OTHER TECH

Ready for My Close-up

On Friday, the crew came back for the final photo shoot. As I posed on my knees, pretending to plug a unit into the wall, it finally dawned on me what was really going on. All of a sudden, as I waited for the photographer to set his flash, hundreds of thoughts started to go off in my head. I started to realize that thousands of people were going to see this picture and I had never looked at my hair. Then I remembered (as if I had forgotten in the first place) that I'm balding, and my nails look bad. I tried to strategically tilt my head so the flash wouldn't reflect on my scalp and blind anyone. Then I noticed that the outlet I was plugging into didn't have a plate on it (usually it was hidden by the couch). Not a big deal except that I'm an electrician and my family would never let me forget it if I had a picture of my house without a plate on the device. So I had to find a plate from another plug and put it on the outlet. Luckily, most of the pictures weren't about me, but about the equipment. My wife, on the other hand, got to pretend she was vacuuming, which really excited her.

Family Fuel

My family and I had a great time doing the article. I enjoyed testing the equipment, troubleshooting problems with the installations, and generally playing around with new toys. My wife loved posing for photos, although I doubt when she was a little girl her dream modeling job was to have pictures taken with a vacuum cleaner for Sound & Vision magazine! My kids just liked the attention. The entire crew was great to work with. The best part was when we had a room full of people all dancing to the Wiggles' "Do the Monkey" so they could get a shot of the kids dancing.

I think the contest was a great idea; hopefully it will add a little real-world experience (and maybe a little fun) to the magazine. The article also should be a nice change of pace from all the HDTV reviews and such (even if that is the real reason anyone reads the magazine in the first place).

Electrical Swarm

It was also cool that, even though the main requirement of the contest was a family that lived in an older house, the biggest advantage I had was my experience as an electrician. Besides the fact that I have a lot of dimmers and low-voltage transformers in my house that allowed me to test the HomePlug equipment, my experience with troubleshooting problems and testing helped a lot. My only regret is that we weren't able to get our hands on some of the stuff that's coming out in the next year, like the new HomePlug speakers and video devices. While some of the items I tested were not necessarily targeted toward me, if the new equipment works as well as the devices I used, I think there's a future for this technology. I know I'll be very interested in the video modules when they come on the market.

Finally, thanks again to Rob, Mike Mettler, and the whole crew at S&V. They were a great bunch to work with.

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