You know you’re a geek when…
Monday, May 14, 2007
I was thinking today about what truly makes you a "geek". I realize there are many definitions for such a term, but here is my partial list on the subject:
- You know the keyboard shortcut for checking your mail, if your on a PC and using Outlook (F9)
- Every time you install a program on the mac you immediately view all the menus, and especially take a long visit to the Preferences (Command + ,)
- You install so many mac apps, that you actually have an app that uninstalls other apps (App Zapper)
- You devise additional keyboard shortcuts, macros, scripts, and workflows constantly to make your life easier and to keep your programming skills sharp
- You program
- You closely read SLAs, EULAs, and Terms of Services
- You point at the TV in disgust, and yell to your spouse in the other room (who doesn't really care) when a insurance commercial clearly has overlaid a safari browser on a computer that is clearly is a PC, as you scold their lack of technical correctness
- You use the words, or any combination of, or all in the same breathe: "convoluted", "fat-fingered", "implement", "iterate", "hack(ed)", "Leo Laporte", "TWIT", "gmail", "legacy", "parse", "re-purposed" or "RSS"
Example: "I hacked together an implementation of MagpieRSS, to parse the TWIT RSS feed. It's a bit convoluted, and I fat-fingered a few things in the several iterations that I did, but I think Leo Laporte would be proud, and I'll probably hop on to GMAIL and send him a note on how I took his RSS feed and re-purposed it on my site."
- You have several devices on your person, at any one time, that either connects to the internet, plays podcasts, or generally speaking would would require large cargo pant pockets to carry any said such electronic device
- You know what, understand the implications of, know the different versions of, and have probably written something that consumes RSS
- You have more gigabytes than most small countries
- You are boycotting MySpace because of it's poor implementation of Fusebox and the Coldfusion programming language
- You use Facebook because of it's fantastic use of PHP and it's own internally built programming framework, as well as an API for other programmers to use
- You download more content than you could possibly ever consume
- You have your own domain name
- You have a GMAIL account, and funnel several other email accounts into it, using filters to attach labels to each message as they arrive
- You use the word "ubiquitous" too much, but feel that's the way everything is headed
- You paid more for an internet service that is 10Mbps or faster
- You run your own server at home
Anything else that really makes you a geek?