Diane’s brother and his wife are both computer hardware folks by trade (though she’s gone into management) at a second-generation offspring of what used to be Ma Bell. I called them today to set up some travel plans, but Pete wasn’t in at the time — Debbie said he’d gone out to buy a router.

I immediately said, “Get a Linksys”.

There was dead silence on the other end of the line, which surprised me no end; I was going to add the model number, and then it hit me, and I asked, “bits or wood?”, to which Debbie replied “carpentry”.

Oh. That might explain why he went to Sears, I guess.

We had 90 minutes to answer the questions; frankly, I thought we did pretty well to get through all 400 questions in the alloted time. No multiple choice, either — these were all fill-in-the-blank questions.

Some of them were easy for at least one of us (for example: What does the Brannock Device measure?). Some were easy for all of us (Name the two moons of Mars).

And then there were the rest of the questions. We worked together and figured some out; we guessed at some; we didn’t have time even to try others. We figured out a few after sealing up the envelope to mail it back (oh, well). Some are still popping into my mind (too little, too late). And there are many others for which I still haven’t a clue, though I do have Google (What is pogonip?)!

And there are some I can’t figure out, even with Google, such as this one: “In 1994, who refurbished World War II planes, complete with flight attendants appropriately attired and old issues of Life and Saturday Evening Post?” — time to ask a librarian! (or wait for the corrected papers to come back in the mail sometime next month….)

This was definitely an exercise in frustration and humility. I’m looking forward to doing it again next year.