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February 22, 2009
When Technology Goes Too Far
I am a Mac guy and have been since my freshman year of college. This means I have access to the wonderful application iChat, with which I keep in touch with various friends, either by typing messages back and forth or by having conversations via video. Alden's two sets of out-of-town grandparents make regular appearances on the other end of the video chat. Usually the session consists of watching the baby drive her plastic car or watching her eat or watching her throw things and yell. Really grandparents have no high standards when it comes to the subject matter of a video chat. But tonight we took the grandparent video chat in a whole new direction. Let me set the stage.
Tonight was the second matchup of the season between the Duke Blue Devils and the Demon Deacons of Wake Forest. Wake clipped Duke in the final seconds of a hard-fought game three weeks ago in Winston Salem. Alden and I were keenly interested in a different outcome in the rematch.
We put on our Duke garb.
And I had on my Duke slipper sneakers.
My keen interest in Duke basketball stems from the keen enthusiasm of my mother, who, as a dancer at Duke, was once asked to fill in as a Duke cheerleader for the ACC tournament one year. We always "watch" the games "together." In the time before iChat, this meant calling one another on the phone during commercials or at halftime, and sometimes even for the final minutes of a particularly tense or important game. More recently, we have chatted with one another on iChat throughout the game, making such insightful comments as "nice three!" or "terrible call!" or "boy oh boy do I hate UNC." But tonight my mother could not get the game on any of the hundreds of channels available via her satellite cable package. I, being in ACC country, was able to watch it. What to do? How to reconcile the inequity?
By placing my mac on stack of books set upon a stool...
...and pointing the screen at the TV...
...we were able to project the game from the TV to my mac to my mother's screen in Andover.
In this manner, three generations of Duke fans watched the game together.
During commercials, Alden and I visited with my mom.
It turned out to be serendipitous that we were all together, as the game was a tough one to endure. Down by 22 points early, Wake rallied to pull within two. My mom and I exchanged groans of agony when Wake scored and cries of joy when Duke did. All the while, Alden struggled to grasp the import of what was happening. My carryings-on probably constituted the most baffling behavior she has witnessed in her life to date.
In the end, my team won, racking up 100 points for the first time in five years. Alden and I were incredibly excited. After saying good night to mom, Alden requested that I jump, a thing I have not done for many months.
In honor of Duke's victory and because I was wearing my lose-fitting comfortable penguin pants, I decided to give it a go.
Who am I to disappoint a child?
Posted by bogenamp at February 22, 2009 11:22 PM