I got a traffic ticket the other day. The whole thing has depressed me.

I'm not depressed about the ticket. I am guilty of running a blinking warning light, and I'll pay the ticket. What depressed me was that --- in the section of the ticket where the officer fills in your hair color --- the cop wrote "gray."

Honest, I just checked in the mirror and there are plenty of traces of red left. I can see them. I wouldn't have minded if the policeman had written in "bald," but the notion of gray hair has me in a funk.

To top things off, my wife told me that --- at 58 --- I'm a senior citizen. I never thought "middle-aged" would sound like a flattering term, but I miss being middle-aged.

To come to terms with this whole thing, today I'll write about ways technology helps those of us who are --- choke --- old people cope with computing.

To start off, many of us can't see as well as we'd like. My solution, for now, has been to use a 19-inch computer monitor at home and (1) use the preferences and options menus of various programs to crank up the type size; and (2) set Windows itself to large-sized type. To do that, you put the mouse on a blank section of screen and click the right button a single time. That brings up a Display Properties menu. Click on the button that says advanced, and you will see a way to adjust font sizes.

That's for now. At the rate things are going, I may have to take more drastic measures soon. When that day comes, I can do more by going to the Windows Control Panel and selecting Accessibility Options.

Once there, I can set the display to high contrast to make type more readable. There are other features that have nothing to do with fading vision, including ways to make the keyboard easier to use for those with fumbling fingers, or even ways to change the method that Windows uses to communicate with you.

One of those features may come in handy someday soon. I get deafer by the year. Mostly it's been fun, since my brain tends to provide words even when I can't really understand what someone is saying. The other day at the water fountain, I believed an editor was telling me that I was "on the brink." Actually they were commenting that I was having a drink. So paranoia may also be kicking in.

Anyway, Windows has a pretty good feature for those of us who can't hear so well. It can show captions instead of the warning sounds it usually makes.

All that --- and more --- can be found in accessibility options. So if you're not perfect in every way, it might pay you to take a look.

I don't like it, but the plain fact is that all of us change as we get older. It's not just a case of needing reading glasses or finding that our reflexes no longer allow us to cream our opponents in some video game.

There are also --- at least with me --- problems that can't be fixed by seeing or hearing a little better.

I'm absent-minded, always have been, but nowadays I'm more likely to end a search for my car keys by discovering I've placed them in the refrigerator between the Mountain Dew and the milk.

Technology can help with memories such as mine. I often use my digital camera to help my memory along when I work on some electronic gadget or even take the lawn mower apart. A camera can provide a photographic record of what goes where.

While you may not spend a lot of time taking computers apart, I'll bet there are times when you want to remember the steps to some complicated task. If you have a digital camera, you can use it to create a visual record that is handy when your memory goes on the blink.

Like I said, my memory has always been famous in a negative way, so I've been losing cars in parking lots for years.

Here's how I use technology to help with that. When I find a parking place at the airport, I call my work voice mail (your answering machine would do just as well as long as you can access the messages remotely) and leave a message with directions to the car --- maybe level 3, B13.

Before I discovered this method, I would write a note. Half the time, I lost that note by the time I returned from the trip. But now I simply retrieve my messages by cellphone and find out where the car is parked. The same method works for other occasions when you're likely to need a reminder.

When I read this in the newspaper I'll probably think of other stuff I should have mentioned. It's that old folks' memory of mine.

So if you want to help me out by telling me how you use your computer to cope with the inconvenience of old age, drop me an e-mail at bhusted@ajc.com.