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So, this Geek thing… David Dorn was called a Geek – to his face, mind you – recently, and it’s made him think. Some might say that’s a first in itself… There I am, sitting happily in front of Stargate SG-1 playing away on the Sky Plus box, when the office phone rings. It’s a DECT portable, so it was clipped onto my belt beside the Samsung A300 Mobile (the one I’ve got on the all-networks tariff), which itself was poised perfectly beside the home telephone (another DECT phone) on the same belt. So I pick up the Sky Plus remote and pause the program – nice that, being able to pause live TV when the phone rings – and then engage the active flip on the phone to answer it. Now, before anyone gets any ideas, I hadn’t just been vegging out in front of the 34” multi-mode TV all day. I’d had a lot of things to do. First job was to get the magazine updated – it’s always the first job – for which purpose the P4 PC with the full Gigabyte of RAM and RAID array in it is pressed into service. And I’d had to check some important CDs for scratches so that I could confirm last week’s review of the SkipDoctor CD repair toolkit, which, frankly, I’d have had to buy had they not sent me one to play with. Then there was the audio file to edit, from the radio show I’d done on the Saturday previous, and mix down into something that sounded reasonable to send out to the participants. Not unnaturally, I’d been monitoring via a 5.1 surround sound system, and I’d needed to tweak that using a white sound generator and spectrum analyser to be sure that what I ended up with was as close to perfect as possible. And finally, before I’d managed to get my behind into the sofa for Strgate, I’d been tweaking settings to get the best data transfer speed out of the 32x CD writer I’d just installed in my PC. But anyway, I’d answered the phone, and from the earpiece (hands-free, of course) came a female voice, asking if I had a few minutes to help her with a technical query. “Oh”, I thought, as you do when you know that said female has all the resources of one of the world’s largest hardware and peripheral manufacturers at her disposal, “I wonder what’s up”. So I asked her what was up – and it turned out she needed some background information on Wireless Networking, ADSL and one or two other very interesting technologies. An hour later, after I’d filled her in with the answers to all of her queries, I got round to asking why she’d called me, rather than the technobods at the company. “Cos you’re the complete Geek”, said she. Me!? A Geek!? I must have spluttered the self-same words into the microphone on my headset (I’d replaced it with a back-electret condenser to get the best sound quality possible via the digital radio link back to the phone’s base station), because she came back and said “Yes – an uber-geek, as it happens”. I was, I have to admit, slightly stunned, not to say shocked. Gobsmacked, even. How could I be a Geek – an Uber-Geek? I mean, I’m into gardening – only that morning I’d been out to the greenhouse to check that the automatic watering system had come on at the right time, and had completed its cycle before the sun had risen, and that the temperature sensor on the bench had shut down the root-heaters at the right temperature. It wasn’t as if I’d connected the humidity sensors and thermal controls up to my computer, or implemented anything other than a very simple light level probe that closes the 50% shading blinds when the sun’s too bright for the plants. That’s not Geeky… is it? I mean, I take my two dogs for walks in the 2000 acres that back onto my office, which is, in turn, attached to my house (and linked via a three-way redundant Ethernet network to it), and the only concession to technology I make is to carry my Mobile and a two-way personal mobile radio system – which sits on my belt beside the DECT phone that can switch between the office and home line automatically. OK, so I’ve got a DECT repeater aerial mounted on the roof so that the signal is boosted a tad, but that’s not Geeky… is it? And I play (and sing) in a band. I’m responsible for the PA – the amplification system – and I’ve set up a redundant system of radio and wired microphones that… uh-oh… Oh, My, God! She was right! I’m a Geek! Can anyone tell me where, on the Internet, I can get a life? Email me, or you can text me. It’s Ok if it’s a WAP site, I’ve got that sorted… or leave a voice mail… or there’s VOIP… or NetMeeting… yes… I can use that… Have your say - click here |
