I know this isn't an image challenge...
...but this is thoroughly appropriate.



Is it frowned upon to post images directly into QOTW answers? I decided I'd play it safe and link for I am not sure.

EDIT: Bugger it, it's only 17kb.
( Iki I think my camel is dead., Sat 8 Mar 2008, 21:01, 2 replies)

I have no godamn idea.
Wrote the first three lines of the Portal credits song on a whiteboard in uni.

In German.

Why? Fucked if I know.

Would be funny to hear it shouted at top volume in German, Nuremburg style. Just me?
( Iki I think my camel is dead., Sat 8 Mar 2008, 20:54, 1 reply)

I was touring the west coast branch lines of the UK recently..
I thought it would make a nice change from going to ibiza, drinking my bodyweight in alcopops every night and taking enough ecstasy to fuel the space shuttle.

So I boarded the two coach sprinter at Wigan, and was bemused to notice the orange and brown livery on the seats and the titanium alloy kickplates by the door. These seemed to contradict each other as the colour scheme was not used until the 1988 edition of the rolling stock but the kickplates signified a 1986 machine.

Then I noticed the dimpled rivets on the side metalwork and I thought to myself "Jim my old son", I thought, "what we have here is a hybrid", made in the Bounds Green works between March and October 1987 it was a forerunner to the 1988 model which had a more subdued interior and a cheaper brushed steel kickplate on the doorway.

I had to disembark at Salford so I could see a 1974 twin engine diesel hopper couple with a 1980 BR standard rolling stock coach.

I recorded all the events diligently in my notebook, keeping my thirst sated with regular drafts of weak lemon drink from my Transformers flask.

Imagine my surprise when it was pointed out to me by other travellers on the platform that I had omitted to put on my trousers before leaving my house that morning.

I am so geeky.
(Vic Flange, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 20:52, 5 replies)

Grammar humour nazis and gay punctuation
I recently changed my MSN display name to the following:

Tilde (`) - the apostrophes gay cousin

This would probably be geeky enough, were it not that someone pointed out that a tilde actually looks like the following:

~

Hence my final MSN display name was as follows:

Tilde (~) - the hyphens gay cousin

...I'm no longer sure if it was worth the effort, to be honest.

(Note the personification on the words apostrophe and hyphen do not contain the 'apostrophe-s' mistake that plagues so much writing with nouns concerning non-living beings oh god I am so alone)
( Iki I think my camel is dead., Sat 8 Mar 2008, 20:38, 8 replies)

Childhood hacker...
Once upon a time in the early 90's, I was 5/6, my oldman bought a PC. It had Windows 2.0 on it. He used it for banking and whatnot. I used it for Paint, Solitaire (and Minesweeper - I still have NO IDEA what do with it) whenever I was allowed on it.

I liked the computer. It did things that I could not. But I was the master. Not it.

Playing around in Program Manager, I discover SuperBase64.
Oh. Holy. Jesus. That sounds cool.

I open it. I am prompted for a username and password.
*random-keyboard-scramble* RETURN.

*ACCESS GRANTED* (Ok, that's a lie, it didn't say that)

I now have all of my Dad's banking info in front of me. I don't know what is is. I'M JUST A CHILD!

"Whassat one?" *click* "Ooohhhhh....whassat?"
*click-click*
*Permanently delete?*
"Umm..." I have no idea what "Permanently" or "Delete" means... "OK" *click*

"Where's everything gone? ...Uh-oh,,,"

*Turn off computer*

2 days later I hear my Dad on the phone to my older cousin who set it all up for him - he was furious.

And now? Still like to *clickety-click* - am an IT engineer working for a global BPO in-charge of THOUSANDS of machines I get to *clickety-click* :-D

Length? Like the tax year-end form.
(allywilson, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 20:20, 4 replies)

Why, just today...
My friend and I were going to be reproducing music by rock bands today; however, that's where the awesomeness of rocking-out ends. Because we were going to, but we didn't.

Instead we ended up playing Dawn of War Soulstorm which he had just bought the day before (which happened to be the day it came out).
For those of you who don't know, Dawn of War is a pc game based on the table-top stratagey game Warhammer 40,000. A science fiction game my friend and I play from time to time.
Soulstorm makes Dawn of War the biggest RTS game to date, and quite possibley the nerdiest.

