John Shalam, Founder, Voxx and Gary Shapiro, CEO of CES

I went to a CES event tonight at the Metropolitan Pavilion on 18th Street. This is a preview event for the annual CES held every January in Vegas. It was good to see that writers in their 50s and 60s were still very much in attendance. Most have been in the consumer electronics business for three decades. Over the years, many of these folks have accumulated lots of gadgets because they had to bench test them or write features on them.

One of the topics a few of us talked about tonight was what we were going to do with all the devices. Some had closets and bathtubs filled with them. Being the age we are, many claimed they wanted to dispose of their inventories so they could downsize. One guy who recently moved to Arizona from New Jersey said, “One of the toughest things about my move was getting rid of all the samples I’ve kept over the years.” Most of the products were out-of-date, but he couldn’t bear to part with them. He finally boxed them up and dropped them off at a nearby church. To this day he feels like he abandoned his children.

When I got home tonight, I read a story in the Boomers section of The New York Times about a similar topic: getting rid of sex paraphernalia before your children find these embarrassing items when you are no longer around.

I am going to let you read this study on your own. Be sure to catch the part about human sense of embarrassment after death. Ouch!

Marc Finer

Jason Henriques with Steve Greenberg and Adam Sohmer.

Murray Slovak and Ken Sander

Peter Lesser .