Embracing Geekness

I AM 33% GEEK.

I probably work in computers, or a history deptartment at a college. I never really fit in with the "normal" crowd. But I have friends, and this is a good thing.

I am a geek. I'm not a nerd, though. Don't know the difference? Well, here's a great quote:

A "geek" is a weird techie/hacker/scifi-fan-type person or similar; a "nerd" however is the stereotypical, well, nerd; it's the trailing-edge of the geek continuum, just before "dork". Nerds typically have no social skills and no life and confine their interests to something like train spotting or collecting obscure objects.

~ Andrew Bulhak

Since I do, in fact, have considerable social skills (when I feel the inclination to use them) and I do actually have a life and I have lots of interests (none of which include train spotting) and I admit that I do collect things, they're not obscure, like, say, 18th century telescopes or antique railway timetables or something equally strange. I am not a nerd.

And I am most certainly weird and rather techie, to the point of having been employed for some time at a rather large internet service provider, where I was a Support Technican and the DNS Administrator (or, Domain Goddess, if you prefer; I certainly do), and where I earned the charming and amusing nickname of BitchTech.

Of course, I married a man I met on the net, and he happens to be a computer professional (programmer, but also a system administrator and web developer), my own personal AlphaGeek. I own a collection of "geek shirts" with logos of various geeky organizations such as modem companies (hey, the K-Flex surfing dog is cool, even if the technology is outdated now), equipment manufacturers (my Lucent shirt always gets comments, actually), and internet service providers. I also tend to go into a cold sweat when I go into a store that sells computer components, and I make the MonkeyTech noise (it goes sort of like "Ohh, oooh, oooooh, ooooooh," and usually involves something like drooling).

Most of my real technical expertise is in HTML and with graphics. I am a Graphics Geek. I make jokes in hexidecimal code and in HTML. I can talk at some length about the problems of using anti-aliasing with variously colored backgrounds and how this affects text if/when you try to put it on a different background color. I have been known to sit for a couple hours playing with special effects in a graphics program, or hand editing a digital picture, pixel by pixel, and liking it, and I have literally dozens of graphics filters installed (although I only use about half of them regularly). Like any good pixel pusher, I own a pen tablet, specifically so that I can work my graphics more effectively, and without which I don't know what I'd do. I have on my desk as I type this a copy of Design Graphics magazine and also Digital Photography & Design. I've got an entire domain, elizabyte, dedicated to my digital art. I have my own web design company (though I don't do a lot of active design work now; I prefer doing book covers and occasional work for select clients).

I'm also an admitted fontaholic with 1500+ fonts on my hard drive (many of them dingbat fonts), and I have no intention of seeking help for the condition.

In addition to all that digital stuff, I'm very much a Geek of Humanities, and tend to go on at some length and quite enthusiastically about such subjects as history (particularly English history) and art, and, not coincidentally, art history.

Here's my very own Geek Code (v. 3.1):

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GH d-@ s:+ a C++ U++++ P+ E---- W+++@$ N K w(+)@$ 
O- PS+() PGP t()+ R* tv(+)@ b(+)++@ G e* r+++ x+++(++++)
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------    

Want to decode the above?

So, yes, I am a geek. I am proud of this fact. I have a love/hate relationship with computers (love them when they work, hate them when they don't, and get a tremendous sense of satisfaction when I fix them).

I live a good portion of my life online, or partly online. I don't regret this in the least. I've been on the net since 1993. I got my first taste of internet interactivity via a university Unix shell account, and while I found the Unix almost beyond understanding (I still feel that way sometimes, despite having worked with the stuff for years and years), I was instantly hooked on the community aspect of Usenet (alt.fan.monty-python, in case you're curious what so took my fancy).

I designed my first web page using Pico in a Unix shell, and it was entirely vanilla because I didn't have a SL/IP connection (now, of course, the standard is PPP). My first graphical page was designed in early 1994 for Netscape 1.1. I met my husband online in 1994, I founded my design company in 1998 (although I had done casual web design work previously).

I've occasionally been called an internet addict. While I admit I have used the net addictively (I've used lots of things addictively, in fact; that's more to do with my dysfunctional history than anything else), I'm not an internet addict any more than someone who watches 4+ hours of TV a day is a TV addict. No more than a comic book collector is "addicted" to comics. No more than anyone with a particular lifestyle and way of interacting is necessarily an "addict".

Working with, on, and via the net is very natural to me, has proved to be extremely healing and thereputic in many ways, has enriched my life tremendously, and lately, as I reach out more, helpful to others. If it's an "addiction", it's a very healthy one (and my final counsellor agreed with this statement; I believe she even visited one or more of my websites). I'm not on the net as much as I once was, because the primary reason for my long hours online (that'd be Andrew, in case you weren't paying attention and couldn't suss it out) is now in my life in the flesh, and I've got lots of things that need attention in non-virtual space (such as our children), but I still consider the internet very much a part of who I am and how I choose to express myself (and, well, it's my business). I don't anticpate that changing anytime in the forseeable future.

I have found a culture into which I fit perfectly, and this is it, cyberspace. And beside that, what better place for a geek?

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