to geek or not to geek .. =)

[someone_4]

Are we geeks?
I was watching the screensavers last night and I was talking to one of my friends that is not in "the biz" and he made a joke saying you are a geek. I thought about it well I am a geek and there is nothing wrong with it. Where did it start? Well who rememebers the movie War Games? That was the big first computer movie I think after that I was hooked!! Computers were cool!! But it sill took a few years to get into it.But 2 years ago I would have never thought I would be working on HPUX ! I didnt even know what HPUX or unix was 3 year ago. I am doing things that allot of people dont know anything about. And I love it ! And if that makes me a GEEK soo be it my gosh i am a GEEK! Anyways that is just my thoughts here.. anyone have some good geek stories? lol
Happy Turkey day!

Richard =)

[Craig Rants]

Well, as I always tell my Wife, "If you mean by geek that I can pay for your new house and car, where as if I had a non-geek job I could not, why yes I guess I am a geek"

Happy Holidays,
Craig

[Darrell Allen]

Hi Richard,

It's interesting how words change. According to the online Encarta dictionary, geek means:

1. somebody awkward: somebody who is considered unattractive and socially awkward (insult)

2. ARTS outrageous carnival performer: a carnival performer whose act consists of outrageous feats such as biting the heads off live animals

3. COMPUTING obsessive computer user: somebody who enjoys or takes pride in using computers or other technology, often to what others consider an excessive degree (informal)


[Late 19th century. Origin uncertain: perhaps from, ultimately, Low German gek "fool."]


My father-in-law tells of the traveling circus that came to his town "years ago". The geek was the kid who ate a live chicken, feathers and all!

I'll take door number 3, please.

Darrell

[Robie Lutsey]

Yeah I'm a geek... I don't feel too bad when I get my paycheck though.

[Jason VanDerMark]

Where I work, we user the term geek and goober interchangably. So we UNIX admins are either the uber-geeks or uber-goobers. Being a geek is not only great, but it definitely pays the bills. =)

Regards,
Jason V.

[someone_4]

What about the movie war games? Now was that ahead of its time?

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

I am a geek..geek..geek....

Physics -> fortran 3 months -> Fox Pro 6 months -> UNIX Admin 8 years

I still think of deBroglie's theory of Dual Nature of light and try to apply Heisenberg's uncertainity principle to my capacity and performance issues

-Sri

[harry d brown jr]

I'm a geek, but:

(1) I drink wild turkey (and often)
(2) I don't have a pocket protector or slide rule
(3) I drink coffee like water
(4) I have short hair
(5) I am usually very well dressed (at work, at home it's sweats)
(6) I do a lot of my own car repairs
(7) I can replace a sink or water heater or any other household appliance
(8) I can cook and clean (I apologize in advance for this: the women love it)
(9) I despise MS
(10) I barely graduated from high school and never finished college!
(11) I am into politics

live free or die
harry

[Krishna Prasad]

As I always say....

I am a geek for a living....

[Alan Riggs]

I geek.
I geek proudly and often.

What -- is there supposed to be a down side?

[Christopher Caldwell]

You know you're a geek if your wife watches the "computer guy" bits on SNL and says "honey, that's just like you".

[Craig Rants]

Christopher,
Your and my wife should talk, after she asks for my help she will say, Move (acts likes she is typing) There was that so hard!

[John Bolene]

I was the ultimate geek in high school in the last 60's.

I wore a pocket protector full of pens and a 6" measuring rule. I had a metal slide rule complete with leather carrying case on my belt. I had to wear slacks and a nice shirt to school because my mother said jeans looked tacky and would not buy me any. Of course glasses, but not with tape holding the 2 halves together.

I started the rocketry club and the slide rule club and was president of both of them.

War games, the movie, came out a few months after PCtalk was coded. PCtalk was a basic program that could be compiled and was the first modem program for the PC. There was a separate module that was available that could do the war dialing, but it was initially designed to just redail numbers when the bulliten board numbers were busy.

Personally, I wrote an assembler modem program for the Apple so that I could use it to dial into work to fix things so I did not have to drive in. We had TI Silent 700's that we could check out to take home for support but they were only for 110 baud and only 2 were available. My program handled an external Hayes Smartmodem at 1200 baud.

My daughters call me a geek and I'm still proud of it.

[Geoff Wild]

There's nothing wrong with being a geek, afterall, even if you don't like him, Bill Gates is one and he is one of the wealthies people in the world.

My daughters and friends call me a Computer Geek - as I have my own network at home of various computers, complete with firewall and VPN to another server.

My daughters are becoming that way as well - both of them were using computers as early as 5 years old.

As a family, we spend way more time on computers then we watch TV.

Rgds...Geoff

UNIX command of the day:
# make fire
Make: Don't know how to make fire. Stop.
# why not?
No match.

[Darrell Allen]

To test your "geekiness"

In the movie "Wayne's World 2", which do you remember best:

A. the book the "geeky-looking" girl was holding (and Garth commented on) when Garth was waiting for the band to show up for the big concert and for Wayne to get back with Cassandra

B. the name of the band they wanted to come to their concert

Darrell

[someone_4]

Darrel I dont remember either But I do rememeber Paul of the wonder years.

[Marco Paganini]

I guess I am a geek. Check this out:

- I do not use microsoft in my laptop
- When I'm forced to use Microsoft, I type vi commands in Word all the time.
- I type really fast
- I hit the backspace key even faster.
- Most people find my musical taste rather unusual.
- I'll wear cargo pants and hiking boots whenever I can.
- I have an old car
- I have a salary that's far below my capacity
- Jobs nobody can do always end up in my hands.
- I'm never more than 5 meters away from my cellphone.
- I use metric.

:)

[G. Vrijhoeven]

Hi Richard,

I have been called a geek/nerd becouse i spend to mutch time on this forum. I do not know if i should take it as a complimet or as a insult. I defended myself by using the argument; but i like the issues and the interaction. so maybe i am a geek but if i am i am happy with it so who gives a ^#$%*#!

Gideon

[someone_4]

I think its a great thing to be geek!

[someone_4]

uggg
i run

# why not?
sh: why: not found.

[harry d brown jr]

Didn't someone say "the geeks shall inherit the world"??

live free or die
harry

[Robie Lutsey]

What was WarGames about?

I was only 3 when it came out so I've never watched it.

[someone_4]

Cliff I found that war games came out in 1983.
But here is the plot.
A young computer whizz kid accidentally connects into a top secret super-computer which has complete control over the U.S. nuclear arsenal. It challenges him to a game between America and Russia, and he innocently starts the countdown to World War 3. Can he convince the computer he wanted to play a game and not the real thing ?

Here is a cool web site too.
http://www-public.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de/~ritterd/wargames/logon.htm

[harry d brown jr]

You are really a geek if:

this is your favorite web page:
http://www.geekcode.com/geek.html

Or you shop from here:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/

or if you book vacations (what the hell is a vacation) with:
http://www.geekcruises.com/

or if your home page is:
http://www.google.com
or
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/Home/1,,1,00.html


live free or die
harry

[someone_4]

Harry thats some good stuff at
http://www.geekcode.com/geek.html

lol
as far as home pages go .. mine is www.iwon.com but the forum is on my quick links.

Richard