Or just maddeningly so?

I guess there's a good chance that today's entry will mysteriously disappear after Jeremy gets around to reading it, but what the hell. Spill all of your loved one's embarrassing secrets here. Don't worry, he/she doesn't read my page. Tell us everything.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Answers

My husband is the biggest geek in the world. He goes through phases where he's absolutely obsessed with certain things. Right now, he apparently intends to read every self-help book in existence. He'll order ten books on Amazon, and then call me from work at least twice a day and ask if his books have arrived.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I like my books too, but once I order them I pretty much forget about them until they arrive.

He just got his own web page up and going, and he obsessively checks his stats 45,000 times a day.

Total geek.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

What the heck does taking forever to pee have to do with being a big geek?

eric (a big geek who's significant other doesn't read this, so he has no fear of being outed in embarassing detail.)

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Hmmm.

During one of the 45,000 times I checked my web page stats, I found lots of referrals from here. As long as we're tattling...

My wife's geekiest habit is that she gets all twitchy when she's reading. Her bottom lip goes back and forth (not like she's mouthing words, but side to side) and the toes on her feet all magically begin to move independently of one another.

I'm not sure what causes it.

I'd point out that she's all geeky because she talks to our cats, but I make up songs about them and sing to them, so I won't.

Robyn's significant other http://www.onefatman.com

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Ack!

In the words of the great George Costanza:

"Worlds colliding! Not good!"

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

You are both endearingly geeky. I can tell that already.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

My husband is the cute geek. His first obsession is Star Wars. Anything Star Wars. The books, movies, magazines, toys, he has it. It does make it easy to buy gifts though.

His other geekly obsession. Tools. Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of tools. He carries 100's of pounds of tools in the trunk of our car.

His obsession with being prepared for anything. He carries everything from extra food, clothes, blankets in case anything goes wrong.

It's cute though, and has actually saved us one time.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Robyn: I checked your husband's page through some other post you had made, possibly on Rob's forum. Good luck, Fred!

My boyfriend is endearingly geeky about violins. He trolls eBay auctions endlessly, checks back to make sure they went to good homes. I have no idea what his criteria is for this. He corresponds with both the buyers and sellers, but rarely bids.

May I add that he actually doesn't know how to play the violin?

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

My husband is geeky when it comes to films -- they must be in the proper aspect ratio and meet a whole load of other requirements before he'll even consider watching them. A couple of years ago on Boxing Day, his whole family was sitting down after dinner to watch Crimson Tide on television, and he refused to watch because it wasn't in widescreen. He's not pissy about it, he'll just say, 'Have fun, I'm off to play the piano,' or whatever and will happily spend the next two hours dicking around with whatever it is he dicks around with (music, video games, his guitars, etc).

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Neither. That's my job.

We helped somebody move last month; he and his wife had to go back to the old place to clean up, but he was going to need to grade papers when he got back, so he asked me to set up his computer system for him, it's all there in those three boxes, don't bother with the scanner, thanks, bye. His mom was just floored that he would let somebody else set up his computer. I was geekily flattered.

Whenever my wife lets me upgrade one of our computers, I always buy way more than I think I'll need. I got a 4 gb drive when I only needed 2 gb. I added 128 mb of ram when I just needed 32. Next time I buy a printer it's gonna be a laserprinter; enough of this bubblejet crap.

I've already downloaded the patch to Diablo II, and the game isn't even out yet... which doesn't look so good for Blizzard, as you think they'd have included it on the original cd since they just went gold a week and a half ago, but hey...

I have my computer plugged into my stereo system so I get the big sound effects... makes the whole house shake.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

I have to say that the word "geek" has lost all meaning. It used to mean something like "person with excessive interest in technical things and low interest in human things." Now we have Beth talking about her man's obsession with Hewlett Packard's customer support (quite geeky), obsessing over a piece of equipment (somewhat geeky) and taking a long time to pee (not geeky at all, though perhaps endearing. or not.)

I know I'm fighting a losing battle here.

Anyway, my so is not at all geeky. He isn't at all interested in computers, Star Wars, or other traditional geek things. He does get cutely obsessive about things, like putting all his pocket change in this contraption that sorts it, or organizing his ashtray collection.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Actually I was under the impression that the use of the word "geek" to mean "technogeek" was a fairly recent development. Beyond its original meaning (i.e., the dude who bit the heads off chickens), "geek" has been synonomous with "nerd" or "dork" for as long as I can remember. I'm pretty sure "computer geek" was a later development.