I've also been playing Warhammer 40,000 since I was about 3 years old, too.
I can pretty much recite the rules and statlines for nearly all the races in the game on demand.
( xihpete A neutrino walks straight through a bar, with v>c., Sat 8 Mar 2008, 20:20, Reply)

Apologies in advance but...
All your clicks are belong to me!
(Golden Harris, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 20:09, 1 reply)

I don't wanna think about it!
Ummm... I'm writing this while wearing my Doctor Who T-Shirt, after just having had a Doctor Who marathon. When I get bored I play with my Doctor Who figurines.
I also have all my books arranged alphabetically by author, then by the date the book was published. I do the same with my films, and my CDs. Everything in my computer is put away carefully in very specific folders.
I hang my photographs using a ruler to make sure the picture is equidistant from each wall edge.
Maybe I'm not geeky, just obsessive compulsive.
But I can be cool (shockingly). I know the offside rule, can put on make-up with the best of them and only own 3 computer games (The Sims, HP and the Philosophers Stone, HP and the Chamber of Secrets). I have completed none of them.
(Demagogue69 did your grandad 3 times., Sat 8 Mar 2008, 20:00, Reply)

I allways assume
WTF = What The Frack?
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 19:36, Reply)

i transform my money
into the form of poorly made 'takara' toys from japan....

of course were talking about transformers ^tm

im twentyone years of age and i have ALL the move figures and a large amount of the orginals aswell...

geeky bit?
i play with them


/GOLF CLAP
(tweedleDUMB Giving Up Smoking, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 19:24, Reply)

Greek geek
It's Saturday night and I am working on the lyrics to "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" in Greek.

Only in the Greek version he went to Athens...

/coat
( Tourette's ( . )( . ) has a monkey hair in her fried egg, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 19:17, 5 replies)

Mostly Geek
A few years back I was working in Credit Control. One day a customer calls up to dispute an invoice, after explaining that as per the T&Cs of the contract the charges were correct he had to pay. He retaliated with "I've been trying to resolve this for 3 weeks" in a word I said "tough shit, pay up". However, all through the conversation I was thinking the customer's name was familiar, obviously I will not state it here. Anyhow, I get him off the line, he's going to pay but is pissed off.

I google his name and low and behold the name of the customer is the same as that of a computer programmer from the 80's. So I call him back on the grounds that I had had a word with my boss (lie)re the poor customer service and we would like to offer him a 50% credit to the invoice, to which he said thanks and excepted. As the call was winding to an end I asked
"Err, did you write XXXX" to which he replied "Yes" you could then here the tumble weed as neither of us had anything else to say. I then ended the call. Geek? Yes because it was not Mathew Smith or Jeff Minter.

I would like to state now I am sorry for not buying your game back in the 80's, but a friend copied it for me so with interest the 50% credit makes up for my theft.

PS: Lenslok was shite.
(mark731, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 19:12, 1 reply)

more stuff:
i own/have owned the following t-shirts from thinkgeek.com

"it must be user error"

"to be or not to be" (written in code)

"you are dumb" (written in binary ascii code)

i also had a binary watch, which several people made the mistake of asking about...

also every month me and 15 of my mates would all desend on someones house (in the group not just a random persons house) and have a big gaming session this would involve everyone bringing there own pc or laptop, me bringing my game server... 3 network hubs, several 4 way power extension boards, a large amount of network cable a fair few pizzas and booze, every room in the house had at least 4 people in it with computer equipment everywhere resting on tables and kitchen worktops

the non geeks will never understand the satisfaction of bringing a crap load of computers together in one place, getting them setup and networked as fast as possible (thats where my skills came in as non of the others were actual IT people) so u can get down to some good old war/conflict based gaming while drinking and scoffing pizza (apart from one time when we cooked the electrics in an old house)
(maxumus HEY!.... diddly dee, de de de de de de, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 19:06, Reply)

Nerdy or sad?
This one's probably more sad than nerdy, but the two words seem to be interchangeable these days so here goes. Some while ago I bought a Rover, the first car I had ever owned from new. A year on, I got a letter from Rover congratulating me on my car's first birthday. It said too that I would receive a present when I took the car for its next service.

Well, the next service wasn't due for months and I couldn't possibly wait until then. I wanted my present NOW! So I jumped in the car and went down to the garage.

Me: I would like my present, please.
Receptionist: Huh?
Me: My present. For my car. First birthday and all that?
Receptionist (obviously wondering if she should call the local mental hospital): Sorry, I'm not following you.
Me: Look, I've got a letter...

