The Butt Ugly Weblog

Geekiness

I have just spent the past 2 hours trying to configure a Windows 98 laptop to connect to an Apple Airport WLAN network. I'm in a seminar: I could've listened to extremely interesting presentations; I could've talked with one of the more interesting (for me anyway) invididuals in the world; I could've spared myself from an incredible number of grief, tears, and despair.

I could've said no.

But most geeks do not say no when someone asks for help. Even when you're "off duty". It's both a matter of personal pride, and the simple fact most geeks are, beneath the surface, friendly people.

Some people probably would point out that technical support is sometimes the only form of communication that geeks can have with non-geeks; and that some take advantage of the geeks' friendliness to offload "all the computery questions to them", but the truth is, we really don't care.

You recognize a true geek from the way he loves his work. A geek can work 14-16 hour days, get a lousy pay, without having to. It's the simple fact that you love the work, and the way you accomplish things while doing it. The road is more important than the goal, which is probably why most software is never finished: there is always something to be improved, tinkered, made better.

A geek does not have to be a computer nerd: Most artists (writes, painters, composers) work much in the same way, because they also love what they do, and they simply could not be not doing their work. I've heard this from many writers - they say that writing chose them, not that they chose to be writers. It's much the same thing with me: I don't think I could stop working with computers and programming. There's just no choice. In that sense, I do sort of count myself as an artist, and it gives a bit more evidence to why programming is an art.

(What happened to the WLAN card? I had to give up. And I always hate it when that happens. I actually had to go outside, stand in the cold air in my T-shirt, and to really cool off. I was about ready to start to go off and mash any Windows 98-computer I could find and feed the pieces down the throats of the programmers who were responsible for the thing.)