Actually I had originally used the word "dork," but that word has lost its shine for me ever since I found out it meant penis.

And he didn't take a long time to pee; he fell asleep while he was peeing because he worked until nearly 2 a.m. I guess I should have made that more clear.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Dictionary.com isn't the best source for such things, but here is their definition of "geek":

geek (gk)
n. Slang

An odd or ridiculous person.

A carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken.

[Perhaps alteration of dialectal geck, fool, from Low German gek, from Middle Low German.]

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Not to get snippy, except I am, but I wish to point out that "geek" dates to 1914 and probably evolved in English from a Low German word meaning "fool" and a geek was first a carnival performer who bit the heads off chickens. Which is not an endearing trait, I'd say. I've tried to use the word only with its original meaning since reading and loving Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, but I know that it's pointless and that I'm being a prescriptivist and that there just isn't another word like geek that means what we want it to mean. "Nerd" carries too much antisocial baggage and "grind" is only academic.

As some other folks did, Beth, I didn't follow the pee:geek::anything:something connection. However, if having to wake up to pee is a geek trait because they tend to drink too much caffeine, then I'd have to say yes, if on no other count, Rich is a geek, but at least you're spared regularly sharing a bed with yours. Or perhaps when you do share a bed, Jeremy is courteous enough not to UNCOVER YOU as he gets up and gets back in and doesn't thereafter WARM HIS FEET on your tush.

Is Rich a geek? Oh yes. When we started going out, in 1992, I figured the modem was enough to make him a geek, but at least he had a Mac (Powerbook 170) so I could deal with the geekiness. He's only gotten worse. I still don't know what DSL stands for, but I know it means no one calling us ever gets a busy signal and we can be online with three computers and talk on the phone all at the same time. I don't know a USB from a bus from an airport, but I know my G3 needs a USB something or other before I can get a web cam. I am pretty sure that without him, I'd still be working on Veronica, my Mac SE with the 7" b/w screen and 4 megs of RAM, or limited to a Performa, or worse, using Windows and having to hire someone to figure stuff out for me.

He's a geek and I wouldn't have him any other way.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Both.

On the technogeek aspect, Sabs is a sysadmin/tech support kind of person, he gets excited about computer equipment and cool gadgets. It's cute when he gets excited about improvements in mother boards.

It's annoying when he steals my new monitor so that he can play Everquest in better color.

He's a big gamer geek too. This is the part that is annoying. Sabs can disappear for hours with his gaming supplements, get sucked into games and completely lose all sense of time going by in the real world outside.

We're both scifi/fantasy geeks. Our bookshelves are covered with sff authors and almost nothing else, except history and theology/philosophy.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

On the other hand, at least Lizzie can spell "Hewlett Packard."

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Beth and I were consulting dictionaries simultaneously. I wasn't trying to be soapboxy.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Go to hell, Dave.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Our S.O.'s should meet, Suzy. They can talk all night long about Star Wars, its philosophical ramifications, etc. They could have little battles over who has the most Star Wars stuff.

My boyfriend is obsessed with the entire trilogy. He nearly got fired by skipping work to stand in line for tickets to the Phantom Menace. He had skipped work and then was caught on the news when a crew was out there filming all the people lined up for tickets. After it was released to video, he watched it about every day for a month.

His love for extended-arm pictures makes him a super geek. Whenever there is a camera with film loaded, I will always end up with about 9 or 10 pictures of Tom taking pictures of himself, with his arm held way out. I don't know why he's fascinated with that.

I got a digital camera, went to work and when I came home I had 37 images of a small Yoda doll in his little Degobah planet. Yoda sitting next to our dog. Our dog trying to eat Yoda. Tom and Yoda. Yoda watching TV. You get the picture.

Presently, he is consumed with Everquest so I don't see him much anymore. He will live, eat, and breathe Everquest until he gets sick of it, probably about another two weeks. We own every video game system known to man. Then he's getting Unreal Tournament. I will not see him for a long, long time after that.

