Mr. Geeky and I went out to buy some Christmas presents for ourselves. This is our tradition for almost every holiday that requires gifts. We get a joint big present, usually a gadget or appliance. Last year we got our smart phones. This year, we decided to get a digital video camera. We also decided we needed an external hard drive to hold the video and some other accoutrements. So I did my research on the digital video cameras. As always, Mr. Geeky and I try to get the biggest bang for our buck. Mr. Geeky left me to figure out the video cameras and wandered off to look at some other stuff. So I find the one recommended by David Pogue and start poking around on it. It’s a nice camera, but I don’t see a firewire out and I need firewire or it won’t work with my Mac. So I ask the worker dude. The guy is 12. Okay, he’s maybe right out of college, but he looks 12. I ask him about the firewire port on the camera. He points to the usb port and says, well, you can use that for both. It’s a 4-pin port. I say, no it’s not. I’m thinking I know what a 4-pin port looks like and that’s not it and you cannot use one port for two different types of data transfer you ding dong. I point out that there’s a little dv label on the front, but I don’t see how to get to it. Finally, he figures out that the opening is impeded by their security device, so he takes that off and sure enough we find the real 4-pin firewire port. Told you so, buddy.

Later, the guy redeemed himself somewhat by giving us three different cameras that he thought were the best in our price range. We went with the cheapest and he seemed somewhat disappointed, but hey, we’re living on academic salaries here. I think we’ll probably be buying a new camera in 3 years, but by then I figure they’ll have hard drives instead of tape.

On the way home, I noted to Mr. Geeky that no women work at Best Buy and that it’s scary that I know more than the worker dudes about most everything. I mean, I really don’t know everything even if I pretend I do.