At 1:00 a.m. on March 8, 2006, the good people of Good Morning America knocked on Jenny's apartment door in Vancouver, BC, and set about converting her tiny apartment into a live satellite feed studio: cameras, lights, and a 1,000-foot umbilical cord running down 11 flights of stairs to a giant satellite truck on the street. Setup took four hours. We went live to the East Coast at around 4:30 a.m., were on the air for roughly five minutes, and then the crew spent another two hours tearing it all down. "Studio apartment" gained a whole new meaning.
ABC ran the companion story, "Couple Implants Microchips Into Hands," the same morning. It noted that Jennifer, then a 23-year-old marketing student, had gotten her chip in December 2005, and that only about 30 people worldwide had voluntarily received implants at the time. My quote held to the core of it: "I did it because I don't want to carry anything around. I really did this for convenience."
The funny part happened on air. We'd spent a good 30 minutes beforehand going back and forth about whether I should log into my computer live, and finally settled on doing it when Charlie Gibson asked. About 1:20 into the segment he brings up the computer log-in, I just barely start to turn around to do it, and he goes "let me ask you a question..." You can see the confusion on my face. Live national television, everyone.