Not exactly a geek out day, but one highlight...

Well, hardly surprising that the course of the day varied from my plans.  And pizza box builds are not top of my priority list, just that I do want to get my daughter a box to go with the CRT I recently reclaimed from the street for her and the keyboard and mouse she has already chosen.

But there was one blogworthy moment in the day that has a geeky side to it.

Occasionally I accept the randome marketing research calls that come my way for one reasn or another.  I was being nice to everyone today, so I took a call that turned out being even longer than the average.  But I managed to find my entertainment in it and I'll try to give a flavour of the best part:-

Lots of questions about TV and HD-readiness....

prompting answers based around the fact that my only TV set is a 5 1/2" Black and White portable!

How many TV's in the house? One

Where is the TV? Living room

How likely to buy another TV? No chance

Interested in Cable, HD, Satellite? No way.

... and so on...

Then they turn to another aspect:-

How many computers in the house? Eight, no six, no maybe seven and three other peoples... Lots (I'm a geek)

Are you connected to the internet?  Hell yes!

How long have you been connected?  Since the 'net was born, an early user of the Prestel predecessor.

So, more than five years?  Yes!

You have email?  Yes, how many would be more the question

How often do you check email, daily, weekly, monthly?  Hourly at least!

Do you join forums or sites or use chat?  Yes, I run them and build them!

You get the idea.  I imagine I skewed a few stats for them, since I have every intention to live with no TV whatsoever after they turn the old UHF signals off in 2012.  After all... it will leave that little space for one more computer!

And I am serious about not knowing how many computers I have - it is a toughie for a geek; because do you count those CPU's you have stranded in dead mobos or without a hard drive?  Are you going to count the fileserver not plugged in to keep the electricity bill down?  What about the bozen in the house friends left with you to fix?  The list goes on and on... it gets much worse if you take the old school view as to what a computer really is, because you average boiler, microwave, washing machine etc etc all have microprocessors that I could easily consider to be computers.

I was glad to give the researcher the odd laught though... And I felt quite proud to be a geek who does not watch a lot of TV!