Should I bring out the bubbly?

My name is Anand and I'm (supposed to be) a geek. And in Geekland, today I got the ultimate reward. I'll get to it in a bit. First, more on why I'm a geek.

Geek is a label that my sister lovingly stuck onto my forehead while I was with her in Dubai. I think that label is wrong more on account of her being 'um, lets say, "technologically challenged" rather than on my being any sort of technical gee-whiz with soda bottle glasses. You see, back then, when I was in Dubai, I was a man of simple means, living the bachelor life in a single room with no TV or girlfriends to keep me company. So it became that my means of entertainment centred around the Internet and appliances that make it possible to connect to the Internet - i.e., computers and related items.

I was quite content using my office laptop with a tethered connection for these pursuits until the suits in my office decided that using the office laptop for personal purposes was blasphemy and blocked all the fun software - messengers, video players and the like. For some sadistic reason, there were some software that were not blocked, but an email was circulated saying you may install these software, but if you get caught, somebody's gonna get hurt, we won't say who.

I needed a personal laptop now and not wanting to settle for anything else, it came in the form of a Mac. Soon I was blissfully spending nights watching movies online and even downloading some of them. Problem solved? No. My Mac has a 13" screen, so keeping it tethered meant the screen was faraway and audio sounded wonky. So I got a wireless router and sound blasters (again of the super fast and super fine quality varieties respectively). Problem number 3 was that I was running out disc space thanks to my fire-at-will downloading, so I needed more hard disk space and that came in the form of a 500GB WD MyBook (back then that was the most space available). The only drawback to the above was the minefield of wires that necessitated tip-toeing into my room to avoid an urgent meeting between face and floor. So that's about my computing pursuits.

Next on the list is my love of good mobile phones running Windows Mobile and lovely, fun filled hours spent customising them with custom ROMs that I tested for some 'fellow' geeks at an online forum. The result - three phones, with one almost always connected to my laptop. That's it.

When I started this blog, I also included a stat counter so I can see which countries people are visiting my page from and get some cheap kicks out of that. So in geek terms, I am really only a teenager who is experimenting and nowhere near the professional that I am portrayed to be. I can see true geeks nodding in agreement and I am thankful to them.


But please, pretty please, call me a geek! Why, because I got the reward mentioned above. With frowning eyebrows, I can see you asking me what that reward is. Here it is: my page is listed 6th out of 4.2 million web pages, I am on Google!












PS: I will not rest until I reach the number 1 spot. So, to answer my question, no I will not bring out the bubbly on this occasion, but yes, I might just treat myself to another custom ROM...