Geeky Memeage...

[seawasp]

Ganked from jrittenhouse:

List 5 reasons why you are a geek. And make them good reasons. Justify them. Explain them. Be loud and proud about how big of a geek you are! Then pick the 5 biggest geeks you know and have them do the meme.
I don't think the 5 biggest geeks I know have LJs...

1. I have been an RPG gamer for over 28 years. I have been a gamer so long that I translate book and movie and TV characters into game stats almost automatically. I have played at power levels that make munchkins cower. I ran what was probably the first PBEM D&D game in the world, in 1978.

2. I have been online for longer than many reading this journal have been alive. I sent my first E-mail in 1976. My online alias, "Sea Wasp", is probably known by more people than know my real name. I've been known by that name since 1977. On Usenet, articles personally written by me exceed 50,000.

3. I am a true anime fanboy. Not only have I worked in an anime convention, not only have I written anime fanfiction, I have participated in anime cosplay and won awards. I have been interviewed, in costume and in character, by Japanese TV. I was known as Son Goku to a large group of anime fans -- and I wasn't someone who looked at all like him; it was just how well I projected the character.

4. I started reading SF as early as I can remember. I remember lines from books I read once 20 years ago. I spent all my money on books when I was younger; I don't think I ever bought a "snack" with pocket money. I read SF, I watched SF, I tried to write SF. And I finally reached the bottom and became an SF author.

5. I was a science geek throughout my childhood. To the point that my favorite books aside from SF were things like "Volcanoes", "The Silent World", "Kon-Tiki", etc. I own the three-volume set of Halstead's "Poisonous and Venomous Marine Animals", which I used to read as my favorite entertainment when home sick from school.

I AM A GEEK GOD!!!!

Comments

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

I am in awe of your geekiness!

I wonder if I can come up with anything sufficiently geeky for myself. Oh, I bet I can.

[howardtayler.livejournal.com]

I bow to your superior geekiness.

[james8bitstar.livejournal.com]

What does PBEM mean?

[shana.livejournal.com]

Play by e-mail.

As my loyal lieutenant says...

[seawasp]

"Play by Email". I ran such a game starting in '78 (may have been as early as late '77). Had to rewrite the Email program every few months because the sysop deleted it every time he found it.

Re: As my loyal lieutenant says...

[noctyrnus.livejournal.com]

Sysop ? Now THERES a term I havent heard in years , lol. In fact , I think the
only time other than the local BBS's that I was on back in NY was the guy who ran the BOCES Mainframe/Miniframe System , his name was Jack ( I cant recall the guys name ), but he went to all the local area HS's and talked to the people that where on the system. As I recall , the accounts where ####,#### , and no personalized names , except in the email you send. GAWD , the useless stuff I remember :P

[sub-musashi.livejournal.com]

You win the Internet.

Re: As my loyal lieutenant says...

[sub-musashi.livejournal.com]

Recognizing terms like sysop, ftp, and BBS should be the qualifiers to even take a geek test.

Re: As my loyal lieutenant says...

[noctyrnus.livejournal.com]

Im might be a quasi-geek , but not a full blown one , or at least I dont think I am :P

Re: As my loyal lieutenant says...

[seawasp]

Yep. Jack Murphy. He used to delete Email, Talk, and similar programs because they were "games" and clearly did not have,nor ever would have, an actual USE. This, please note, was not HIS policy necessarily, but the stated position of BOCES.

Accounts were up to three numbers followed by up to three numbers -- 34,34 or 131,2, or 1,2.

Useless stuff? Dude, I not only remember all that, I remember the accounts I used and the PASSWORDS to them. And the code needed to make a program control-C proof.

Note again that email ONLY existed because people like me wrote it. Multiple times, as there was no such thing as portable discs. Therefore you literally had to RE-TYPE the entire program back in.

But...

[seawasp]

... I already OWNED it. Now what?

Re: As my loyal lieutenant says...

[noctyrnus.livejournal.com]

I remember my last account on there - 26,10 and the password too. I think Niskayuna Schools , or at least the high school , was assigned 26,### , and the lower the last 3 #'s , the higher up in the computer users you were, or something like that.

I can remember suggesting a program , and a friend and I made it, that actually read ALL the systems emails, but as you said , Jack was fond of
deleting email type programs , etc... but we both had print outs of the
program in case one of us lost our copy , we had a back up.

Those days were fun :)

Re: As my loyal lieutenant says...

[seawasp]

I'd already made that program. It was INSIDE the Mail code. Basically, I'd bugged Mail; it sent me a copy of all messages sent. This was because there were a bunch of hackers that were silly enough to think they could do nasty things to me. And the idiots were using *MY MAIL PROGRAM*.

Eventually they wised up and started using their own, but by then I was running another scam on them and caught them with their pants down.

Re: As my loyal lieutenant says...

[noctyrnus.livejournal.com]

You sneaky boy you :P

translating into stats

[(Anonymous)]

Just recently, 11 year old son and I were translating all the SpongeBob Squarepants characters into D&D stats.

My boy is turning into a geek!

Re: translating into stats

[heracolyte.livejournal.com]

Oops I didn't mean it to me anon. The spongebob reference was by me.

Re: translating into stats

[seawasp]

But why are you letting your son watch Squidbob Cthulhupants? Or were you translating them into the enemy?

Re: translating into stats

[heracolyte.livejournal.com]

Spongebob is of such serious artistic depth that they have to deal with the earth shattering issues of having a campfire exist under water! It deserves to be translated into D&D stats