The extent of my geekiness

It's a pretty well-known fact that that I'm a little on the geeky side, and very curious about the way things work. I think that's the reason I'm such a tree hugger--I'm constantly contemplating where things come from before we get them and where things go when we're done with them. (Actually, I think that everyone needs to think about that a little more--what kind of damage are you doing to the world when you mindlessly purchase items and discard things you don't want anymore. But I digress...)

We bought one of those handy little digital pregnancy tests when we were pretty sure that our attempts to procreate had been successful. We were just going to get one of the cheap ones, which are rumored to be just as accurate as the expensive ones, but we wanted to be darn sure we could read the results correctly, so we succumbed to the pressures of the television ads and bought a fancy test.

The little plastic stick proudly displayed the "YES+" on the screen for a few days. I checked it every day when I got home from work just to see if it had changed its mind. (I wasn't quite convinced it was true, and frankly, I'm still not.)

Then the screen went blank, so what did I do? I did what any proper geek would do--I took it apart to see how it worked, of course! And it's shockingly simple! There's a little battery and display screen, and then there's a little test strip with the two lines on it, an optical sensor, and a tiny light source. The test does the same darn thing as the "simple" tests, but the "high tech" part is that it detects the presence of the second line (indicating a positive test), and if that line is there, it triggers the screen to say YES. No line--the screen says NO. Now that I know how it works, I'm a little embarrassed to have thought that getting the high tech test would be better!

I'll post some pictures of the insides of the test tomorrow. I'm being beckoned to the living room at this time...