What makes you a geek?

[DeeBye]

I am a pretty unabashed geek. My family and friends all know this. I like geek stuff.

What makes me a geek?

• I build my own computers.<>
  
• I buy new computer parts so new FPS games run better, but I hate FPS games.<>
  
• I have enough spare computer parts laying around my house to assemble at least 3 computers.<>
  
• I have 2,000 comic books from my teenage years lying in storage.<>
  
• I watched Catwoman because I can't not watch a comic book movie.<>
  
• My router uses Linux (Linksys WRT54GL)<>
  
• I have no less than 5 various types of flash memory cards scattered around my desk.<>
  
• I once bought a DVD player because it had a USB port. Wait, make that three times.<>
  
• I have 3 DVD players with USB ports. I can't resist USB ports.<>
  
• My keyboard has it's own LCD screen, and my mouse has adjustable weights.<>
  
• I own more than 20 Star Wars novels and have read them all.<>
  
• I taught my son how to install a video card at the tender age of 4.<>
  
• has been sitting atop my computer case for 10 years now. Wicket is my computer guardian and no one messes with Wicket.<>
  
• I own a Borg coffee mug. I will supply a picture if requested.<>
  [st]I know the Lounge is full of geeks. Don't deny it. What makes YOU a geek?
  
  [edit] Is anyone annoyed by my signature? It bugs me sometimes but it's been there for a really long time. I'll remove it if enough people object.

[Sir_Die_alot]

I confess to many of these but not all. Thankfully that makes you a bigger geek than me.:ph34r:

[kandrathe]

Hmmm, what makes me a geek?

• I kept my old D & D books to give to my sons.<>
  
• I have a home network with at least one Ethernet port available in every room.<>
  
• For awhile I maintained a DB server, and web server in my computer room to parallel work I was doing at the office.<>
  
• I still like to write computer programs in assembly language, but have become most comfortable with Java, Ruby, C++ and Python.<>
  
• When new computer languages are invented, I download the tools to write a few small programs to see if they are cool/fun.<>
  
• When I go to movies based on "geek" topics (comics, Scifi, computers, etc.) I later have conversations with other geeks about how the script deviated from the "truth" of that genre.<>
  
• I too build my own computers, and most any other thing I can (e.g. kiln, forge, etc).<>
  
• I researched and priced out what it would take to add 3 phase power to my house.<>
  
• I think Deebye is cool. :)<>
  [st]

[--Pete]

Hi,

What makes YOU a geek?

Birth?

Actually, I'd written a long detailed reply which I somehow blew away while trying to post it. I guess that counts against my geekhood;)

--Pete

[Jester]

I am a cultural, rather than technological, geek.

Despite not having played a single game nor bought a single card for about a decade, I still religiously follow the development of Magic: The Gathering. I have seen every episode of Star Trek: TNG, in order. Ditto Buffy: the Vampire Slayer. I once performed a circus act where I tore the head off a live chicken - with my teeth. (Sorry, wrong definition of "geek".) I have read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ten times, Dune fifteen times, and Kim Stanley Robinson's gigantic Mars trilogy four times. I play old-to-ancient retro computer games when I get bored. My favourite web comic is XKCD.

However, without any appreciable computer skills, my geek cred is surely lower than many in the assembled community here.

-Jester

[LavCat]

• I build my own computers (except for Commodore).<>
  
• I designed, built, and wrote drivers for PC peripherals for 17 years.<>
  
• I have issues of QST going back to the 1920's with few gaps.<>
  
• I've built stuff from QST.<>
  
• I've never bought a DVD player and I don't own a television.<>
  
• My only USB device is a now non-working iPod I was given at a trade event.<>
  
• USB is vile technology.<>
  
• I buy keyboards by the case, but my only mouse is Commodore.<>
  
• I have a Commodore 128D on my desk.<>
  
• I am a SCSI girl. All of my hard drives since the late 1980's have been SCSI.<>
  
• Seagate told me two days ago that they are no longer making SCSI.<>
  
• My son can speak for himself, but he is kind enough to take out the recycling.<>
  [st]

[LennyLen]

Mostly for the same reasons others have listed, but I think this deserves special mention: I once broke up with a girl by telling her she was taking up too much of my Star Trek time.

