According to the NY Times, there’s a quick and simple test to see where you lie in the geek camp (Vs regular human beings)
1. Do you run linux? (They never did specify if you’re a debian or slackware user).
2. Do you use bit torrent?
3. Do you have more email address’ than trousers? (The actual article says pants, translated from the American).
So am I a geek? Well I think two out of three points to distinctive geekish tendencies, if not a totally socially inept full blown geek. For example, I have an X Box, but rarely play games – I use it more for playing DVD’s upscaled to nearly-there HD quality – I have a long term girlfreind that accepts that I spend most of my days off ‘geeking’ although what it is I’m doing remains a mystery to her; and for that matter sometimes to me also – and I have yet to ever engage in any MORPG of any kind.
I suppose there’s two types of geek. The ones that are obsessive to the point of mental illness about one thing, and the ones that are a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. I fall into the second category, I’m like a hoover, sucking up ideas, code and thoughts from all over the place. I’d like to be good at one specific thing, but I find that all too boring, so I’m pretty good at most things. I’m not afraid to break something as long as I can put it back together again.
At present I work in a large Further and Higher Education college, so I do a fare share of fixing broken things and making stuff work by cobbling together parts, and running about making sure things work. One of my main hates is how some people – mainly the Art staff – refuse to learn how technology works, even on a basic scale. They say to me that I’m part of the technological generation, but I’m not. When I was growing up, there was no internet, no digital cameras, data projectors or home computers… I got my first PC when I was 15, and that was a cast off from my fathers office which had a 10″ black and white display and ran everything from 5.25″ floppy disks. I’ve learnt everything I know from working out why it went wrong. Other people can do the same, but they’re lazy and refuse to put the time in.
People phone me when they can’t make something work.
Nine times out of ten it’s because it’s not plugged in.
You see what I’m dealing with?
