Brain Drippings

I came to the world of geeking pretty early, having my first modem (a 300 baud modem card for the Apple ][+) so long ago I don’t remember the year. I’ve had an email address since 1987, continuously. I registered my first domain in 1991, but let it lapse. I’ve had kreme.com since 1995, hosted the entire time on Mac hardware (a 6200 at first, then a 6360 and currently a beige-box G3, though some web pages are on a x86 FreeBSD machine). My first email address started …!apple! just to give you an idea.

A friend of mine defined ‘geeking’ as using a computer to socialise, waste time, or play games with/against other people. Writing papers for class didn’t count. Playing solo games in your dorm didn’t count. The essential nature of geeking is that you are connected to other people, albeit virtually. This was in the 1980’s, so that meant AMD 3a terminals in a lab on campus with a 2400baud connection. Or, if you were really on the bleeding edge, you lived in a Geek House that had a server and its own terminals, connected to the University via a Hayes Dual Standard modem at 9600bps. In college an essential part of geeking was also setting up real life parties, Denny’s runs, or… on occasion, a 900 mile round-trip road trip to LA for In-and-Out Burgers, this was back in teh ady when there was ONE location. I recall one night abut 3am when at least 60 geeks descended on the local Denny’s, there was one waitress. Poor girl.

Although I’ve been a sysadmin for Unix (FreeBSD and various other flavours of BSD and OS X) for the better part of 20 years, I am not really a hardcore programmer. I fiddle with php a bit, and I do the guts and bones of websites, but I leave the prettification to others. I am pretty anal about writing web-code to standards, and make a point of running even short throw-away pages through validators. I’ve run, on my own hardware, some flavor of UNIX since 1990, that was an AT&T 386 UNIX that I got with an AT&T minicomputer from a place I worked one summer. It used to get a UUCP feed of the rec. hierarchy… I also used to use SPRINTNET to call San Jose (only 10¢ a minute!) and login to Netcom and read news and get on IRC (back before Eris and Eris-Free). There was also nyx.net which I was a part of for several years.

But, despite all that, I do not consider myself primarily a computer guy. I mean, yeah, I’m the alpha-geek for my family and most of my friends, except those who are the alpha-geeks to me, but my primary interest in computers is not the computers themselves, but what they allow me to do.

I have friends in a dozen countries around the world. From Australia to Scotland, Mexico to Thailand, Japan to Spain. I am able to read a few hundred emails a day on topics as varied as US politics, Spiral Dynamics, procmail, World of Warcraft, or new TV shows, movies, and books. I keep in touch with a wide circle of people, and that is really what computers are for me. Without a connection to the outside world computers are not all that interesting to me.

Besides geeking, my main interests are, sad to say, sedentary. Books, movies, and TV shows—in that order. I try to read several books every week, and usually do. I see a lot of movies, and I watch quite a lot of TV, thanks to TiVo. Activities in the Big Blue Room include swimming, running the kids about town, and other ‘homemaker’ type tasks. I am home with the kids since I can do almost all my sysadmin work remotely thanks to a super fast Internet connection (well, super fast for the US) and ssh. We love ssh.

I am in many respects an Anglophile (or a Europhile, perhaps), to such an extent that you will sometimes see BrEng spelling sneak into my prose. My excuse is most the authors I read are British, and I learn their spellings. Honestly, I’m just a lousy speller and I can’t remember if ‘we’ use the z’s or the Brits do. Socialize. Socialise. Yeah, they both look correct.

I am not the stereotypical guy in many respect. I have no interest in cars other than that they work. I’m not big into sports. I follow the local NFL team, but I care less and less every year. The only sporting event that I really make a concerted effort to follow is Wimbledon, which if I can, I will watch every second that is broadcast. I think, essentially, I don’t have the temperament to be a ‘fan’. Not of anything. Fan is just short for fanatic, and to quote William Shatner, “I just can’t get behind that”. Similarly, I don’t especially like bars, any kind of racing where there are only left-hand turns, or any of the bubble-headed ‘celebrity’ T&A stars du jour. I do like a lot of non-guy things (I refer to this as ‘pinging the gaydar’), including Rogers and Hart musicals, so-called ‘chick-flicks’, and candles, scented or not. Most years (though not the last 5 or so) I prefer women’s tennis to men’s, and women’s Olympic events as well. I watch Ice Dancing, but not synchronized swimming.

If you’re still reading this, really, you need to get out more. It’s NOT that interesting.

Oh, and I write. A lot. As you might have noticed from the excessive wordiness on display here, I do have a penchant for going on a bit. I have a couple of things floating around my computer that I have, in some form or another, been working on for decades. I keep swearing I’ll finish them at some point, but as I start the slide down the backside of the proverbial hill it seems less and less likely. Which is OK, I guess. I enjoy the process so that’s enough for me. If I ever get to the point where a story is complete, well, then I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it, right?