The way of the geek.
Written on January 7, 2009
Sometimes, people call me names. I watch a group of people, huddled tightly, and I hear their furtive murmurs. They’re working up the courage to approach. Eventually, one of them does.
“Excuse me, I don’t mean to intrude, but are you a…, what I mean to say is, that George said you were a…”
A computer person? Yes, I am. That is to say, people call me that.
Mind you, I don’t exactly understand why they call me that. On an average day, I often spend upwards of 14 hours away from a computer. You may as well call me a “sleep person”, “food person” or “ride the bus in the deathly silence of Canadian early-morning public transit person”.
After calling me names, people invariably ask me questions. Computers run slowly, programs run amok, and internet shenanigans sow chaos and confusion; these are all cinders to spark the flame of inquisition.
I never know the answers. Sure, I can figure out the answers, given access to a computer, but off-hand? No.
Every “computer person” has one answer to everything. It’s the secret to their power. In the fairy tale, the giant, for safekeeping, hid his heart in a stone in a box in the wilderness: and this was the source of his invulnerability.
Geeks have a similar tale of invulnerability, although our hidden heart lies not in a wilderness chest.
No, it’s called Google, and it’s hidden in plain sight. Samson, shorn, could never have been weaker than a geek without Google access.
This leads to interesting times when people ask questions of computer geeks. To the old phrase, “It never hurts to ask,” geeks counter with the adage, “Teach a man to fish”. Googling is something that anyone can do. It doesn’t take a computer person and geeks have turned this revelation into an art form.
For example, what if someone wants to know about passive-aggressive behaviour?
Filed in: curios.