He's presently geeky because he has a really odd sunburn. Two triangular creases on his lower back from the "chub flaps" (his term, not mine). He's totally fascinated with it. Also, his back and chest are totally burned but there are two large white handprints on his chest. Turns out he put lotion on his arms and legs and then didn't have anything to wipe the sunscreen off on, so he slapped his hands against his chest. That's my man!

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

My husband is a computer geek, which means he gets foolishly carried away by problems specific to computers like peripherals working or not, programming that works or doesn't, and he still doesn't pick up his dirty underwear off the floor. He scouts Ebay for Pokemon cards, which he claims are for our son, but I know that it's just geekspeak for more cards so that he can add to the collection of cards to play Pokemon cards with our son. Total geek.

And not only do I work with my geek hubby, but I've worked with your geek boyfriend, too.

You can tell a lot about a person by the company s/he keeps.

My first day back from maternity leave and just look at this mess.

-Geekgirl

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

oh-me-oh-my.....

"did my packages arrive?" (wait 5 seconds) "No? how about now??" (7 seconds) "Are they there yet?"

My SO is so endearingly geeky that I got today's journal entry forwarded to me from a friend with no comment other than "hilaaaarious" in the subject line. Everybody knows he's a geek.

He has web pages too, this one is a u-boot obsession that spun off from a computer game. And to get authentic-looking photographs of the reproduction uniforms (which he sells on ebay and online), I have to endure his experimentation with various facial hair configurations. Take a look at the site. Most of the guys in the photos are my geeky boyfriend. http://www.yawp.com/3rd-i/staff/abbadon/handbook/kmshop.html

Then there's the geeky zine that he and his friends write (I call their meetings the "geekly weekly"). http://www.yawp.com/3rd-i/

D&D - done that. gamer - yup. garage band - yep, yep.

It scares me sometimes. But only sometimes.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Yup. That's how we met. I was Assistant Manager at Software Etc. and he's a gaming geek. Actually, the manager was his friend and introduced us, etc., etc.. At least I know I can find him at his computer. Plus he's a gadget geek -- MUST have the latest and greatest or else he's not the cool kid on the block.

Lately, however, he's become a bike geek. Adding the cool handles, the speedometer computer thingee, and now those pedals/shoes. Oy. But he gets so enthusiastic about these things and cute and all that I don't have the heart to say anything about it. It would be like kicking a puppy, ya know?

~ PK ~ The Bookeemonster (book geek) http://www.peakcoaching.com

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

oh hell. I'd be the geek in the living room in the tent. In fact Daiv and I would have probably eaten dinner *in* the tent and possibly even slept there that night (watching telly through the door of course.) =:)

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

My S.O. is not just a geek but a certified gearhead.

I have to admit I'm not sure where exactly that term comes from; I picked it up from him but don't know if it originated in the bicycle world, the camping/hiking/climber world, or the camera world, which are three of his major things. (Martial arts is the fourth, but not a lot of gear there, unless you count the various practice swords.)

I honestly thinks he likes the stuff better than the activity. He's always taking bikes apart, adjusting them, adding different parts, replacing handlebars, etc. He's been known to take apart a camera and put it back together just for the heck of it. He's addicted to bags: backpacks, fannypacks, panniers, whatever you can use to carry stuff. And all the camping gear: He's the one who shows up with the complicated new cookstove and assorted gadgets.

There are bicycle and outdoors catalogs everywhere in this house; god forbid we ever throw an REI or Bridgestone catalog away. One of his bicycle newsgroups recently dubbed catalogs "bike porn"--which I found oddly appropriate.

The weird thing is, he doesn't consider "geek" an insult, but "gearhead" is fightin' words. I'm not sure why, especially when it seems to fit him to a tee.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

My darlin' is a geek of the first order. He works from home, doing computery things. Sometimes I'll ring him to say I'm coming home, and I get home, and the dressing gown is suspiciously warm and he's sitting in front of the computer looking freshly dressed. I can't say for sure, but I suspect he sits there all day straight from breakfast.

I know I caught him in his PJ's once, exactly how I'd left him except for an empty coffee cup, and the ridicule has lodged in his brain; he's now really careful not to get caught.

Perhaps I should just burst through the door and run up the stairs.

