Minis, we are beginning to see this term used everywhere. So exactly what does mini mean? Well Webster's online dictionary defines mini as "something small of its kind". I guess everyone has seen the Mini Cooper cars. I have to be honest about this, they are cute, but at the price they go for, I think that they are over priced. I know that there are many out there that won't agree with this, but that is okay, we are talking about personal opinions here. Hey is your computer too big, did you know that you can get a mini version of it? Look at the Mac, there is THE Mac and the MINI Mac. There is usually a give back here and in this case it is functionality. The Mini Mac is said to be a nice machine, but it is nowhere as expandable as the full sized job. We tend to use the word mini quite often in our speech lately. You must have heard a coworker say something like, I am going on a mini vacation. People sometimes say this when they are going away for only a couple of days. Feel like you want a cup of coffee, but you don't want too much? Have you ever asked for a mini cup? Remember mini me, he was the little guy from the movies?

I was looking at some sites on the internet the other day and one was advertising mini icons. Well I have trouble seeing the normal sized ones sometimes, why anyone would want mini ones is beyond me. Some web browsers are now advertising mini versions. Opera, a semi-famous browser is now advertising a mini version. What they seem to be talking about is the fact that it is relatively smaller than the other browsers and uses less memory, or so they say. I went to IHop the other day and had a nice plate of mini waffles. I didn't want those big old things all over my plate. The concept of mini food seems to go back quite a way. I am talking about modern mini food. For any of you that have ever gone into a fancy French restaurant, you know what I mean. Sometimes those guys don't give you enough food to fill a cavity in a bad tooth. There used to be a famous restaurant in New York. It was called Shrafts and served very thin sandwiches. They were truly mini sandwiches, even though that is not what they were called. It became very popular with the ladies, I guess because of diets and things like that. You would hardly ever see a man in there, I guess that is because he would have needed about a dozen of those babies to feel full.

I think that if things keep going the way that they are, we will soon be buying mini amounts of gasoline, quarts instead of gallons. That is the stunt that they pull in Europe, where a liter of gas is about the same as a gallon is here. Someday we may be saying, gee gas is pretty cheap today, it has gone down to only two dollars a quart. How about those mini series that they show on television every once in a while. Some of them are actually pretty good. They are called mini series because they usually only have three or four episodes. Well I guess it just goes to show you that if you have a good idea for a show, it doesn't have to be stretched out over a whole season to be good. HBO seems to have something that is sort of a cross between a mini series and a normal show. It usually runs for a season and sometimes two and then finishes, no matter how good it is and how many people are watching. A good example of this was the excellent show called Rome. It had great actors and incredible sets and was more like a long movie than a tv show. Another was Wildwood, a very good western. These shows were not for the prudent taste however. They were filled with sex and sexual situations so the kids had to be asleep before they were watched, but their quality was incredible.

I knew someone, actually more than one, who was told by his doctor that he had a mini stroke. This is not a good mini folks. As a matter of fact, it is a very bad mini and could only be worse if it wasn't a mini at all. There are mini heart attacks, mini headaches and all sorts of mini complications out there. Medical minis just are not a good thing. On the other hand, there are new mini medical devices out there that are so portable that they can be carried anywhere and this allows the doctor to do tests in remote areas that he was never able to do before. This is especially useful in third world countries, where some people live extremely far away and have probably never had any of these tests before. The have an electrocardiograph machine that is the size of a desktop adding machine and many other medical devices that have been drastically reduced in size, these are truly mini machines. There is a new X-Ray machine out that is only the size of a small microwave oven and works with a laptop. While not quite a mini, it gets pretty close and for something like this the price is mini, only about forty two thousand dollars.

Someone was telling me the other day that they had a mini accident. It turned out that they had gotten a scratch on their car. Saying this seemed a little dramatic to me, but to each his own. There are a lot of minis in electronics. We used to use controllers to, guess what? Yep control other devices, but now we are using a lot of mini controllers. Guess what these mini controllers are placed on? Yes again, mini boards. I actually purchased a mini FM radio in the local dollar store. Things are really getting crazy. I am old enough to remember when the first transistor radios came out. I got one for my birthday and it lasted for about two days before a transistor blew out. You never hear of that happening anymore. This mini fm radio would not have been possible to build back then, but if it had, it would have probably cost thousands of dollars, not the one dollar that I laid out for it. What about those new mini media players. I am talking about the IPods and there ilk. These are definitely mini devices and they are capable of even playing videos, along with audio. These have only been made possible by the shrinking electronic circuitry inside of them. We are falling into a mini world, where all of the consumer devices that are large today, will be very small tomorrow. Of course some things have to be big, like your refrigerator and car. You car has to be big enough for you to get inside of and that refrigerator has to be able to hold some food, but even that refrigerator may turn into some sort of device someday that is tiny and puts out some sort of field over a prescribed area to keep you food cold. Maybe your food will be preserved using something other than cold?

What about fashion? In the past and even today mini clothing has been popular at times. There has been the mini skirt, mini bathing suit and mini clothes for dolls and such. Guess what they have for the washable mini clothes. They actually sell mini clothespins, if you want to hang them out on a line to dry. Mini hair dryers are available to dry your hair and there is a mini clothes washer for those of you that don't have much room in your home or apartment for a washing machine. You can also add the mini clothes dryer to this and you have a set. Do you get some fuzz on your clothes after they are washed? There is a mini clothes shaver that will take this off without hurting the garment. I saw something the other day that I never expected to see. I passed an area where there were very tiny houses and the streets only allowed one car to pass. When I asked someone about this, he said to me that it was called tiny town and was composed of mini houses. How far will this mini movement go. Will it be possible some day to reduce us in size, thus saving the world's resources? You never know.