You Know You’re a Geek When…

Thanks to Julia Hayden for this lovely list:

• • You look at a movie trailer and think, “I have that typeface.”

• • You get sudden attacks of bittersweet nostalgic feelings when thinking about your long-lost old Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX-81, TRS-80 (or other hardware), and use large amounts of money/time trying to track one down.
  • You are wearing ten year old spectacles, made of steel.
  • You realize you never cook, eating only take-away pizza.
  • You seriously consider devoting a web page to your computer. (Not the brand, mind you, but the actual computer itself)
  • You get depressed when you get less than 10 e-mail messages a day.

• • You plan to get two Masters degrees.

• • You already know what you want to write both Master’s papers and your dissertation about, and you just graduated from College.

• • You can discuss the philosophical and physical differences among the tangos.
  • Although vaguely insulted by pocket-protector jokes, you still find them funny.
  • Someone asks you what languages you know, and you reply Upper Slavic, French, Esperanto and C.
  • You spend more than 10 minutes contemplating how traffic lights work.
  • You can talk for hours about how, in 25 years, the whole country won’t have E-Mail addresses.
  • You design detailed floor plans before moving all of your furniture around.
  • You’ve created a new variety of rose.
  • You set up your own newsgroup.
  • If you know the correct pronunciation of Tex, Linux, and TCL.
  • If you paid $6000 for your computer and $500 for your car.
  • There’s a newsgroup dedicated to you because of your netly activities.
  • Someone mentions the Q Continuum, and you know what that means.
  • Everyone in the neighborhood brings you (to) their computers to figure out what is wrong.
  • You can hold detailed technical conversations in a second language.
  • You are on the Obscure Software and Computer Crap Junk Mailing Lists
  • You can explain how AppleTalk Networks work.
  • Sleep and nighttime are no longer irrevocably linked
  • WAIS is your life.
  • You walk past a Con and people know who you are.
  • You have a definite philosophy of stacking wood for fires.
  • You hear the word “Scuzzy” and the first thing you think of is not an adjective.
  • You went to a high school where the only team with a winning record was the Chess team.
  • You rig up elaborate mechanisms to do really basic tasks.
  • You know about USENET cultures in groups you don’t even read.
  • You get REALLY excited when people from countries with limited access to the ‘net are frequent visitors to your pages.
  • You don’t hand in final papers unless they’ve been formatted on a desktop publishing program.
  • You write web pages about your web pages.
  • Your favorite part of Geometry was proving theorems.
  • You’ve ever contemplated collecting graters.
  • You can remember your web address faster than your phone number.
  • You’ll spend a long time customizing a computer you’ll use one day to the absolute pinnacle of comfort, but you won’t bother to spend two hours sewing up a skirt, and wear the damn thing sarong style.
  • You do your best work after 11 p.m.
  • You work in a building where you need a badge to move between floors.
  • You calculate the odds of getting one of the primo parking spaces in relation to your apartment, factoring in time, weather, season, etc, and are accurate over 80% of the time.
  • You can count the number of moderately good hacker/computer dude type films on one hand.
  • You’ve bought one of those license plate holders on which you can have your URL or E-Mail address embossed
  • You can track the geek gene through your family tree.
  • You froth at the mouth when someone talks about the “Information Superhighway.”
  • You are a member of the USENET elite, invoked in posts in threads to which you have not posted.
  • You can sing Tom Lehrer’s element song.
  • Not only is your computer in the center of your room, it’s set up to allow ‘netting from your couch, as well as your desk chair.
  • You arrange your jobs so you can telecommute.
  • You organize your CDs, so the tops all face upward, alphabetically, or by record label (If you do more than one of these, you are an Anal-Retentive Geek).
  • You spend a lot of time figuring out which of 100 adult goldfish are the most fertile, have the strongest genes, and combined to produce tiny little goldfish.
  • You carry an 264-gig flash drive to and from work.
  • You can sing any song from Grease 2. If you do the hand movements while singing, you should get out more.
  • You plot to get your grandmother on E-mail.
  • You’ve contemplated devoting a web page to World News Now, Kevin, Thalia, Bill, Shielah, Nissan, Okido, Asha, Dick Schapp, Willis, or, natch, Barry.

Click for 10 Steps to Become a Better Geek poster.

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.