My parents - bless their old-fashioned hearts - aren't what I would necessarily call "computer people."
I don't mean that in the sense that they aren't virtual avatars in a computer-generated game world (or as I like to call them, "my friends"). But rather, for some reason, they have decided that computers - the Internet and all that stuff - just aren't for them.
They'd be kind of like Quakers if it wasn't for the big-screen TV in the living room and RV parked in the yard.
Technology just isn't their thing and I guess being the obedient, good son, I went in the complete opposite direction and became a geek with chronic mouse finger.
But I actually had no choice in the matter.
Somebody had to stop the VCR from flashing "12:00" every time the power went out, and I got tired of my dad just putting black duct tape over it.
Hmm - TV, RV, VCR is it me, or do my parents only embrace technologies that are named by a bunch of capital letters?
But to be fair, they do try, and my mom even has an email account now so we can send pictures of our darling princess daughter and "the boy" more often.
But they find the whole thing confusing - "why does it keep asking me if I'm sure I want to do what I already told them I was sure I wanted to do?" - and it's about to get even worse.
They already have a hard time understanding the concept or difference between .com, .ca, .org, .net or any of the other 22 or so generic, top-level domains.
These generic top-level domains are basically what comes after the last dot in a domain address, and it represents the last label of a fully qualified domain name.
Well, now the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has voted to let the virtual naming floodgates open and allow almost any domain suffix beginning in July 2012.
These global Internet regulators met last week and basically paved the way for a new era in the World Wide Web, in which we'll surely be seeing everything from .coke and .apple, to .trump, .disney and .ladygaga.
But don't expect to see a .stevenhill anytime soon unless I win the lottery, rob a bank, or writing for community papers suddenly becomes a lucrative career.
It costs $185,000 per domain application (which includes 150 pages of policy documents), plus about $100,000 for technical setup and another $100,000 per year for upkeep.
But such large-scale changes are bound to cause some growing pains for the Internet. There will definitely be fights for domains like .sport, .travel or .bank, and so many top-level domains also pose a bit of a security risk if you are unsure if your bank's site is tdcanada.com, tdcanada.td, or tdbank.tdcanada.
This is also going to make my parents even more confused then ever about the Internet and guarantee they'll never embrace the technology.
I guess I could just stop using the word computer and just start calling it a PC instead.
Maybe that'd work.