He's an endearing geek though - he's done me a mighty fine webpage for work, the envy of all my friends. Now that's lerve.

cheers

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

My husband is a car geek. More specifically a BMW geek. We have two now; used to have three. One is in good shape. One was a hunk of rusting metal with a dead engine and one is his baby. An E30 M3. He killed the engine in that one too. I don't want to tell you how much we paid to rebuild it, but he "saved us a lot of money" ordering parts from all over the world from discount car catalogs to cleaning out other BMW geeks' garages.

He will get up at 5 am just to make sure he can wash his car before he goes to an autocross or track event. (I thought that was what the occasional thunderstorm was for.)

But I love him. After all, not only do I get to drive a nice car, but he changes my oil and does all of my routine maintenance.

Although we get ALOT of car magazines/catalogs. Sometimes I have to pitch them before he gets home from work. There is only so much I can take. You'd be surprised how far-reaching this BMW fanticism goes with the super die-hards.

Beth, a tent in your living room? Try having a set of tires in your powder room!

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Julie, I feel your pain. We had a transmission in our living room for about a year.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

My sweetie is a geek, and that's OK. in fact, we met because I sent email to Dave Winer saying I was looking for a geeky guy (to go with my own geeky qualities). That was over two years ago!

http://www.ha lcyon.com/anitar/journal/061298.html

Anita of Anita's BOD and Anita's LOL

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Reasons why my boyfriend is a geek:

~He watches Star Trek.

~He would rather watch The History Channel than anything else on television.

~He's obsessed with Star Wars.

Yes - to me, those things make a geek.

But _this_ is what REALLY got me calling him a geek:

One morning, I was on my way out the door for work, and I woke him up and leaned down to give him a kiss. He looked up at me, smiled really really big, and said:

"My baby has lips like a horse."

Then he giggled for about 10 minutes. That's what did it for me.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2000

The boyfriend is a major geek. Not a day passes by that he won't tell me about his computer this, computer that, about the new programm that he downloaded and how it can do so many things, and how it has all these little extra programms that work miracles.

I call him on the phone, he tells me he formatted. We go out, he explains the functions of his new drive. We make love, he stares at the damn thing in the dark, just to make sure it's there.

He really needs a new life, and I need a new boyfriend. Or a new computer, maybe.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2000

My boyfriend is a Computer Geek of the first degree. He bought a hub to connect his two PCs, uses his laptop in bed, staying to work till past 8pm, asking me "Don't you just love software?"

Fortunately .... I am a computer geek of the second degree.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2000

My boyfriend is a non-tech geek. He is a book geek. When he gets a new book he sits on the couch and looks at it. Doesn't read it, just looks at it---the front and back cover, perhaps the table of contents or the acknowledgements. It takes about an hour before he has bonded with the outside of his new book! But he's so cute .....

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2000

My husband is a programmer, he loves Star Wars and the history channel, but no one has mentioned the ultimate time-suck, Legos Mindstorm. The little robots must be built and programmed and you need to try to download the JVM for them and see if you can get that running and so on. I'm not complaining though, I know where he is at night.

I'm not that much better, however. I have 6 domains that I'm always working on content for.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2000

My boyfriend is SUCH a geek, but in a cute 12 year old boy way. He's 25 and Still obssesed with play station and star wars. Were not going to be able to even buy a house in 10 years if he keeps spending such high percentages of his paycheck on his "toys".

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2000

My boyfriend? Geek. He's an electrical engineering major, to begin with. Which means he likes to pick apart electronics and speculate on the innermost workings of my computer. (He's good at fixing stuff, though, which is nice.) And he and another friend of mine have this grand scheme that they talk about constantly: They're going to create some computer game company and make this game involving sour gummy worms. (Why, why, why?) And then they're going to do all sorts of fantastic programming and eventually be bought out by Microsoft for millions of dollars. Right, guys.

I just got off the phone with him, in fact. He was sitting in his bathtub, talking on the cordless. At one point, he said in a Dr. Strangelove / Mr. Evil voice, "If I dropped the phone in right now, I would E-lec-tro-CUTE myself."

Riiight.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2000

My wife is endearingly geeky.

Jen is a UNIX geek. When she got her first computer, her friend asked what operating system she wanted and she replied, "anything but Windows", so he put Slackware Linux on it and she's used UNIX exclusively ever since. She prefers console mode to using a windowing system and would rather use Sun hardware any day than sit at a PC.

