You know you’re REALLY a geek if…
I discovered Scott Karp’s blog today and the Top 10 List he created to evaluate yourself and discover whether you’re a geek or not…
Well, I definitely qualify if that’s the total criteria, but I think there are levels of geekness. Scott’s quiz defines the entry level. Here’s a quiz for the next rung of “You might just be a geek if…”
- You have ever installed an open source blogging framework on a server and then proceeded to customize themes and write plugins for it
- You have written a custom RSS aggregator and integrated it into your website projects and/or blog
- You have arguments about what Web 2.0 is and what it isn’t with your friends. Bonus points if you argue with your non-techie family about it anyway.
- You have ever stayed up past midnight playing with coding your new todo list with expandable priority sections just to say that “yeah, I can do AJAX”
- You have ever done a happy dance when someone on your “A-list” blog roll left a comment on one of your blog posts, your digged article hit the front page, or your blog post got listed on del.icio.us/popular
- You have 10 or more links in your del.icio.us archive that have the tag “daily” or “infodiscovery” (or eqivalent).
- You have attempted to sell your attention data on eBay (ok, I haven’t done this one, but it’s an idea!)
- You have made a podcast
- You subscribe to RSS feeds that alert you to brand new beta sites and sign up for every beta you can. Bonus points if you try to contact the developers to discuss enhancements!
- You were ever picked on by your tech-savvy friends for being a geek
Admittedly, two of these I haven’t done, so I’ll say if you score an 8, you’re at least as geeky as me and that’s pretty dang geeky. I’ll leave the next tier list to someone else!!
March 2nd, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Number 10 is priceless. Lindsay and I are both constantly being picked on by other nerds, for… being nerdy! What the hell? When you’re nerdy to the point that nerds are picking on ya, you’ve ascended into alpha-geekery.
If you think of alpha-geekery as something requiring ascension, you’re probably a geek.
March 2nd, 2006 at 2:02 pm
If you use the word alpha-geekery, ever…
March 6th, 2006 at 8:02 pm
This isn’t an accurate test:) Only #1 applies to me, but I am still a geek.
Here are some more that I am guilty of:
Installing TeX/LaTeX,Ghostscript,and a DVI viewer under Win3.11 on a 386 with 24MB RAM.
Installing Linux from a magazine CD on a 386 back in 1996.
Compiling a new kernel merely because the working one wasn’t the newest.
Spending 3 days installing Debian Gnu/Linux on a laptop with an internet install rather than downloading and burning handful of install CD’s that might have directly supported the laptop’s network card hardware.
March 7th, 2006 at 9:17 am
That makes you a hardcore old skool geek, Randy. Gotta catch up with the new millenium d00d.
March 7th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Well, I did say that it was a test for a particular level of geekiness (relative to the test that I referenced). There are many ways to be a geek, for sure. Maybe my test is for a particular type of geek… the “Beta Geek”, as in web betas, not second class…
In a related note, I find it very funny that I’m at the Emerging Tech Conference and most of the things that are being presented as bleeding edge I’ve already heard of, begged for an invite weeks (months) ago, played with, or contacted the developers about with enhancement suggestions. Geeze, I even freak myself out some times.