[Lissa]

• I am a SCSI girl. All of my hard drives since the late 1980's have been SCSI.<>
  
• Seagate told me two days ago that they are no longer making SCSI.<>
  [st]

Whoever this Seagate person was told you wrong. SCSI still exists, but it now has moved to the same setup as ATA, to Serial. Now SCSI is being made primarily as SAS, Serial Attached SCSI which is much faster that the old SCSI interfaces (doing up to 3 Gb/s, about 10 times the speed of the old U320). So, SCSI still exists, it's just faster now.

[DeeBye]

Whoever this Seagate person was told you wrong. SCSI still exists, but it now has moved to the same setup as ATA, to Serial. Now SCSI is being made primarily as SAS, Serial Attached SCSI which is much faster that the old SCSI interfaces (doing up to 3 Gb/s, about 10 times the speed of the old U320). So, SCSI still exists, it's just faster now.

You get 12 Geek Points for this post.

[Vandiablo]

You get 12 Geek Points for this post.

Thanks for enlightening me. Long ago when I played D&D, years before there was AD&D, I naively thought that our GP rewards were "gold pieces".

By the way, starting this thread gets you 5 Silly Points (SP) and posting a pic of Wicket gets you 150 Excellence Points (known as either EP or XP).

For the record, I am a retired Royal Geek. While in the midst of my heaviest D&D dayze, I was:
-Captain of the Math Team
-Pres of the Chess Club
-Pres of the Wargamers' Guild
-attendee of two Star Trek conventions
-a member of my school's string orchestra
-a member of my school's quiz-show team

I was never involved in either Debate or comics-fandom. I have my standards. (Tho I do have a stack of 35-yr-old Dennis the Menaces...)

I was actually cool when I was in elementary school. I was a card-carrying member of Dick Dastardly's organization, until I lost the card. And I carried a Yellow Submarine lunchbox, which I still have.

Unfortunately, the coolness of my Yellow Submarine lunchbox is more than offset by:
-my Star Wars pillow. This is from the first movie, but the Luke and Leia on the pillow don't match the actors from the movie. Supposedly the artwork predated the casting.
-my Commodore 64. I still keep it, hoping that my Wizard of Wor cartridge will someday work again. I haven't tried it in 10 years though. All the other cartridges still worked *sob* why did my favorite stop?? I'm considering digging it out and having my 5-y-o sons play "International Soccer" on it. Modern soccer games would be too distracting.
-my Dungeon Master screen. This is actually pretty cool. My brother made it and it looks like a castle.
-the fact that I know Algol.

And, um, I am afraid to mention this, but, um, here goes: I collect math books. For pleasure. Still a geek.

-V

p.s. The math books I keep are mostly those above intro-to-calculus level. Anyone want any titles? Anyone? Anyone?

[eppie]

I like to play Diablo 2, and I like science.


For the rest I don't like science fiction and the only thing worse then science fiction movies are science fiction books.......which are still not as bad as fantasy books.

I (this is no joke) once fell asleep in the cinema watching star wars.

I have no idea what 9 out of 10 abbreviations of computer defintions mentioned in this thread are. And I also don't know what that thing is you have standing on your computer.

I would like to know more about computers and love to get excited by writing my own programs.....but I guess I am just too lazy.

[eppie]

And, um, I am afraid to mention this, but, um, here goes: I collect math books. For pleasure. Still a geek.

-V

p.s. The math books I keep are mostly those above intro-to-calculus level. Anyone want any titles? Anyone? Anyone?

Well this last one is pretty cool actually. I started reading Kreyzig advanced engineering mathematics again, the book that miraculously helped me through my math classes at university.
I didn't even manage to pass page 3........making an integration function just didn't go anymore, let alone solving it. I guess it has been all the drinking.

[LavCat]

Whoever this Seagate person was told you wrong. SCSI still exists, but it now has moved to the same setup as ATA, to Serial. Now SCSI is being made primarily as SAS, Serial Attached SCSI which is much faster that the old SCSI interfaces (doing up to 3 Gb/s, about 10 times the speed of the old U320). So, SCSI still exists, it's just faster now.

I am reasonably familiar with SAS and I have been following prices of SAS controllers for a while. My motherboard has only four PCIe slots and there is one left. Whether something could be crammed in there is another question. But, no, the Seagate person and I were talking about the same thing. I'm sorry if my paraphrase of what he said was confusing. What he actually said was "Nobody is making SCSI!" (Meaning U320.) This was someone at their presales support.

