Nerdiness is next to godliness

My company recently changed our IT department, getting rid of the outsource and hiring a new superstar...the savior of the broken, the beaten and the damned. He started a week ago and I've become obsolete, at least as far as tech support is concerned. On the bright side, it's the first time in years I really feel like it's going to be a challenge to keep up my less than acceptable technical activities at the office (no more bittorrent, no more downloading, probably no more hacked, cracked or patched proggies on my machine, until I can beat this bastidge).

With my alter-ego and tech support role apparently no longer active, I'll have to turn to other sources for inspiration. Thankfully, I had one today...before going any further, I must warn you that what you're about to read is nauseating.

I was out for the day with a client...actually, 3 of the senior people at one of my client companies. It's a somewhat revamped team, as I've had one primary point of contact for the last 5 years or so, but he recently left the company. The guy that replaced my longstanding contact is a nice guy, and seems pretty good at what he does. He had an absolutely beautiful thinkpad laptop too, which immediately made me think he was cooler than he seemed...at first.

When we were on our fifth meeting of the day and I was fighting to stay awake, I was taking notes as replacement guy's boss was talking to our audience. Just as I was about to doze off, new guy's computer started making some of the most heinous noises I'd heard in some time...never before have I heard a battery warning alarm blare so loudly. He shut off his computer but didn't bother to put it away. About 10 minutes later, I happened to look back over and saw him still sitting, looking intently at the screen on this pretty laptop. At that point, I saw something that disturbed me beyond belief. There he was, a senior executive at one of my longest standing clients, with a finger shoved deep in his nose. If that wasn't bad enough, I then saw him pull finger from nostril, and start typing again (typing what, I have no idea - I thought the laptop was still powered down). Glancing over a few other times during the meeting, I saw several more gross abuses of technology, including one instance where he appeared to be knuckle deep, and another where he looked like he was doubling up, the first time since kindergarten that I've seen someone with both index fingers simultaneously invading the nasal cavity. As grossed out as I was, the only thing I could think was that poor laptop.

wow, I really AM a geek.