We do have a retro-look electronic toaster, and it often does stupid things, like refusing to stay down when it's in a weird state. The fix is to unplug it for 5 seconds or so to reset whatever bizarre state it's managed to get itself into. Mechanical toasters don't do that, and toast better too. DGMS on the states and menus of the new microwave. A proper appliance has two states: standing up, and lying on its side.
One of the things I like about San Francisco is the almost universal lack of lawns. And air conditioners. When I lived in New Orleans, if you didn't mow the grass twice a week, it would grow so tall the mower would bounce off. And after mowing the lawn for an hour in the sun, you *needed* the air conditioning.
It's weird that the prime use for billion-transistor chips and gigaflop processing turns out to be stupid, violent video games and watching NASCAR crashes on giant plasma displays.
Good, simple things endure. Like me!
John