Geek: a slang term describing a person as peculiar or odd because he/she is deeply interested in one or more things including those of intellectuality, electronics, etc.
I’m sure some people think I’m a geek because I have some technical expertise. My husband, on the other hand, is happy to let me handle the TVs and VCRs in the family. He just wants to watch the local weather every day and wants the process to be simple. “Just tell me which button to push, Jean.” If we’re going to be gone when his program is on he lets me do the taping.
So when the TV stations switched to completely digital this past summer and I had trouble recording some of them he said it was probably because the stations didn’t have enough power or bandwidth (I can’t remember the exact explanation) and forgot about it. His station came in fine. His background is in experimental physics and he knows a lot about electronics, so I accepted his explanation.
Until the new fall programs started I didn’t care enough to check our assumptions. When I did I found out we had been completely wrong. The stations were doing just fine, it was my new recorder that couldn’t pick them up.
In the meantime our faithful, repair-free old CRT TV was finally acting flaky after 25 years of service. Sometimes the picture would keep rolling upwards, sometimes the picture was half “snow”.
So I started to look online for DVD recorders and TVs. They had to have a good tuners, and the sellers had to have satisfaction-guaranteed policies. Then we had to go to Santa Fe last Monday to check on a car that had been in the shop for six weeks (that’s another story that I’ll write about later), so we started looking at DVD recorders and digital TVs there. I had assumed we were still gathering information, but when we went into Best Buy and asked the salesman about tuners, he phoned one of the fellows on the Geek Squad. The fellow came and took over. He was quiet and knowledgeable, our kind of salesman, so we ended up buying both a new recorder and a new TV, with two-year Geek Squad support for each.
That’s our kind of store, one that respects technical expertise. It understands that it’s good business to use the term geek with pride. 🙂
I can assure you that having a geek handy is the way to be happy in the modern world. i am blessed in that I have a son who is one and he usually handles all modern gadgetry for me and enables me to simply push a few buttons to get the desired result.
.-= Rummuser´s last blog ..Restaurants. =-.
Rummuser,
I’m glad you too have your resident geek. 🙂
I have ‘guys’ who are sure they know what is best for me…I recently gave up on one of my TV’s and someone on the freecycle circuit took it and the video recorder away. I hadn’t ever watch a video but for some reason I couldn’t disconnect from the TV – otherwise the TV refused to work!
I got given a no frills TV and we (2 females) plugged it it & connected to the outdoor aerial connection and it just worked! No specail anything with it – not even a remote to go funny! Of course, at some point it will not work as they have changed how TVs’ will air programmes but for the time being fine
A couple of weeks ago the new email programme do 2 things that I ‘don’t’ know now how to deal with…it keeps telling me that my ‘servers certificate is out of date and do I want to continue to use it?’ – the server has not replied to me on how to fix it AND The other things was that the software programme suddenly closed one night and when it returned it was looking different! It still works but it’s got a difference ‘face’ 🙂
I had a lot of trouble with my new washing machine a number of years ago but the manual was quite user friendly and I finally did work out to programme in ‘favourite wash’
I hope my old microwave never goes bung…because I notice the new ones have a lot of buttons!! It took me some weeks to discover what the computer geek did to my scanner – he had taken out a plug that he thought was part of the then defunct printer! It wasn’t it was part of scanner and the reason why there was no ‘hole’ in the surge board was because the new wireless hook up had needed it. I finally bought a double adapter so I could hook the scanner back up!! Silly geeks who don’t understand that sometimes people have different bits of machinery for different reasons (I think he said something along the lines of buying a combi machine for the 2 things – but the only the printer was broke!)
bye for now
cathy in NZ
.-= Cathy in NZ´s last blog ..RAIN, RAIN GO AWAY! =-.
Cathy,
Our 25-year -old TV was definitely no-frills, but we had to mess around with a converter box when they switched the TV stations to digital. They had a cute commercial showing an elderly lady trying to understand what to do…it was sad as well as funny.
They did their best to warn people and to tell them how to make the conversion. They even gave $40 coupons to pay most of the cost of the converter boxes. Even so it was, and still is, a nuisance. 🙂
I usually poke around for a while and see what I can figure out without using the manual. Sometimes it’s well-designed and I don’t have to read much. Even if I do have to resort to the manual it makes a lot more sense if I’ve looked at all the buttons first.
Thank you so much for writing. Your comments always warm my heart and put a smile on my face.
15 years ago i told a fellow wife of a geek that we were married to geeks. (i was establishing a bond, i thought.) she was taken aback & insulted. “my husband is not a geek!”
i’m glad that “geek” is OK now. (at least by fellow geeks.)
bikehikebabe,
Americans have a history of being anti-intellectual. On the whole they like party types better. Bill Gates and the other people who have made millions and billions developing technology have brought a bit more respect to “geeks” and “nerds”. 🙂