techie

Through all of High School and most of College, I was proudly a techie.

At the end of HS, I had worked over 800 hours for various theatrical events, and probably 600 - 650 of that was lighting/construction/set hand related.

Personally, I love lighting. But I digress.

Using the word techie to describe anybody of the computer sort is an extreme misnomer, unless we're talking about Intelligent Lighting, which is a whole other story.

A techie does not sit at a desk typing, or even under a desk digging into the innards of a 486.

They ride genie's at 3 AM, swinging through the rafters with only safety chains to keep them safe, dangling off of a catwalk by one foot in a further effort to get the perfect angle on a parkam. They are an elite of a very different kind.

And we have a reason to wear all black all the time, unlike the rest of you goobers.

• is someone who arrived 10 hours before you for load in and will stay 6 hours after you leave.
• is a Fine Arts degree that covered everything from mechanical engineering to fashion history, human figure drawing and graphic design to carpentry and welding.
• is someone just as capable dealing with the micro-voltages on a DMX Isolated splitter or a 480 volt three phase buck-boost transformer.
• is the person who makes sure that 2 ton piece of truss stays up in the air where it belongs.
• is the person who decides whether you are being lit with Alice Cooper green or something a little more flattering.
• is the person who can tell you the difference between a himation and a chlamys and or what type of egg and dart moulding would be most appropriate to a given section of London circa 1830.