Thursday, May 12, 2005
Irritating
Lifestyles of the Engaged!
That's the ad that really irritates me every morning. A one-liner taken out of context followed by canned laughter (either that or the line is just so bad it's not funny.) What's the deal with that?
"Eh have you washed the toilet yet?" (ahahahahhaha)
"When are you fixing the fridge?" (AAHAHAHAHAHA)
(always followed by Lifestyles of the Engaged is filmed before a real-live audience.)
It's pathetic. Makes it seem like we don't even know what's funny and what's not anymore.
*****
The Essence of Geekdom
This post comes many days overdue, after I made the horrific discovery whilst on-call that there is no blogging from the hospital network. The next forty eight hours have, of course, been spent semiconscious. I think I caught Coach Carter with a friend somewhere in there too.
We've been seeing an increasing emergence of Geekdom of late; somehow (alongside Gaydom) it's moved from being something vaguely dirty to shamefully come out of the closet (shuffling your feet) about, to a banner of status to be proudly held aloft, a fashion statement almost. I'm tecchy, I'm trendy. I know all about the latest trillion-megapixel digital camera cum washing-machine, I have three of them at home! I have an Ipod and an Ibook! I rules you ok!
I remember that when the phenomenon was in its infancy that bastion of intelligence and wit the country over, The New Paper ran underwhelmingly intellectual interviews with slinky models about their handheld devices and their latest geeky toys. Back in those days the models knew Jack about their supposed daily necessities, and preferred to wax effusive about themselves instead.
We've come a long way now, and some of them (models) even write for (ha) PC magazines, and actually know their stuff down to the last megapixel and nanosecond. They're The New Geeks, supposedly.
Being the pleasant and agreeable chap that I am though, I move that they really aren't. They're actually geek wannabes - people who want to jump on the bandwagon but can't - because they haven't quite captured, or understood the True Spirit of Geekdom.
Now I know a thing or two about computers, what with having administered a computer network once and assembled and repaired a fair number of PCs - but I wouldn't dare deign to call myself a Geek.
But it was a close call, the other day.
See, doing what I do, which is mostly watch patients go nowhere fast in a hurry (sometimes they go somewhere fast in a hurry, only its the wrong place and that can get a bit disheartening) one gets slightly depressed, and feels the urge to occasionally treat onself to, ah - retail therapy, I believe the phrase is.
Not being one to splurge on clothes (been there, done that, wallet very empty now) I've been indulging my clearly psychotic and depressive alter-ego in computer hardware, including a graphics card that cost close to the price of a small nuclear reactor, a sleek little logitech mx1000 laser mouse, and of late a gigabyte of dual-channel DDR ram and a wireless LAN card running at 108mbps.
Yeah, it's been one of those years. You'd think the evidence pretty incontrovertible - the man must be a geek, but still I say nay.
You see, after plugging everything up I couldn't help but notice the heat radiating out of my case (must be the dead lizards and fried ants around the casing clued perceptive old me in) so I started doing a bit of worrying about my Northbridge potentially setting fire to the neighbourhood and razing the entire population-ultradense little island I live on to the ground. (yes, I knew what a northbridge was, and if you don't, you probably ought not to.)
Actually no, I just worried that all that excess heat might have a negative impact on my computer's shelf-life.
After ripping an old processor fan off a pentium-75 museum piece (anyone want to buy an antique?) that happened to be lying around thanks to my brother's own little difficulties with reality and duct-taping it to my northbridge, and feeling happy with myself I got to worrying that maybe it still wasn't enough... (this particular trait I blame on genetics. I'm Singaporean. Ergo, I must be Kiasu.)
That's when I started reading tech forums about PC cooling solutions, and THESE ladies and gentlemen are the big time tech boys - this is where the real-life tech-boys eat, sleep and breathe.
I began slide down the slippery slope towards compu-insanity... decisions, decisions... invest in an active cooling solution? ah, but the noise... or maybe a passive cooling solution... will it be a toss up between the mini jet turbine / rocket engine... or maybe the ultra conductive thermonuclear-cooling-rod-thingummagig which costs twice the price of an aircraft carrier from the subcontinent... My mind was awhirl. Reality began to shimmer...
It was only when I started considering water-cooling (which essentially moves half the nation's Newater (tm) reserves through your PC's case every five seconds) that I caught myself from plunging headlong over the brink into the endless canyon of True Geekdom.
True Geekdom is about an obsessive urge for perfection - a stark over-the-topness that has nothing to do with aesthetic or common sense, or even about liking sleek, shiny things. It has to do with wanting to modify, tweak and overclock that last little virtual knob and dial till your system teeters on the brink of frying itself into a supernova at an ultra-cold temperature of absolute zero, just so that you can tell yourself - and other geeks - that you've been there. That you've overclocked your 486 to the speed of an AMD 64 on steroids... just... because. It's about patience and hours of toil, trouble and trial-and-error -- as well as about extravagence : too much money spent, too many degrees under that don't matter, too much air being moved that plankton and people halfway across the globe from enough oxygen to live meaningful lives -- it's about not caring about anything at all, except... perfection.
So no, I'm not a geek.
And neither are the rest of you normal people toting your fancy video-phones and digital-cameras out there.
