In the summer of 2000, following my freshman year in college, I had my first full-time job in a music store. My big purchase that summer was my first DVD player: a Toshiba that hit me for about $250. The first DVD I purchased with it was the venerable LL Cool J epic Deep Blue Sea, which I still own - the disc requires me to flip it on Side B halfway through to finish the film.

I was the first person I knew personally who had a DVD player. When I returned for my sophomore year with a machine that played CD-sized movie discs, I felt like hot s**t. Still, I was pretty attached to my VHS player and didn't think that anything would ever render it obsolete.

Ten and a half years later, I haven't had a functioning VHS player in several years, and what tapes I have left are collecting dust in storage instead of a landfill, out of nothing but a sense of nostalgic loyalty.

But now, my standard DVDs are rapidly turning into dinosaurs as well: on my big HD television, their once-impeccable quality pales in comparison to my Blu-Rays and even the Hi-Def streaming media on Netflix. And while many of my DVDs are available on Blu-Ray, I wouldn't dare bother spending the money or making the effort to upgrade - that's money I'll probably never throw down the drain.

I didn't realize I was in the midst of a media medium shift until about a year and a half ago, when I referenced on Facebook the compact disc wallet I keep in my car, and several friends responded, "Who the hell still listens to CDs in their car?" The concept of only listening to my iPod in the whip was foreign to me then, and remains as such now.

I suppose I'm turning into my father - the man who only grudgingly embraces new media; I always make fun of him for just graduating from dial-up Internet less than two years ago and still using as his primary television the one that belonged to his mother-in-law who died in 1994. But am I really much different from a man who still speaks fondly of the 8-track player on his old Buick Century?

It remains to be seen, I suppose. I'll be d**ned if I'm giving up my CDs for an iPod anytime soon; as long as I don't have an Mp3 player hard wire connection in my car, I'll continue buying 50-stack spools of CDs and creating dope mixes for my CD wallet.

I give folks the Cliff face when they tell me they're digitizing their CDs so as to get rid of them. A large part of the appeal of purchasing them is the jacket artwork and credits - something you can't get downloading from iTunes. Plus, tactile discs with music are certainly more durable than hard drives that are susceptible to crash, deleting your music collection forever and driving you to hara-kiri. Think about it: what's more likely to be destroyed or lost forever: 700 actual CDs or a fragile machine the size of a paperback novel containing 700 albums' worth of music?

The media shift isn't limited to music: I hate the now ubiquitous notion that I'm supposed to watch blockbuster movies on my 3.5-inch phone. I have a copy of The Dark Knight on my iPhone simply because it came with my Blu-ray copy, but I would have to be trapped on a deserted island free of televisions, computers or any reading material to watch a 2.5-hour film that I originally watched in its IMAX glory on some s**t I'd have to squint to see the pencil Joker shoved in dude's head.

And as much as I love my little portable toys (I'm one of those a*sholes in the blocks-long line at the Apple store for every new iPhone release), I can't see myself ever adopting an eBook reader. Because I've been a hardcore reader of all things since right after I was dropping quarter-pounders in my diapers, no Kindle can replace the joy I get from that new book smell or from just wasting time in bookstores browsing things I'll never read. I'm currently reading Jay-Z's Decoded - a book so packed with graphics and visual goodies that I don't even want to see it attempted on an eBook reader.

Netflix caused a ruckus last week by making it so customers can no longer add DVDs to their queues through anything that's not a computer. It's not nearly the big f**king deal that some folks made it out to be, but it signifies a shift toward doing away with optical media altogether which isn't the best news for cats like me who aren't excited about the idea of streaming every d**n thing over the internet.

How often have you tried to stream a YouTube video or a Netflix instant movie before the bastard hangs up and "rebuffers" while you hold your junk waiting there for it to finish? Simple laws of broadband internet usage dictate that the more our society shifts toward consumption of everything via high-speed internet and Wi-Fi, the more things are going to slow down. Hopefully the fellas with the heavy-rimmed glasses and pocket protectors are working on improving the broadband infrastructure.

I get the sinking feeling that Netflix and kindred companies will continue making the shift without factoring in the strain, leaving people like me wanting to jam my remote in my Xbox 360 every time I see the word "rebuffering."

Change is always inevitable, and I'm sure a lot of the things I'm complaining about will become increasingly pervasive. So I'll just be that old dude still carting around his CDs in his car, watching his old DVDs, stepping on any 3-D glasses I see, praying to Black Jesus that Best Buy stores don't start closing up anytime soon and hanging on to the present as long as I can.

That said, I'll be interested in revisiting this column in 15 years.