Mar 08 2007
Why John Chow is a Geek and Darren Rowse Is Not
John Chow, the self-described Root Of All Evil is a Geek.
Darren Rowse, professional blogger and former Student Of Theology is NOT a Geek.
Surprising, but true.
Ms. Q tells you why.
Ms. Q has been long overdue for a Serious Research Project. If you’d like to read about prior Research Projects, I’ve done studies on Men’s Butts and Premature Holidays.
Serious research requires Serious Wine. This means red. This means Zinfandel.
One bottle. All for Ms. Q.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
There are 2 types of Geeks: Old School and New School.
There are Geek Women but they will not be discussed here.
They are outnumbered by their male counterparts and require more study to ascertain their defining characteristics.
Old School Geeks:
- Ponytail
- Bushy facial hair
- All clothing looks similar
- Shy and/or Incredibly Arrogant when annoyed
- Large glasses
- Consumes cheap carbohydrates (standard vending machine fare: chips, cookies, Pop Tarts)
- Digital watch
- Soft body
New School Geeks:
- Fashion hair/no hair
- No facial hair/Etch-a-Sketch jaw frame
- Heart rate monitor or Chronograph
- Snacks on protein bars
- bicycles
- Fleece
- gadgets
- small rimless glasses
- coffee
- Hard body
Shared characteristics:
- Opinionated
- Has built a PC
- searches for answers to questions few people care about
Optional:
- Likes games (video, board, role-playing)
- Enjoys Hong Kong “Kung-Fu” movies
- Has read: “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” and “Dune”
- Has read books by Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and Orson Scott Card.
- Knows who Dr. Who is.
- Has attended at least one Science Fiction/Fantasy/Comic Book Convention
Ms. Q may be a Serious Researcher but she admits to falling prey to assumptions based on stereotypes.
Darren Rowse has the small glasses and interesting facial hair.
John Chow has no glasses and a crew cut. Ms. Q thought fer sure Darren would be the geek and John the non-geek.
Findings for John Chow
As I sipped wine and culled through their archives, I was stunned to learn that John Chow has built his own PC:
“The year was 1999 and I have just started a site call Moto’s Project 504, a personal home page about the first computer I built all by myself. The system was a Pentium II 300 overclocked all the way to 504MHz, an unheard of feat at the time. The site was created with MS Front Page because I didn’t know any HTML. ”
While I knew that John Chow had founded The Tech Zone, I’d never gotten the “geek vibe” while reading his blog.
Conclusion: John Chow is The Root Of All Evil AND a Geek.
Findings for Darren Rowse
I pored through Darren’s blog. No mention of building a PC. He does mention he got his first Apple computer (an iBook).
I pour myself another glass of luscious berry-infused fermented fruit.
I pore some more. After searching and paging through posts, the picture I’m getting of Darren is someone who wants to help others and who enjoys writing. I am not catching even the mere whiff of Geekiness.
Conclusion: Darren stays true to his theologian student roots by helping people via his writing skills. He is NOT a Geek.
Bonus! Findings for Steve Pavlina
I had another glass of wine left and I decided to look into the background of one of my favorite bloggers, Steve Pavlina.
He provided me with an abundance of evidence that he is a Geek:
Steve has a double-major in Computer Science and Mathematics. This is a typical Geek combo-pack. Some variations on this are double majors in EE and CS and EE and Mathematics.
Steve has built his own PC from scratch. He did this in 2004 and developed better hardware skills:
“If you want to develop better hardware skills, a great project is to build your own PC from scratch. I did this in 2004 and found it very rewarding.”
Steve ponders the Why and wants to find solutions. When he finds solutions, he wants to improve on them. His posts are long and extremely detailed. Typical geek behavior.
Conclusion: Steve Pavlina is a Serious Geek. In fact, at the age of 19 he went through Seriously Bad Times and it was then that he made the decision to use his Geek Powers for the Greater Good.
Wait! There’s more! Findings on HMTKSteve
If you’ve been following my blog, you may have noticed HMTKSteve is a frequent commenter. If you’ve ever visited his blog there is no guessing around at his Pure Unadulterated Geekiness: Games. Writes C++ code. Webmaster. He likes Linux.
- He developed a card game called Tech Support.
- He wrote this story that only Geeks could appreciate.
- He builds and fixes computers.
Summary
Geeks don’t want to be a geek. They just are.
If you want to be one, you’re probably not.
Ms. Q is not a geek. She has geek-like tendencies but that is about it.
Do you agree with my conclusions?
Feel free to either refute or support my findings by writing a post. Ms. Q is anxious to compare notes! Reference this post in yours and I will link back. I hope that enough people participate so that I can write up the new findings!
Remember: Research Is Good!
If you’re one of the 4 men I’ve written about and you do not agree with my assessment, I am open to changing my mind. I realize that my sampling had more to do with wine than with reading posts.
Everyone: Which bloggers do you think are geeks and why?
Yes, I am a Geek.