We're just people who like shiny toys with lots of little buttons on. :)
That's the ad that really irritates me every morning. A one-liner taken out of context followed by canned laughter (either that or the line is just so bad it's not funny.) What's the deal with that?
"Eh have you washed the toilet yet?" (ahahahahhaha)
"When are you fixing the fridge?" (AAHAHAHAHAHA)
(always followed by Lifestyles of the Engaged is filmed before a real-live audience.)
It's pathetic. Makes it seem like we don't even know what's funny and what's not anymore.
*****
The Essence of Geekdom
This post comes many days overdue, after I made the horrific discovery whilst on-call that there is no blogging from the hospital network. The next forty eight hours have, of course, been spent semiconscious. I think I caught Coach Carter with a friend somewhere in there too.
We've been seeing an increasing emergence of Geekdom of late; somehow (alongside Gaydom) it's moved from being something vaguely dirty to shamefully come out of the closet (shuffling your feet) about, to a banner of status to be proudly held aloft, a fashion statement almost. I'm tecchy, I'm trendy. I know all about the latest trillion-megapixel digital camera cum washing-machine, I have three of them at home! I have an Ipod and an Ibook! I rules you ok!
I remember that when the phenomenon was in its infancy that bastion of intelligence and wit the country over, The New Paper ran underwhelmingly intellectual interviews with slinky models about their handheld devices and their latest geeky toys. Back in those days the models knew Jack about their supposed daily necessities, and preferred to wax effusive about themselves instead.
We've come a long way now, and some of them (models) even write for (ha) PC magazines, and actually know their stuff down to the last megapixel and nanosecond. They're The New Geeks, supposedly.
Being the pleasant and agreeable chap that I am though, I move that they really aren't. They're actually geek wannabes - people who want to jump on the bandwagon but can't - because they haven't quite captured, or understood the True Spirit of Geekdom.
Now I know a thing or two about computers, what with having administered a computer network once and assembled and repaired a fair number of PCs - but I wouldn't dare deign to call myself a Geek.
But it was a close call, the other day.
See, doing what I do, which is mostly watch patients go nowhere fast in a hurry (sometimes they go somewhere fast in a hurry, only its the wrong place and that can get a bit disheartening) one gets slightly depressed, and feels the urge to occasionally treat onself to, ah - retail therapy, I believe the phrase is.
Not being one to splurge on clothes (been there, done that, wallet very empty now) I've been indulging my clearly psychotic and depressive alter-ego in computer hardware, including a graphics card that cost close to the price of a small nuclear reactor, a sleek little logitech mx1000 laser mouse, and of late a gigabyte of dual-channel DDR ram and a wireless LAN card running at 108mbps.
Yeah, it's been one of those years. You'd think the evidence pretty incontrovertible - the man must be a geek, but still I say nay.
You see, after plugging everything up I couldn't help but notice the heat radiating out of my case (must be the dead lizards and fried ants around the casing clued perceptive old me in) so I started doing a bit of worrying about my Northbridge potentially setting fire to the neighbourhood and razing the entire population-ultradense little island I live on to the ground. (yes, I knew what a northbridge was, and if you don't, you probably ought not to.)
Actually no, I just worried that all that excess heat might have a negative impact on my computer's shelf-life.
After ripping an old processor fan off a pentium-75 museum piece (anyone want to buy an antique?) that happened to be lying around thanks to my brother's own little difficulties with reality and duct-taping it to my northbridge, and feeling happy with myself I got to worrying that maybe it still wasn't enough... (this particular trait I blame on genetics. I'm Singaporean. Ergo, I must be Kiasu.)
That's when I started reading tech forums about PC cooling solutions, and THESE ladies and gentlemen are the big time tech boys - this is where the real-life tech-boys eat, sleep and breathe.
I began slide down the slippery slope towards compu-insanity... decisions, decisions... invest in an active cooling solution? ah, but the noise... or maybe a passive cooling solution... will it be a toss up between the mini jet turbine / rocket engine... or maybe the ultra conductive thermonuclear-cooling-rod-thingummagig which costs twice the price of an aircraft carrier from the subcontinent... My mind was awhirl. Reality began to shimmer...
It was only when I started considering water-cooling (which essentially moves half the nation's Newater (tm) reserves through your PC's case every five seconds) that I caught myself from plunging headlong over the brink into the endless canyon of True Geekdom.
True Geekdom is about an obsessive urge for perfection - a stark over-the-topness that has nothing to do with aesthetic or common sense, or even about liking sleek, shiny things. It has to do with wanting to modify, tweak and overclock that last little virtual knob and dial till your system teeters on the brink of frying itself into a supernova at an ultra-cold temperature of absolute zero, just so that you can tell yourself - and other geeks - that you've been there. That you've overclocked your 486 to the speed of an AMD 64 on steroids... just... because. It's about patience and hours of toil, trouble and trial-and-error -- as well as about extravagence : too much money spent, too many degrees under that don't matter, too much air being moved that plankton and people halfway across the globe from enough oxygen to live meaningful lives -- it's about not caring about anything at all, except... perfection.
So no, I'm not a geek.
And neither are the rest of you normal people toting your fancy video-phones and digital-cameras out there.
We're just people who like shiny toys with lots of little buttons on. :)
