That Mysterious Box of Cables

I’ve learned that I have a severe weakness for electronic gizmos that do, well, stuff.  In fact, most times that I find myself in a “shopping” environment I gravitate towards anything electronic and will attempt to buy gadgets that I already have, except the newer ones with more “features” and or blinking lights.  I don’t think this weakness makes me particularly unique, in fact, what I think it makes me is:

A guy

My dad is the same way, so I guess I could blame him a bit, but I look around and well, most dads are that way, so he’s totally off the hook.  Still it’s fun to reminisce about the attic in my parent’s house which became a graveyard for printers, scanners, fax machines and mysterious cables that no one could reasonably identify.  All guys have a “location” for those cables and cords that came with the electronic stuff.  The vast majority of these cables won’t ever get used and will, in fact, probably never leave their plastic wrap and/or twisty tie.  This is only partially because we don’t really know what they all do.  It’s also because the odds are off the charts that we already have a cable exactly like the one that came with the “new gadget.”  The Mrs. HTF asks me frequently to “organize” (by which she means throw away) the plastic tote that houses my cable stash.  I’ll poke around a bit and then put the lid back on realizing 3 things at roughly the same time:

1. I don’t know what many of these even do or which gadget they came with

2. In spite of #1 – it’s guaranteed that someday, somehow I will desperately need one of these things to save the world and/or to transfer video

3. I think there’s a game on the TV I need to watch now

Of course, this is a totally rational reaction to the problem.  I’ll probably address it later by spending a crazy amount of money on a newer version of whatever that comes with cables that aren’t compatible with the older version, thus rendering those old cable obsolete.  Too bad I’ll never be able to ID the old ones, but that’s beside the point.  Now I have something newer to play with.