I was at a meeting this afternoon, going through the details with a supplier for an update I'm carrying out in a couple of weeks time. I spent two hours going over specs, availability, schema expansions, disc auditing and other such exciting pieces of information.
My boss came in half way through the meeting, and after about ten minutes, you could see that he had lost interest. At the end of the meeting, he looked at me and said that I had spent the whole time speaking in geek. I was very happy.
For those of you who don't already know, I'm a bit of a geek. In fact, I have a book (called 10^3 {cannot do superscripts} ways to be a geek) which rates me as a Geekmeister General, which is its highest rating. I rate over 50% above this level. And I wonder why I don't go out with that many women?
I do a geek job and I have a geek life, there is balance and I am happy.
I know that half the time when people invite me around to their place, it is because they are having a problem with their computer. And would I mind having a quick look at their computer while I'm there. Not too much of a problem for me.
But I'm not just a computer geek. I don't spend hours building my own network at home and playing with them. I've never had a lan party, or ever had a conversation with someone in binary.
I see myself as more a general geek. I don't have any one special geek speciality, while I know enough about a number of subjects. Why not? Well I get bored and move onto a new subject matter. I get very enthusiastic about something new and then suddenly I'm off doing something completely different.
I suppose that helps me spot the inner geek in people. I can quite happily spend hours talking to people about their geek subject, and frequently do. I use this to help my own knowledge of geek, and I make friends out of it.
So the next time you meet someone who seems a little geekish, talk to them about their subject. You never know, you might learn something new.
Bye for now