At Backspace surfing. Tall thin guy on a couch across from me is approached by a tall (hard to judge but she’s wearing flats and seems 6′ tall from where I sit) short-haired brunette, thin and muscular, in a skintight black T and jeans, with tats up and down her arms and peeking out from various bits of flesh here and there. They start talking about programming – the guy mentions something about Ruby Cocoa, which pegs him as a Mac OS X programmer.
The girl hadn’t heard of Ruby Cocoa but she was aware of the implications. She’s a programmer, too. Or at least hardcore geek. They’re apparently waiting for more people so they chat.
The guy gets a phone call and takes it on his generic non-smart non-PDA phone.
However, my already burning curiosity gets some kerosene tossed on it when the girl pulls out an iPhone. She plays with it for a bit while the boy is on his call.
I lean over the top of my laptop. “I’m trying not to covet your iPhone,” I say.
“Oh, no, that’s perfectly understandable,” she says, almost embarrassed.
“So if you feel waves of attention from over here, it’s me,” I say, along with waving my hands in her direction to indicate said waves.
She chuckles. “It’s the only thing I have going for me, lately.”
I hope that the look on my face reflects my complete astonishment at this ludicrous statement, but knowing how well I hide my feelings it probably didn’t. Let’s see: she’s brainy, geeky, tall, hot, and she loves amazing design and ease of use and sexy sexy technology, and yet still modest enough to apologize for it all. I don’t remember what I said, exactly, but I think I just nodded.
She talks about how it’s the most amazing thing she’s ever owned and that she’s completely OK with how much it costs. She must get asked that a lot, but doesn’t she see that I’m surfing on a MacBook Pro? Don’t worry, milady, I get it.
I mention that I’m waiting for my T-Mobile contract to expire so I can get one; she counters with the fact that she paid the early termination fee to T-Mobile to get the iPhone. I ask her how the EDGE service is in Portland and she says it’s great.
I go back to surfing while the boy finishes his phone call and plays with the iPhone.
They’re joined by another girl, also cute, but obviously lacking an iPhone. They leave for some other venue.
At least I said something. Maybe I’ll post this in Missed Connections…