No Hold’s Barred



Techno Christmas – Confessions of a nerd



I think the world has finally caught up to me.

There was a time when wanting something electronic for Christmas was plain nerdy.

There was nothing wrong with a baseball glove, or a fire truck, or a new pair of skates or a toboggan under the Christmas tree.

For the girls (at the risk of being called sexist) there were Barbie dolls, new dresses, and something called a roller-skate. Yes, moving along with wheels on your feet is really nothing new at all. (Now I am truly dating myself!)

About as close to an electronic gadget as one would see under the tree was a Lionel HO-gauge train set.

My friends thought I was very strange for wanting the very latest Heathkit radio - some assembly required, or a new Optiscanner in later years.

The final straw came in 1972 when I asked my wife for a telephone for the car. Can you imagine? A telephone – in a car!

Can you imagine my excitement when Santa put the very latest Motorola phone under the Christmas tree with four – count them – four voice channels? It weighed about 50 pounds, and had more cables and wires than a stereo system on steroids. However, it was not long before the Charlottetown mobile operator knew my voice by heart.

I confess, I have always been a nerd.

Not only do I prefer Santa to visit the electronics store on the way to my house from the North Pole, but I tend to give all my non-nerd friends and family electronics too. After all, someone has to bring them up to date!

From bedside radios that double as weather alert sirens - alerts always seem to happen at 2 a.m.- to FRS radios and computer accessories, a gift should reflect the giver as well as the givee. If it does not take a battery, it probably did not come from me.

Finally it seems, everyone else has seen the wisdom of my ways. After decades of fighting the long hard battle – it seems everyone else has seen the light, all 100 kilowatts of it.



2005 Christmas lists

The hottest item (now unisex) for every boy and girl is the cell phone.

Can you imagine? 40,000 voice channels, and now you can even watch TV too!

I-pods and Blackberries are hot and now everyone wants one. One is truly a bad boy or girl if Santa does not leave an MP3 player under the LED flashing Christmas tree!

Even the dolls of old, for the more traditional gift-giver, now come with electronic gizmos attached. It not only closes its eyes and cries, but takes a bottle and ….well…. processes the liquid. An electronic diaper dispenser is available as an accessory.

There are even fashion accessories for your latest electronic gadget.

The DVD player in the family van fits in perfectly with the new compact hands free phone and who could be without ONSTAR? That would be irresponsible, or so the commercials tell us.

“Operator, trace this call to tell me where I am please.”

Party favours are no longer funny hats and noisemakers, but an electronic breathalyzer to assure you are not over the legal limit.

Christmas cards come via e-mail, complete with a Christmas song attached.

And they called me a nerd?

The young people of today have me defeated – hands down. I am a neophyte when it comes to being a nerd. They have gadgets I can’t even pronounce, let alone hope to operate. I am now just the guy with the flashing 12:00 on my latest gift.

I reached my limit with my fully loaded GPS unit for my birthday and this Christmas’s present – a Sirius satellite radio.

Now, if I could only find a watch that I could set the time on without a manual!

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