Brian Viner

I wasn't quite sure..

which is best - to be a geek, a nerd, a yuppie or a Wasp. Used to be a Wasp (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) but that was along time ago and it's probably now not correct to be anything like a Wasp. A Yuppie then? A Young Urban Professional person. Nah! young doesn't apply - urban? No, not living in Russell; Professional - not really, no more, long time ago now.

See, the problem was I wanted to buy this thing. Which I now have bought. And I hate it. It's an "i" thing and I used to love "i " things but I now hate them. I wanted to go into a shop, not just any old shop. I wanted to go into David Jones in Sydney and seem as if I knew what I was talking about. I didn't want to be a Nerd. Nerds are awkward shy and unattractive. They trip up and fall over a lot. They are goofy. Much worse than being a Nerd is being a Geek although Geeks do know about 'i' things but Geeks are also freaks and do disgusting acts so I didn't want to go into David Jones and they would think "Here comes a Geek and we hope he is not going to do a disgusting act all over our 'i' things (or alternatively hope that he will do something disgusting " - depending on how their day was going). So I thought I might be a sort of combination of all three, a sort of YuGeNer, and in I went to buy the most useless thing in the shop, an 'ipod touch'.

Briskly stepping up to the Mac display counter and briskly adjusting my "All Blacks Forever" sweatshirt, the one with the Giant Silver Fern emblazoned across the front (I find a touch of class always intimidates the Aussies) I was approached.

Now I have found over the years that when two people of the same like mind meet little has to be said. Each knows almost immediately there is rapport, a mutual respect for, and in this case, knowledge of, computers and the bits of things with wires and stuff that plug into them.

"Look" I said, " I want an 'ipod touch'."

"No problem" he said.

"But," I said "It must be a 4G."  I thought that now we are getting into high tech language that might stop him in his tracks so to speak, but it didn't.

"Here you are" he said, "$260 bucks please."

"Ha!" I said, giving him my specially logo'd All Blacks World Cup 2011 credit card, "I don't live here, and before we go any further, when I get home can I just plug this into my MacBook and it will work?" Implying of course, we were of an ilk and both understood these things.

"Of course" he said.

"Wonderful" I said, carefully putting my brand new ipod touch into my flight bag, the one covered with giant silver ferns and rugby balls.

So I flew home. After a day or so, barely able to contain my excitement, I plugged the ipod Touch into the MacBook - and it didn't work. Oh, the computer hummed and buzzed and fizzed for a while then threw up a little box on the screen that said I needed a whole new operating system, a Mac osx Snow Leopard 10.6.3. Great. Sooo disappointed, soooo looking forward to listening to all of my Cliff Richard's greatest hits and singing along to some classical stuff like ABBA.

So what do we do when we have this kind of problem? We ring Harvey Norman and yes, they do have the Snow Leopard in stock and it's $59 and yes, just plug it in and it will work. So I did the two hours drive to our nearest store wearing my green and gold Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie sweatshirt. Again a touch of class always helps. 

So I bought one and plugged it in. And I this is why I hate I things, because once again some fizzing and humming and yet another little box popped up and said I didn't have enough ROM and I needed to buy more things to plug in and get more ROM!

I am not going to, and I will never ever, buy another 'i ' thing again. Until I can afford an ipad that is.

There is a happy ending of sorts. A friend of mine who is not a Geek or a Nerd and does not indulge in disgusting acts, simply took away my old loathed Toshiba, updated it, loaded in the itouch and it all works perfectly.