I’ve always resisted the word “geek”. I mean, after all, it’s not like I actually write code or anything. I don’t actually make my living with a computer (I’m a teacher!), I’m not an educational technologist or instructional designer.
But then it became necessary to avoid the cable company, and the world of U-Verse. I was going to boycott the Olympics, but having heard an alternate position on Tibet from my activist student from China (another post for another time), I decided to watch after all. I have a DSL modem through AT&T, and it broke. They were so awful about replacing it, I didn’t want to give them more money by buying U-Verse for my TV. And the cable company turned out not to be the cable company any more. I haven’t had cable in years, and didn’t realize they’re all divided among various vendors offering different deals. I didn’t trust the company that offered me the good deal, and the actual TimeWarner wanted me to pay a bunch for two weeks of Olympics.
So I geeked out. I had read that nbcolympics.com was going to broadcast a lot of the games. I borrowed one of those really big screen televisions (like I’d buy one), and tried to hook up my iBook to it. I had a cable for that from hooking it up to an external monitor, so no problem. But when I went to the website, it informed me that to use Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology to watch the games, I needed to be on an Intel Mac.
So I disconnected by iMac from everything on my desk, moved it into the living room, and had to borrow a special cable to hook it up to the TV. That meant setting up my iBook to the external monitor on my desk (luckily I found that cable in the old box for my iBook). But the iMac couldn’t play sound into the big TV, only video. So I got out some USB speakers I use for my iBook, and plugged them in.
Between NBC on my little antenna and nbcolympics.com, I was able to watch Olympics happily (even the equestrian and synchronised swimming events!) for two weeks. So yeah, now I’m a geek. Except for those low-tech sticky notes stuck to my computer.
