discover a true geek 29 january 2001 by johnmichael patrick monty monteith

First a few items to help determine if you are a true computer geek:

1. You smile (although sometimes do not allow others to see it) when presented with a computer that is reportedly beyond repair, because you secretively believe you can get it running better than it did when it was brand new.
2. Your have at least two computers operating in your house that are over three years old, and all run better than your neighbors' computer which are six months old. (Extra points if these computers are networked with CAT-5 cabling you installed yourself.)
3. You know what VPN, ISP, TCP/IP and ASCII all stand for. (Extra geek points if you knew that "modem" means "modulator - demodulator".)
4. A perfect evening to you would be spent reminiscing on the arguments in the eighties about the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Apple Macintosh, and IBM PC. (If you are over the age of twenty-five and any of the computers are unfamiliar, you are not a computer geek.)
5. At some point you ran QuarterDeck's Desqview software simply to show that a MS/DR/IBM-DOS system could indeed multitask. (Or you were the one who owned the Amiga ridiculing the Desqview user on how it was not true preemptive multitasking.)
6. You know that LISP is a computer language, and get a chuckle when you remember that in geek-circles is stands for Lots-of Idiotic Silly Parenthesis.
7. Friends believe that you must spend tens of thousands on computer equipment every year because your house is overflowing with the stuff, but in fact you spend a fraction of what it seems keeping the old stuff up-to-date.
8. You have programmed (or want to), even just briefly, any of these computers: Timex Sinclair, Commodore VIC-20 / PET, Atari 400/800, or a Kaypro 2 (or other CP/M based system).
9. Despite knowing you could get a good job there, you tell others that you would never work for Microsoft because you cannot stand their corporate philosophy. However, you also know there were times you considered giving into the dark-side.
10. At some point you actively avoided using Microsoft products but eventually gave up.

Is there a point to all of this? It is to show that there are a lot of people out there that are mistaken as computer geeks but are not. Bill Gates, for example, is not a true computer geek. He is a great businessman who managed to strike a deal with IBM two decades ago that forever etched his future, but he is more like the anti-geek. Steve Jobs, the iCEO of Apple Computer, is one of the few leaders of a major computer organization that truly has computer geek roots. This is a man that took pleasure in building computers in his garage. What could be more true to computer geek form? Of course, he traded in his soldering iron for yuppie designer computer boxes long ago. Still, he was once a brother of computer-geekdom.

True computer geeks can be easy to discover if you look for the clues. If you think of these people as you would a great car mechanic, you will be able to spot them from a mile away. A really good car mechanic does not drive a new car - they drive cars that should have been left in the junkyard a decade before. They get all giddy inside when someone asks them to fix a car twenty years old because a good mechanic knows they can make the car new again. The best mechanics are also the ones that will frankly tell you every infinitesimal detail of what is good and bad about your car, including expounding upon the state of the automotive industry. You will always leave a great mechanic knowing that they know the insides of your auto better than anyone on Earth. A great mechanic when presented with the statement, "I think I need to buy a new car" will immediately protest, "Why? Your car is running fine!"

A computer geek is identical to this description. If you already own a computer, and you ask them if you need to buy a new one, they might suggest some more RAM or a new hard drive, but they rarely tell you to buy a whole new one. They are the people you can hand your long-since-dead computer to and know that the next day it can be returned to you running perfectly again. If wanted, they can tell you the history of the manufacturer of each component inside your computer. In addition, they will tell you which version of each Microsoft product you need to be running to best avoid bugs and conflicts with other Microsoft products. While a true computer geek loves new computer toys, and given the opportunity will create the 'ultimate' system, they also will always have around an old computer they built from scratch that is far more reliable.

While all this may seem silly at first, this truly is important information. When taking your computer in to be repaired, asking the repair person what a "Kaypro 2" is, often will tell you immediately whether your computer will get the care it deserves. When listening to a presentation on where technology is going, go ahead and throw the presenter for a loop by asking them if they know what "LISP" stands for. While these tools will not help make the presentation more meaning-full or get your computer repaired better, it is at least nice to know that you can recognize a true geek when you see them.