriously. I love getting the paper. I love taking it out of the bag and scanning the headlines. No matter that the news may already be 12 hours old (or more) and I could have found the same information online soon after it happened. The point is, there's nothing like holding and reading a real newspaper.

I understand that I am a dying breed. Relatively few people read physical, hard-copy newspapers anymore. And in no way am I a technophobe. I still get a lot of my news online. But you have to understand, I started my career in a newsroom. Night after night, I got the thrill of producing a publication that would be distributed to thousands of people within hours after we finished it. It was a rush.

Of course this was back in the 80's and 90's. Even then people were predicting the downfall of print journalism,  but I wanted to make a career out of being a sports writer. I loved covering a game, writing about it, and knowing that my work was being read at breakfast tables around the area the next morning. Or would end up being pasted into some kid's high school scrapbook. That was a natural high.

In time, I realized that a career in journalism wasn't to be. I had a growing family to support, and honestly, you ain't gonna get rich as a newspaper reporter. So I eventually moved into marketing and public relations, a move a lot of reporters make when they decide it's time to get a "real" job, for whatever reason.

But I hang on to my newspaper addiction. The paper shows up every day, rain or shine, in front of my house, and I read it cover to cover. I still read the comics and do the little word puzzle that runs next to them when I have time. I scour the sports pages, especially, but I also read every story in the metro and business sections to make sure I haven't missed anything work-related.

There will come a time in the not-so-distant future when newspapers will go away, and I'm actually OK with that. I know it's unstoppable, and progress is progress. But I think back to the days when I delivered the Lake County News-Herald and practically every house along my route got the paper at least on Sundays, if not every day.

Nowadays, the paper is delivered by adults with huge routes and hundreds of customers. The routes HAVE to be huge, because the vast majority of houses don't subscribe any more. I used to ride my bike and place the paper inside people's front doors or in their side milk chutes. Now it's thrown from moving cars, though sometimes (as in our case) you can ask for a delivery tube to be placed in front of your house and the paper will be stuffed in there every morning.

This is the second nostalgic blog post in two days, if you're keeping track. I guess that's another sign of advancing age -- when you start talking about the "old" days. But I'll tell you one thing: If reading a newspaper is a sign of old fogey-hood, you can book my ticket on the Geezer Bus today.