While growing up, my parents and teachers were constantly berating me to "get my head out of the clouds."
I can hardly be blamed, though, as I've always been somewhat of a habitual daydreamer.
I was also usually given those tried-and-true instructions during Canadian history or algebra class on a perfectly fine, sunny summer day, or when caught reading comic books in my room instead of doing my homework.
But now, here I am in adulthood, and all everyone in tech circles can talk about is how we should all now get in the cloud.
I'm sure you've seen those Microsoft commercials for its software with the tagline, "To the Cloud!"
But what is this cloud everyone is on about if it's not those big soft, fuzzy things in the sky?
Well, the cloud is actually big, soft, fuzzy marketing language and a fancy term for all the computers - other than your own - that are connected to the Internet.
Think about Hotmail or Flickr, or all the potentially regrettable photos you've uploaded over the years to Facebook.
All those personal emails and out-of-focus photos don't reside on your own computer, but on rows upon rows of computers owned by folks like Google and Microsoft in a warehouse somewhere.
That's right.
The Facebook pics of your last birthday party actually live in a box in a secret warehouse location like they were the lightning-spewing, Nazi-face-melting Ark from the Indiana Jones movie.
The concept of cloud computing isn't something new, though - Hotmail has been around for ages, but the idea, coupled with today's faster Internet speeds, is creating new opportunities to spend more time in the cloud.
In the past, computer users had to store most of their files on the hard drives of their own PCs.
If you had a big music collection on your computer from iTunes or something similar, those music files live and take up space on your drive.
It's the same with video games.
The game has to be loaded onto a computer hard drive - taking up valuable space.
Not only do all those files slow down your computer, but in the event that hard drive crashes, wave bye-bye to your collection and your high scores.
But with cloud computing, those game and music files reside elsewhere - not only freeing up space on your computer and keeping them safe from crashes, but also making them accessible from any computer anywhere.
With new services like Amazon's Cloud Drive for music and OnLive for gaming, you can access your music from home, office or cell, and play top games like Batman Arkham Asylum and Call of Duty from anyone's computer.
That also means gamers won't need powerful (and expensive) rigs to play these graphics-heavy games, as games are run on huge server farms, rather than being rendered on the users' own PCs.
Of course, the somewhat huge downside is if you lose your connection to the Internet, then you pretty much get dropped out of the cloud like a human-shaped hailstone and lose access to all your data, files and games.
Also, the music industry isn't very fond of the cloud, as it supposedly offers easy access to friends' music collections and could promote piracy.
Regardless, the cloud is fast becoming the future (as well as an annoying buzz word), and the rest of us had better get used to keeping our heads - and all our files - in it.
