i can't claim ignorance because i knew what i was getting into from the onset. from the first day we met, chad has never bothered to camouflage his geekiness. in fact, he wears it like a badge of honor. and i have to admit that i find it quite endearing (kind of in the same way i find the dog's snoring endearing).
during the height of his geekdom, chad owned no less than eight working computers (that he built himself), attended "LAN parties" on a very regular basis (sometimes held at the local denny's at 1am) and read big fat programming books for leisure. he still does all of these things, but on a smaller scale. it's cool, though, because i get to learn something new and geeky almost every single day.
today i was introduced to the world of "x10". recently, chad's friend, william - who is also a geek (they tend to band together) - suggested that we set up an x10 alert that will let you know from inside the house if the garage door is up or down. apparently william was thinking about this during his downtime. me personally, i would have been satisfied with looking out the back door with my own eyes to check if the door was up or down. but i guess that's the kind of banal thinking you would expect from a former high school cheerleader. anyways, chad took the idea even further, adding that it would also be nice to know if the doors are locked and if the dog is in his cage.
and then, he got really excited about the infinite possibilities...
William: you would be amazed what all you can do. I was reading an article where the dog door would only unlock for their dog
Chad: you know what i was just thinking.. it would be nice to let the dog out from work. we were talking about having a dog door on the side of the house where the door leads to the basement. but would be also cool if we had webcams set up and could lock and unlock the dog door :-) and signal him with a flashing light if the door was unlocked. train him.
Hannah: wait. what's an x10?
Chad: its a system you can use to 'automate' your house.
Hannah: is that what the jetsons had?
Chad: you buy little gadgets that control lights, your thermostat, tell you when doors are open or closed etc. and they all feed in to your pc and you can control from there or over the web. people do all kinds of cool stuff with it
Hannah: uh
Chad: geeky
Hannah: like spy on their spouses? in the shower?
Chad: :-) no that's just webcam hehe
Chad: you know how the cool kids on fast and furious did all that shit to their cars
ground effects body kits etc? this is what geeks do to their houses
Hannah: oh. how about you work on the doorbell first (our doorbell doesn't work). i think that's the best way to know if someone is at your door. or is that too low tech for you?
Chad: ah nice. so it can be wireless or the signals are just sent through the powerlines. no i think we need a trap door with face recognition cameras that cross references the sexual predator database so if a bad guy comes to the door, the system automatically traps the person in haha
Hannah: OMG what??? why would i want a sexual predator trapped in my house?
Chad: no it would be cordoned off to a section of the basement.
Hannah: you know this conversation is total blogworthy
Chad: oh shit
Hannah: and you're going to come out looking like uber geek
Chad: i have to get back to work
so i read this wikipedia entry on x10 ... and i still don't really get it. what i want to know is, will it cook dinner?