Build your own PC – I did this back in 1990. It was an IBM 4.77mhz machine with a 10MB (yes, that’s MB not GB) hard disk and 640K (Yes, K not MB) of RAM. That was my first PC style computer. The hard disk was a once piece unit that pluged into an ISA slot.
College – Rather than getting an e-ju-ma-ca-tion I went into the Army and learned electronics there. I worked on the big M1A1 tanks and Bradleys. Why toy around with the small stuff when you can have more fun driving 60 tons of steel!
Unlike many of the new-age techno-geeks I shun multi-function devices. My cell phone is a very basic Samsung model that is… just a phone. I keep getting calls from Sprint offering me a free phone upgrade but I keep telling them no!
Also, I am in the minority of geeks in that I was able to get married and have a child! Yes, this geek has had sex at least once in his life and has the child to prove it!!!
HMTKSteve: You do have geekiness oozing outta you – I mean, you recall the exact specifications of the first PC you built. I thought you might be more “old school” than “new school” what with being in the Army and all.
It’s true that Geeks rarely replicate but they do! Generally old-school geeks end up with more, uh, assertive girlfriends/wives who see the value of geeks and who went on a mission to nab one.
It also had a Hercules graphics adapter that I later replaced with an Orchard card that did 256 color! I think I paid $120 for that thing!
Let’s not forget the paper-white VGA monitor I purchased, 256 shades of grey! I went with that one because the color VGA monitors were way out of my 1990 price range.
Hmmm… I think I will have to write a blog post about this!
[...] Q recently reminded me of the very first PC I built from [...]
You’re referring to stuff I have no idea about. I had no computer experience until I went back to school for my CS degree in 1992. I was clueless. When I first went to the computer lab I was very intimidated by the terminals and their blinking green cursor on a black background.
Glad I learned “VI” though. Seems to be a dying editor with everyone just FTPing files making changes and FTPing back.
I’m obviously not a geek.
And proud of it!
Steve P: Yes – geeks should proudly proclaim their geekhood instead of abashedly admitting they have a storage shed of ribbon cables, motherboards, old memory and PS/2 mice “just in case”.
Hey!
Those memory chips I pried off of that old XT motherboard may come in handy some day!
Actually, we did pry some chips off of an old motherboard and transferred them to a new motherboard (back in ‘93) but those old chips could not handle the blazing fast speed of the 16mhz “turbo” mode that new board supported!
Everything worked fine in normal mode but, if you hit that turbo button, the computer just locked up!
What ever happened to those turbo buttons?
I’d forgotten about those turbo buttons! I saw your post about your first PC – I have to write up about my first one. I recall I purchased a 386 and I forget the speed but it was on Windows 3.11. That PC had a turbo button but it didn’t seem to make any difference.
I have some old keyboards and mice. I tend to hold onto old equipment until it fails. I used to have a serial mouse. YEP, a SERIAL mouse. My old laptop used to support one. A couple of years ago I was on site and the client was teasing me as they watched me unpack my laptop and screw in the serial mouse.
Well..it came in handy when we needed to set up something on one of their old PCs and it only had serial ports!
I currently use a USB mouse for my laptop while everyone else uses a cordless one or knows how to use the mousepad thing. I cannot use the eraser pointer thing at all. I need a mouse.
I still have spare serial mice in my closet!
Our new computers at work came with only USB. No PS/2 no serial. WTF? We had to buy special adapters to convert those USB posts back into serial and PS/2 ports to support our equipment!!!
Not to mention the lack of floppy drives. We still use software that comes on floppies!!!
You work in telecom and they still use floppies? I gave up on floppies. I use a USB drive to copy stuff – few sites I work at have floppy drives – everyone seems to have laptops and docking stations. Do you also have spare keyboards?
Oh my. That list of optional characteristics had me wondering if someone was watching me.
A little while ago I suggested some SciFi authors for a friend of mine’s son. I’m sure Asimov, Dick, and Card were all on it.
As for the stories about hardware and such, the keyboard i’m using on my main system at work has an AT style connector. (You know, the ones about a third of an inch in diameter or so. Pins you can actually see.) Why? It works. It’s quiet. I’m happy.
If I were to plug it directly into my notebook, I’d have to go through an adapter to make it PS/2, just to plug it into a USB adapter to plug into the notebook!
Turbo Button – we nicknamed someone that once. he kept complaining about how a tool was taking forever to load on his system. He was the only one that was complaining, but finally, the developer for the tool went over to see him. (He was in our field arm, which at that time was in a separate office.) Developer sees the turbo button while the tool is loading, hits it, and watches it zip through the rest of loading. Bye bye!
I’ve been labelled a geek because I’m good at math, play video games, and spend all day on the computer. But I also have several non geek tendencies like taking psychology as my major, english literature as my minor, and heading into a career as a freelance writer. I think I have a very conflicted sense of self.
Michael: Have you ever built a PC? If so, you ARE a geek. Accept and embrace your Geekhood.