The REAL geek squad

How does that prayer go again? Oh yeah: Lead me not into temptation.

Well, that’s one prayer shot all to hell. That’s because a conversation at work today went something like this:

“Cynthia, my home PC won’t even turn on, not a single sound or anything when I hit the power switch. Any idea what the problem is?”
“Mmmmm…might be a busted power supply; if there’s a computer store around here you could pick one up fairly cheap.”
“There’s a place called Fry’s just down the road, I could walk to it.”
“Really? Well, that’s all my work done for the day, then. See you Monday!”

Yup. Fry’s. Within walking distance.

There goes my discretionary income.

For those of you not gadgeteers or geeks, Fry’s is sorta the quintessential warehouse for electronics buffs. Think Best Buy with people who know electronics. Radio Shack with a decent selection. CompUSA without the rotten policies. Costco and Trader Joe’s combined, but for gadgets.

Now it’s not as cool as the BucketMouth Shop, that long-gone place I hung out in during my salad days, where the Sierra Online folks came down to trade hacks and you could pick up an 8080 processor for about a quarter. But it’s about the closest thing left.

And it’s full of real geeks, the kind that didn’t spend their stock option money on manicures, Gucci and BMWs. The ones that drool over really cool PC cases and clog the aisles arguing the relative merits of RedHat vs. Ubuntu. Who gleefully grab a salesman to point out a mistake on the spec sheet (and, more than likely, the salesman just as gleefully points out an obscure geekism that makes it totally correct).

It’s where I can come in with an idea to build a black box casting controller for the Intelligent Kiln Project that needs to survive grinding swarf, high temps and maybe some water splashes…and have the salesman suggest a mineral oil-cooled system with a membrane keyboard before I can.

Great place for peoplewatching and discreet eavesdropping (”Dylan, if your mom didn’t specifically SAY the money was for college, then she can’t get mad at you for buying it, right?”).

Drat. Get thee behind me, Fry’s.