Triumph of the Nerds

Posting live from the car wash . . .
Tonight I tried to post live from inside the Select Wash bay, while the Echo was taking a shower, but the Internet link on my cell phone failed. So I sadly postponed my post until now.
I'm watching "Triumph of the Nerds" on the Science channel. This is an awesome show featuring interviews with Bill G., Steve Allen, the Woz, and Ed Roberts, the guy who invented the Altair 8800, the first personal computer. It's that box in the picture above, with all the switches on the front. I had the thrilling experience of meeting an Altair 8800 in person back in 2004.
There's even a kind if peevish interview with Steve Jobs, where he accuses Microsoft of having "no style". Then he goes on to brag about how the Macintosh was developed by artists and poets, and that it why it was successful. Okay, Mr. Jobs, my personal experience with creative folks in the IT industry differs a bit from yours. I've learned that poets and artists are not considered qualified by their peer IT professionals, after 10 years of being occasionally mocked, sometimes gently, sometimes roughly, for having an English degree in addition to a programming degree. Twice I've been laughed at during a conference call interview with other geeks after admitting to having an English degree. I just hope they thought that darn speaker was on mute.
When I was working on my first website at the U of MN, I tried to join the Unix club. I got politely kicked out when they found out I was an English major. I really needed some Unix help, so my Dad gave me a cheat sheet with useful commands like chmod and grep. Pretty soon I was using Emacs to write my HTML right on the server, via a modem connection on a VT220 terminal. And with my new-found grasp of the chmod command,
I could make my HTML files world readable.
Now I let Google's Blogger software do all the heavy lifting for me. I just click the Publish button and bam! My files are instantly world readable. This is a good thing. I lost my Unix cheatsheet when I moved in 2005. I think it accidentally got recycled in my green City of Farmington bin.
I'm pretty secure with my geek identity now. If I could go back in time to re-join the University Unix club, I wouldn't let them eject me. I'd retort that I own a C-64, and I can write Dungeons & Dragons style adventure games for it in Basic.
If anything is proof of my geek status, it's that I'm here watching a show about Windows and Apple when I could be watching the Headbanger's Ball. Rocking out is my usual Saturday night agenda, whether I'm watching the Ball or out at the bar watching some live metal. I guess when you're a geek Saturday night isn't just about bars, it's about bar graphs. Saturday night isn't for hooking up, it's for hooking up your wireless network. And Saturday night is definitely not about getting loaded - it's about getting downloaded!

Check out this awesome C64! I own the joystick, still in the original packaging.