Well, after a lot of palaver it transpired that I was indeed entitled to a present - a sponge worth £1. It also became clear that I was the only person who had bothered to collect it, as I saw a cupboard in the back full of unclaimed sponges. I dreaded going back to the garage after that.
(eesnahk, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 18:52, Reply)

there must be something
i can break a computer just by touching it; my maths is remedial; i suck at science; i've never seen star trek and i've never read terry pratchett. i don't understand most of these jokes and i feel very inadequate.

so i'm very left out, and i want to play!

different type of geekiness, but i have more books in my flat than ebay; if i like an author i will hunt down everything they've ever written (although i don't stack them on my shelves in order!), and any dreamhouse i ever have must contain a library. i'd rather read than watch tv, eat nice food, watch a sunset, most things really.

and i don't wear much makeup but i own about 57 boxes of the stuff, and buy virtually every limited edition thing as fast as chanel, bobbi brown et al can make it.

my favourite films ever would have to include "dirty dancing", "cocktail" and "pretty woman" and there has never been a porn scene or book written (with the exception of frankspencer's catporn maybe) that can live up to patrick swayze's body in that dance scene.....

re-reading the above, i think on balance i'm sadder than most people here!

oooh, speaking of books (which my friends know better than to do unless they want an overly inflamed monologue), i've just finished the latest book by my current obsession douglas kennedy - anyone reading anything they can recommend right now? ta........
( rachelswipe with a fork, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 18:33, 12 replies)

I have a master's degree in molecular genetics
Does that count?
(TooMuchCoffee Lies about having too much coffee, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 18:28, Reply)

Well...
0100100101101101001000000110111001101111011101000
0100000011100100110010101100001011011000110110001
1110010010000001110100011010000110000101110100001
0000001101110011001010111001001100100011110010010
1100001000000110100100100000011101000110100001101
1110111010101100111011010000111010000100000011010
0101100100001000000110101001110101011100110111010
0001000000110001001100101001000000110000100100000
011101000111011101110101011011100111010000100000
0110000101101110011001000010000001100111011001010
1110100001000000111010001101000011010010111001100
1000000111011101110010011010010111010001110100011
0010101101110001000000110100101101110001000000110
0010011010010110111001100001011100100111100100100
0000111010001101111001000000110110101100001011010
1101100101001000000110100101110100001000000110110
0011011110110111101101011001000000110110001101001
0110101101100101001000000110000100100000011101110
1100101011011000110110000100000011101000110100001
1011110111010101100111011010000111010000100000011
0111101110101011101000010000001100001011011100110
0100001000000111011101101001011101000111010001111
0010010000001110000011011110111001101110100001011
1000001101000010100000110100001010010010000110111
1001000000110100001101111001000000110100001101111
00100001
(Guilt wants to get in your moist confines, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 18:18, 12 replies)

I'm a wargamer...
So am I a nerd, geek or just sad...A grown man playing with toy soldiers...?
Well at least I'm not a train spotter...Or a bus spotter.....Or a real life RPGer.......
(archstanton The gold is next to me....leave me be, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 18:09, Reply)

I think I may have posted this on the talk board a wee while ago but it goes a little something like this for those that didn’t read it (most of you then)...
It all started out when I was bored and being lazy. I decided to remote desktop to my PC from my laptop to change songs on media player while sitting on my bed. Then I thought "I wonder what happens if I then remote desktop from my PC to my laptop and then try control that through my laptop while still using remote desktop."

To cut a long and not very interesting story that isn't actual all that long more just plain boring short it locked up both my desktop and my laptop after creating a rather nice never ending loop image into the distance of windows like doom.

I had to restart my desktop to get the madness to stop.

That is how nerdy I am.
(Rt Hon Quargflax, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 18:06, Reply)

There's no place like 127.0.0.1

( Gerbilinafishtank Gerbil in a fish tank...TURTLE POWER!, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 18:01, 2 replies)

I could've been a contender
I could have been a computer nerd. I once wrote a program on my Acorn Electron that made the screen turn red if 30 greater than 10. Goto 10. Run. Woo! But my career in programming was cut short when I saved up my 35p-a-week pocket money for months - my siblings spent theirs on frivolous things like edible paper, chocolate shells. Losers. Oh I'd show them. Oh yes, I would. - bought a book and copied a 1,000 line program - I forget what it did, probably turned the screen magenta - only to get to the end, press "run" and have the dreaded "error at line..." message appear.

Thus a ten-year-old's dream of watching two pixels bounce around a crappy monitor were Shot Down In Flames, I developed an apathy that remains with me to this day, and there ended my interest in computers.

