What’s In A Name…

As it turns out, Shakespeare was right.

People ask me why I consider myself an electrogeek, instead of a technogeek. It’s a bit of a long story, so I’ll make it easy for you.

There are two primary differences. A Technogeek usually refers to those who are usually into computers, or digital gadgets generally. That’s cool, and I like looking at all the new toys that come out that we all want to have. The fastest computer, the best and coolest programs, the flashiest cell phones, etc.

An Electrogeek, however, is far more interested in what makes all those toys work. All the chips, resistors, lasers, and so forth that comprise the toys and make them work. We’re also more interested in making them that much better.

For most people, if a flashdrive casing breaks, they’ll put it together long enough to get their stuff of it and on to a new one. Not me—I look at the guts of the thing, marvel at how it was done, then glue the case shut, wrap some electrician’s tape around it…and keep on using it. It still works, and unless you look at it closely, you’d never know it had broken.

Now you’re catching on. The other principal difference is that Electrogeeks fix their toys if something goes wrong. Soldering irons, electrical tape and multimeters are the most used essentials of our toolkits.

I come by these traits honestly. Dad’s an Electrical Engineer; he was always fixing or tweaking something or other out in the shop. We had one of the first computers in our neighborhood; a TRS-80 level 2 (which was a Model 1, with a whopping 12KB of ROM instead of the standard level I 4KB ROM) that was…ummm, modified, shall we say…a bit, by the time Dad got done.

One of my favorite “toys” as a kid was the Science Fair 100 in 1 electronics kit. I built everything I could with it, then started to build things with it (and some spare parts) that I wasn’t supposed to build. Then I raided some of the parts off of it for other projects. (And I’m paying dearly for that now, as I recently bought a second one off Ebay for the vintage parts to fix my kit up again.) I blew the relay out—no mean feat— and had to replace both transistors and a few resistors. (Don’t ask what I was trying to build. You really don’t want to know.)

Why pay some guy to hook up a speaker to the stereo setup in the bedroom? 10’ of 18 gauge speaker wire and the speaker, 15 minutes of my time, and there it is. Wasn’t the first time I’ve hooked up speakers—and won’t be the last, either.

10 years ago, when digital batteries weren’t as good as they are now, I built a battery trap to drain the last bit of juice out of them, so they’d last longer and hold a charge better. (I don’t need to use it now, though—the rechargeables are so much better then they were—but I still have it.)

I could go on, with things like the Realistic DX-150A shortwave radio I had in high school that got better reception than some better, modern units of the day. (I recently reacquired one of those as well, to add to the digital shortwave I currently own.) And before you ask—the first thing I did was take it apart, clean it, and adjust it. Dad would have done the same thing, I’m sure.

Anyway—thanks for asking.

Enough for now.

(posted 3/5/08)