Two Geeks in Love

This is how I spent last Saturday evening with the woman I love.

We've been together for 16 years, and -- ok I admit it -- we are both MAC GEEKS. Between the two of us we currently own three desktop computers and three portables. The desktops are ethernetworked, and the portables are AirPort wireless, so we can use them anywhere in the house (or in the backyard if we want to.) High-speed Internet, the whole bit.

She gave me an iPod recently as a gift, and I've been madly ripping in iTunes from our large collection of audio CDs. (Plus I picked up one of those Griffin USB audio inputs and have digitized some of our favorite vinyl LPs.) We're experimenting with Apache, PHP & mySQL on OS X, and we've already assembled an iPhoto album of our cats (seven of 'em) and ordered a beautiful 16-page hardbound book.

We like these toys, and we always seem to have some kind of new "project" going. So Saturday rolls around, and for a change we decide to just kick back and relax. I get the AV cable that came with my iBook and run it into the switchbox on our TV/VCR/DVD/Stereo system. Now my iBook screen is mirrored on our big 36" tube Zenith, with the audio routed to our six surround-sound speakers. I launch iTunes and start up my "Sensual Classics" playlist, and then I turn on the visuals, full screen.

Wow! Rachmaninoff and Schubert never looked so good! We curled up on the couch and sat mezmerized for about half an hour. Then I went to the cellar and brought back a lovely bottle of 20-year Lagavulin, popped the cork and poured us each a glass. We sipped the scotch, lulled into a perfect mood of nothingness by the rippling colors on the screen as we were bathed in the lush sounds of symphony.

Macallan (one of the cats) came in and sat on the rug right in front of the huge screen, and was obviously as entranced as we were. I fetched the digital camera and snapped some pictures of him there. (Separate exposures for the cat and the screen -- I'll Photoshop them together later. This is how innocently a new project begins.) The cat saunters off, we put the camera down, and are once again enchanted by the dance of colors moving to the beat of the music.

Kinderszenen ends, and then we hear the first stately beats of Ravel's Bolero. My sweetheart gets up, turns to me and offers her hand, inviting me to dance. So we dance for a while. Slow and building, like the music. We kiss, and then we kiss some more. And with more passion than we've shown for each other in quite a while, we kiss our way through to the pounding finish of Bolero.

I'd like to thank Apple Computer for making such great tech toys, software that fires the imagination and hardware that's beautiful to look at and so easy to connect to all the other tech toys that fill our lives. Thanks for iTunes and the fantastic visuals that go along with it. Thanks for iPhoto, and the beautiful photo album of our cats. Geeks we are indeed, but oh -- life is good.

Last update: 2/22/08; 2:01:59 PM.