The older I get the more stuff I accumulate. And while the saying goes that “opposites attract,” it turns out that my lovely wife and I are both minor league pack rats who keep just about everything; anyone for a Motorola brick cell phone, circa 1989?

There has been an avalanche of media material regarding the Navy Seals after their successful mission against Osama Bin Laden. Tell-all books, movies and television shows have been presenting America’s elite warriors, with details regarding their missions and training activities. I’ve read or watched them all, mostly while sitting at Midway Airport waiting for my next flight out of town.

Having watched the electronic security industry grow over the past 35 years, I found that what happened in the 1980s is here again. Before the introduction of the digital communicator around 1977, each alarm company had its own central station with leased, direct-wire types of connections to clients’ systems.

A regular part of my workday routine is watching the gyrations of the stock market on CNBC. While the pundits screech about the value or lack thereof of various stocks, I twitch right along with the beat — Buy or sell? What and how much? I can either do something or do nothing, and either way I’m already too late to profit on whatever recent convulsion has hit the markets.

Arecent groundswell in the development of coax-based Ethernet and Power over Ethernet (PoE) transceivers is providing a revolutionary opportunity for security integrators. These devices provide a simple way to upgrade and update video surveillance, access control, intercom and other system types by connecting the latest in IP-enabled devices to coax cables that were previously installed within the past 20 years.

While rummaging through the closet searching for an Exacto knife to perform some minor self-inflicted surgery (splinter removal) I was confronted with another of my half-baked projects that never was completed.

As much as I dislike the idea of turning into an extra cranky version of the late Andy Rooney, as time goes on, I truly believe that in many ways the devices and technologies we used in years past were better than what we have today. Or, at least they were easier for me to understand and use.

Although I spent part of my career in the fire alarm industry, I was never really impressed with the types of technologies available in fire control panels. After the advent of point-addressing and remote detector diagnostics, it seemed that fire panel innovations had slowed sometime in the mid-1990s. As IP continues its march into the technologies of our industry, it was only a matter of time before fire alarm control panels would harness the power of networks for the good of both installation companies and their clients.

Fishing on the lake at our southwestern Michigan vacation home takes on greater importance with each passing year. We never seem to have a problem catching the little ones, but the big bass we’ve seen caught by other boats continue to elude us. While I change rods, baits and boat position in a frenzy, my daughter is asking when we can head back to the dock and her Nintendo DS.