She has been known to work all weekend on databases, complex scripts, php, and so on, forsaking both food and sleep in her quest for technical perfection. Last weekend she wanted to enjoy some sun outside, and she wanted to take a laptop out with her. Luckily we didn't have any ethernet cable that was long enough, otherwise she would have stayed out and been burned to a crisp.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2000

My babe is a talented computer geek, and has been all of his life. He once told me this story from his juvenile Dungeons and Dragons days, without a hint of irony.

When he was 12 he and his buddies played D&D obsessively. They tried playing in the back of their classroom for a while, but the school got wise and banned dice from the room. That didn't stop him though: he reprogrammed his pocket calculator to function as a random number generator.

Endearing indeed.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2000

ok - see - I made the lack of sleep connection to geekiness because falling asleep mid-pee is exactly something Tom would do. And I, crossing my legs in bed, would also sit and wonder if there was a polite way to say, "Are you sleeping or peeing, Tom?"

Actually, I usually do say something finally and then Tom startles, all blustery, and finishes, mumbling something about privacy and bathroom privledges.

It's right up there with falling asleep in front of the monitor at three in the morning while your wife patiently waits in the bed, next to the bright monitor, wondering how to tactfully get you into bed. Because, dammit, "Honey, why don't you come to sleep (and turn off the monitor), please," is fighting words.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2000

Paul is a geek in so many ways, I don't know where to start...

Antiques Roadshow, anyone? I can't stand the show - it's mind numbingly boring to me. But he has a list on the refrigerator of the times that it's on the PBS channel in our area. He'll watch an episode he's seen 2 or 3 times before without even losing interest.

He's also full of what I tease him about being a wealth of useless information. The man knows just enough about any topic you can come up with to be a participant in any discussion. It used to embarrass me, but now I find it amusing. Now if I could just get his ass on Jeopardy...

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2000

A note on language...

I believe the word 'geek' is coming to mean somebody with an excessive interest in something, especially when it's used in the sense of 'geeking out' (i.e. "I bought a new computer and just spent the entire weekend geeking out.") - but while technogeekdom has become the dominant meaning, a healthy up-and-comer meaning is being geeky about anything (though the emphasis is decidedly scientific or gadget-related).

The correct and unambiguous synonym for technogeek is "propellerhead".

Thank you. Carry on...

Joanne

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2000

Tammy: My ex went through a phase in which every night, till about 4 a.m., he HAD to stay up and install, remove, and re-install various versions of Linux. Over and over again. He never actually USED any of these versions, but wanted to have the computer with the most OS's so he could be King Geek of the local LUG. And somehow determined that each install wasn't good enough for him, so he had to start over...

I just went to bed.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2000

I'm also addicted to that silly antique road show. I can't get enough, and for the life of me I can't tell you why. I must be the geekaroni queen.

-Z

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2000

Hmmm. He's a geek, definitely. But it just makes both of us geeks, so I guess it's fine.

He's a student in computer science, a star wars geek, a book geek, specifically a 'DUNE' geek [Herbert is a god to him], we're both Terry Pratchett geek...

He's a demo maker, as well. I didn't know that existed before we met, even though I spent my whole life dating computer and gaming geeks!

Demos are little computer real-time graphics displayed to a music, usually with a 'message' in them, like some weird sort of movie, I'd say.

Hundreds of young people [guys] across Europe do them, and organise contests and stuff. You wouldn't believe waht amount of 'functionnality' my SO can cram in 64k of code! Real time 3D bla bla... You can go have a look there to start with if you're interested.

Anyway, he's also maintaining his own webserver [Linux running Apache, of course] through his basic ISP cable subscription, harboring my own site and others. You can find everything here.

I'll always fall for computer and gaming geeks, I can't resist them.
I agree with Laural on tha, it's a 'first degree' & 'second degree' match.

Oh, and Javina? My bunch of male best friends in highscholl had enetred the whole set of rules for the role-playing game session on their calculators! Including the random number generator, of course...

Sorry for the long post, people, it's one of my favorite topics [does it show?]

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2000

Oops, the second link should have been this. And I'm sure he would want me to mention that this is from his demo-group, with his code in it, for all those of you who use Sonique to listen to MP3 and dig the weird moving visual stuff.

Aren't I a good girlfriend?

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2000