Journal: News & Comment

Data galore, but wrinkled clothes

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If you've read this site for any length of time, you have no reason to doubt my geek credentials. Still, something came up today that reinforces the point.

My wife and I were talking about how we have no shortage of computers in this house: her laptop, my laptop, a desktop in the basement, and three fully functioning older Macs that are on a shelf because we simply don't need them right now. And that's after I purged out most of my electronic clutteralia last fall.

I recalled how, when I began my bachelor living phase, with three roommates, back in 1987, we were all geeks, even then. We had met through online bulletin board systems (BBSs). We've moved on a little. Today, one of us is head of Digital Design at Vancouver Film School, a second helps run the campus-wide network for the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and the third has been the official Tall Skinny Guy With Screwdriver for Simon Fraser University's Faculty of Business Administration for lo many years now. Plus there's me.

Anyway, back when we moved in together, we owned among us seven computers. Twenty years ago, that was not only nerdy, it was absurd.

Here is the key point. We had those seven computers, but we didn't have an iron.

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