The Nerd Confession Thread

[hwillm1977]

My family is pretty much all techno geeks... Dad starting working on computers when they still used punch cards to program them.

We had the first personal (home) computer in our province, they even did a newspaper story on it... it was the size of a refridgerator and took 11" disks (I still have an unopened box of those).

Dad used to let my brother and I make our own circuit boards... I could use a soldering iron before I started school.

I'm somewhat of the odd one out in that I'm not naturally gifted with computers... although in high school I took a programming course and ended up teaching half of the labs since I knew more than the teacher (it was GWBASIC) I was taking night courses at a computer college when I was 8, and my marks were always in honours.

Monty python was pretty standard in our house from the time we were little... same goes for HHGTTG... I knew the answer was 42, and usually wrote that on tests if I got stuck.

I joined a math club for fun and did up to national competitions... giving up my lunch hour every day in junior high to practise math.

My father and I design and dicuss various forms of renewable power generation for fun, and have drawn designs on napkins in restaurants... he carries a calculator ALL the time in case we need it We built a little thermocouple in a tuna can to light a light bulb, and I still didn't win the science fair... lol

I'm not really into sci-fi TV or movies... but I can be a bit of a book/reading nerd. I was reading novels (without pictures) by the time I was 4, and had read Anna Sewell's Black Beauty 6 times by the time I started school.

I'm a bit of a farm nerd too, nothing is nicer than curling up with a good book in the barn where the horses have all been bedded down for the night... listening to them all munch the hay and smelling the leather/hay/horse smells.

 

[bibliophile birds]

I'm a bit of a farm nerd too, nothing is nicer than curling up with a good book in the barn where the horses have all been bedded down for the night... listening to them all munch the hay and smelling the leather/hay/horse smells.

i read to the chickens. there is something totally lovely about it isn't there?

 

[xpc]

We built a little thermocouple in a tuna can to light a light bulb, and I still didn't win the science fair... lol.

Well aren't you the little miss Mensa, you would of won that science fair had you powered the thermocouple rather then heating it and creating a thermopile thusly cooling beer.

I forgot this until you made mention, but when my boy was in kindergarten he was sent home and they threatened to fail him all because he didn't want to finger paint, he told the teacher it was stupid and he only fixed things. It was all my fault because I owned an electronics repair shop and his job was to put the screws back in things with the little cordless. Sadly I had to teach him about swallowing pride and respect where none was deserved.

 

[big brown horse]

Thanks everyone for making my day this morning. I love the stories and confessions!


xpc, my dad still has his tandy and a few others from the mid 80's. He donated a bunch of tandys to my highschool in (I believe) '86. It was the very first computer lab the school had. (I could be worng but I think he has a portable tandy too, it is as big as a suitcase!)

He keeps all his (pluged in and still working) dinosaurs on my mom's long farm table in their formal dining room and only removes them for Thanksgiving. Having to move them puts him in a perfectly foul mood just in time for all of us to show up.

 

[Old Sew'n'Sew]

WAIT!!! Who has a "Star Fleet Academy" sticker on their car?

Very COOL! IMO.

I used to have a blue Subaru Legacy that I nicknamed the "Enterprise' because of the little star logo on the front grill. Subaru is a Japanese word for a southern hemisphere star constellation, called "seven sisters".

I think they should add a new smiley to indicate nerdy or ADD thoughts and emotions.

P.S. That laser thing just blows me away.

 

[valmom]

Forgot to add that I have also knit several Harry Potter scarves and I have read David Brin's uplift series at LEAST 3 times.

I didn't know anyone else KNEW about David Brin!

Add me to the list. My entire library consists of science fiction (including the Klingon dictionary and all the StarTrek books that came out in, I think, the 70's and 80's), horse training/vet books, and craft books. In fact my son-in-law-to-be went into raptures at the "old" SF books I have : We had the "Book of Knowledge" encyclopedias growing up- I read them cover to cover.

I also liked biochemistry in school, so I went into pharmacy. (pays well, and you get to use biochem for a practical reason).

And, I will never be mistaken for someone "cool", either.

 

[k0xxx]

In '80 I bought a Sinclair ZX-80, it only had 1k of memory, but hey, whataya want for only $200. In '82 I upgraded to a Timex Sinclair 1000 for half the price of the ZX-80. 2k of ram, with the 16k expansion pack, a dedicated tape drive and 12" B&W TV. I still have the computer, and a couple of the programs for it, laying around somewhere.

Later, an Atari 400 basic, 800 with dual 1050 floppy drives, a 1010 cassette drive, and a 300bd modem. Then a 1200. I still have the 800, along with some game cartridges (Galaxian, Shamus, Missile Command, Star Raider, Kaboom, Stargate, Asteroids).

Back in my TRS-80 Model III days, I lusted after a 20MB hard drive that came out later. Radio Shack billed it as "the ultimate in computer storage". They put it on clearance for $1200, (but the installation kit was an additional $500) and had I been able to sell my boat.... The only item that I still have from this one is the printer that used ink pen type doohickies.

My first "IBM compatible", was a PC's Limited (before Michael Dell changed the name). 4.77 MHz & and 8 MHz turbo, 640k of RAM, dual 360k floppies, and EGA (wow!) graphics. No hard drive, but it all cost me only $1800, which was quite a deal compared to an IBM. I was in high cotton!

Misc. computers of notes were a TI99/4A, an Amiga 500, a Kaypro II lunchbox. I remember showing off my newly built PC with the just released AMD 40MHz processor. Oh, the blazing speed!

 

[valmom]

Oh, I forgot- anyone else loved Babylon 5? We loved that show and spent many happy hours sitting with chinese food on the bed watching the re-runs with my daughter.

 

[k0xxx]

I used to have a blue Subaru Legacy that I nicknamed the "Enterprise' because of the little star logo on the front grill. Subaru is a Japanese word for a southern hemisphere star constellation, called "seven sisters".

Actually, the Seven Sisters, or Pleiades, is a northern hemisphere constellation. Most people confuse it as being the Little Dipper. It, and it's nebula, used to be a favorite target of mine with my old Celestron Super C80.

 

[Old Sew'n'Sew]

Thanks ! I am corrected. I will have to brush up on my nerd trivia. That's something I heard on NPR, I must have reversed the poles somehow. ADD moment!

Reminds me, I love star gazing! How about y'all?