In an ideal world I would just get a SAS controller and a drive or three. But I can hardly afford another drive, let alone a controller. I was hoping to get another U320 for installing Windows 7.

And actually U320 is still faster than 3 GHz SAS, not slower, at least with a single drive. U320 is 2560 Mbits/sec, 3 GHz SAS is only 2400 Mbits/sec. Albeit the bandwidth of U320 is shared among all the drives on the bus.

[Lissa]

I didn't even manage to pass page 3........making an integration function just didn't go anymore, let alone solving it. I guess it has been all the drinking.

MADD - Mathematicians Against Deriving Drunk.

[Lissa]

I am reasonably familiar with SAS and I have been following prices of SAS controllers for a while. My motherboard has only four PCIe slots and there is one left. Whether something could be crammed in there is another question. But, no, the Seagate person and I were talking about the same thing. I'm sorry if my paraphrase of what he said was confusing. What he actually said was "Nobody is making SCSI!" (Meaning U320.) This was someone at their presales support.

In an ideal world I would just get a SAS controller and a drive or three. But I can hardly afford another drive, let alone a controller. I was hoping to get another U320 for installing Windows 7.

And actually U320 is still faster than 3 GHz SAS, not slower, at least with a single drive. U320 is 2560 Mbits/sec, 3 GHz SAS is only 2400 Mbits/sec. Albeit the bandwidth of U320 is shared among all the drives on the bus.

You can still pick up U320 drives (along with U160) from places like NewEgg, TigerDirect, and the large list of retailers on PriceWatch. While Seagate, Hitachi, Fujitsu, IBM, and others may not be producing U320 drives, there are quite a few still out on the market (both OEM and Retail). You can also find them in 68 pin, 80 pin, and LVD connections.

IMO though, SSDs are going to be the way to go once the price drops on them, right now you're paying prices on SSDs like what you would find about a decade ago on IDE hard drives, about $2.50 to $3 a Gig.

[Quark]

I could say any number of things, but I'll leave it at this.

I use spreadsheets at work to determine what gear to wear in WoW.

I've spent more time in spreadsheets planning out chars for the NWN series than actually playing NWN in the past two years.

[LochnarITB]

Mostly for the same reasons others have listed, but I think this deserves special mention: I once broke up with a girl by telling her she was taking up too much of my Star Trek time.

And which of us hasn't done this?! Sheesh!:rolleyes:;)

[--Pete]

Hi,

Algol? That was my first high level language -- specifically Burroughs' Algol. I think I might still have the manual that I liberated from GaTech CompSci.

p.s. The math books I keep are mostly those above intro-to-calculus level. Anyone want any titles? Anyone? Anyone?

Kidding aside, I've looked for years for a good text on Riemannian geometry that ties it both to Euclidean geometry and Cartesian geometry. I have a pretty good ability to push the symbols around, but I'm looking for a better feel.

--Pete

[LavCat]

You can still pick up U320 drives (along with U160) from places like NewEgg, TigerDirect, and the large list of retailers on PriceWatch. While Seagate, Hitachi, Fujitsu, IBM, and others may not be producing U320 drives, there are quite a few still out on the market (both OEM and Retail). You can also find them in 68 pin, 80 pin, and LVD connections.

IMO though, SSDs are going to be the way to go once the price drops on them, right now you're paying prices on SSDs like what you would find about a decade ago on IDE hard drives, about $2.50 to $3 a Gig.

One of Pournelle's Laws states "Silicon is cheaper than iron." May it yet be so.

Newegg does not seem to carry Cheetah drives at all. Last week PC Connection (my preferred supplier of hard drives) had no stock of ST3300655LW, nor did anyone else I googled, which is what prompted the small crisis in my mind. The ST3300655LW today is back in stock. However in the meantime I found a pair of headphones on sale, so no disc drive for me.

[Kevin]

I could cite many things, but I'll leave it with this.

When I was a student member of IEEE our chapter designed T-shirts with list of reasons EEs (Electrical Engineers) were awesome (or whatever)

My contribution was:

You can't spell geek without EE.

It was happily accepted and is on a T-shirt that I and several others still have. We sold over 1000 of those shirts (our campus only had 4500 or so students at the time and only like 400 were EE's).

I'm still proud of that phrase so yep I'm a geek. :)