One nerdiness morphed into another, though, and later I developed a love of the music of AC/DC. Watching their old videos on YouTube still brings me joy. I prefer the Bon Scott era.
I have all the tapes they ever released, stored, of course, in chronological order.

I still have the Electron, though. Chuckie Egg was, and is, the best. I played it on the Amiga once, but it was too fancy, the graphics "too advanced".

Ah, the joy of spending an afternoon watching 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 1A, 1B...and so on and so forth.
( nightbuffalo needs more duct tape, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 16:53, 2 replies)

Geeks versus nerds
Am I right, or isn't there a difference between nerds and geeks? Geeks have a penchant for Star Wars or Star Trek, role-playing games, et cetera. Nerds, however, enjoy books by Stephen Hawking and Aristotle, documentaries about anything and spelling out et cetera instead of just writing etc.

I am a nerd. Right now my Sigmund Freud action figure is perched atop my scanner/printer, right next to the Sigmund Freud version of the Tickle-Me-Elmo. I am a female and every article of clothing I own was either given to me, bought from a rock concert or I've had since high school. But I have spent $800 on books in the last six months.

Edit: Am I missing the point entirely on this one?
(BrainSurgerysFun, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 16:26, 3 replies)

sad
I am a mass spectrometrist and I bend ions around corners for a living.

Enough said.
(Monkey Festerer, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 16:23, Reply)

I drew
the b3ta Space Invaders icon! \o/
( teedyay, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 16:01, Reply)

When I was 13
my birthday present to my mum was a program I'd written on our Amstrad CPC464 that would help her catalogue her vast array of recipes.

In designing the software, I invented a few principles of relational databases.

I was quite disappointed when I found out, years later, that someone else had beaten me to it.
( teedyay, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 15:57, Reply)

Well....
I used to think i was a true geek...

I have spent days at a time sat in my room watching the entire run of Stargate/Farscape/The X-Files/A New Generation

I own every Terry Pratchett book (except "Once More With Footnotes" because I cant afford it)

I'd read LOTR at least 7 times by the age of 14 (Ive lost count now)

I spend most my free time either on here, wikipedia or playing conservatroll

Also, and this bit is important, I'm a massive GW nut (my local store stopped me taking part in their monthly quizzes because i never lost.) I even became a staff member for a year or so...

However I had been reading this QOTW and had started to feel slightly smug, compared to some of my fellow B3tards I seem a veritable font of social skills. (Yay me!)

This being the case I went out last night with a skip in my step and a near terminal caffiene overdose. The night progressed (as they often do) and things were going well between me and this friend of mine S (name witheld to protect the poor girl).

It got to that point where you have to choose whether to back off or dive in head first and giggling (and hope ostracism is just something that happens to other people). I went to the bar to get a drink so I could weigh up the pros and cons (definately alot more pros than cons, Ive always been a sucker for hot blondes ;-) )

All I heard was a voice in my head going
"Go on my son, For The Emperor"






I fail in so many ways...
(big king bob Lord of the Ska, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 15:41, 2 replies)

Just remembered a party I went to...
...a couple of years ago. It was a get-together of an online gaming clan I was a fairly minor member of. Of course, I like my games, gadgets, sci-fi and other trappings of geek recreation but I'd not encountered geekiness at this level for a number of years and I was a bit taken aback. Don't get me wrong here, I enjoyed myself. The guys and girls there were from all over the country, and one or two from further still, of widely differing ages but all highly intelligent, affable and possessing surprising talents in a few cases. It was a most entertaining evening. But examples of weapons-grade geekiness observed include:

* Playing head-to-head in secret levels on GameCube and PS2 that they seemingly knew how to access for our entertainment in seconds.
* Drinking games of a complexity that I just couldn't handle in some cases. Can't even remember some of them, though that's probably due in part to the many forfeits incurred by my resulting poor performance.
* In the latter part of the evening, playing the soundtrack to that Buffy musical episode and singing along, in one case breathtakingly well. I didn't, for reference - seen the episode but I didn't know the words, and besides my singing voice sucks.

My aforementioned poor show in the drinking games left me a bit sloshed and I fell asleep in the porch toward the end of the evening. My hosts very kindly directed me to a couch, but not before taking a snap of it for the archives - fuckers :)
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 14:56, Reply)

QOTW
Is spectacularly back on track with this one!

hurrah!

(does my QOTW enthusiasm count towards my g33k skore?)
( ogwen69 has returned from Reddit, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 14:27, 1 reply)