Geek Cred

Something happened the other day that made me realize that I am running pretty low on Geek Cred these days.

Mike gave me an old motherboard he is no longer using so I could upgrade my screamin' home computer (a Pentium II 266) to the point that I could run Neverwinter Nights. (I won't go into what that is, or why I want to play it, because it's not germane to the story. Go to Google and look it up if your curiosity is overwhelming.)

So he hands me a printed circuit board and starts telling me about the overclocking techniques, and the board architecture, blah blah blah - I feel my eyes start to glaze over. I have no idea what the hell he's talking about, so I just nod knowingly until he leaves.

What happened? I mean, when I was a kid I had a paper route that paid me about $40 a month. I used the money from my route to buy a computer. Yes, a computer! In 1982 I was the proud owner of my first personal computer - a TRS-80 Color Computer with 16k of RAM and a cassette drive, list price $599. I spent a lot of time POKEing and PEEKing around that box, in addition to the Z-80 based TRS-80 Model IIIs we had at school - I knew my way around those boxes, make no mistake. But this thing Mike handed me the other day could be from a telephone answering machine for all I know.

Lo, how the mighty have fallen.