Comments on: Geek or Nerd?

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:02:21 +0000

I saw that and thought of this very thread. Great minds . . .

By: oraclenerd

oraclenerd — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:05:56 +0000

I think it has been settled by this Venn Diagram.

By: Jake

Jake — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:44:07 +0000

I like it.

By: tardate

tardate — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:39:57 +0000

as in: Emotional intelligence Quotient

so maybe geek = emo nerd;-)

By: Jake

Jake — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:03:23 +0000

EQ means etiquette?

By: tardate

tardate — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:42:55 +0000

Had this conversation with my better half too;-)
We agreed to compromise on: geek = nerd + EQ

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:59:52 +0000

Should be awesome. Tron is underrated.

By: joel garry

joel garry — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 05:43:59 +0000

Cubemate this morning bought in a dvd for someone who has never seen it. I remember ditching work with a consultant, and we went to this huge theater in Century City, sitting in the very center, since there was only us and apparently a few guys from TRW who were sitting way up front.

Check out the marketing section of the tron legacy wikipedia entry.

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:25:44 +0000

It's a tough one to explain, but I think we've done a good job here. Anyway, maybe W3C can codify it or something for us.

By: topperge

topperge — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:55:15 +0000

Sadly Chris and I have actually debated this for hours. We'll throw out a topic and debate its geek / nerdiness.

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:58:25 +0000

I think your nerd brethren would disagree.

By: chet

chet — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:27:02 +0000

I proudly refer to myself as a nerd, by the definitions above (namely social abilities), I am not.

I've re-claimed the word for nerds around the world!

Dramatic? Yes.

(no nerds or geeks were harmed during the posting of this comment)

By: chet

chet — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:23:07 +0000

There's a new Tron? WIN!

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:45:39 +0000

Nice one, makes Chris' point about nerdy pursuits applied to real jobs. What better way to design meat space landscapes than to do it for fun?
I wonder if his designs feature caves . . .

Is today his birthday? I'm new to the whole Wil Weaton is a geek meme; it's been going around a lot here in PDX lately. Maybe I'm not as big a geek as my wife and parents would have me believe.

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:41:44 +0000

Geek isn't in the parlance over there? I thought that was in the Queen's English too, or maybe the word still refers to those who bite off chicken's heads in the QE . . .

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:40:00 +0000

Speaking of Tron, I hear there was quite a stir at Comic Con when they showed trailers of the new one. Sounds sweet. Always thought the first one was awesome.

By: joel garry

joel garry — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:31:42 +0000

Grindhouse 3: Below the Valley of the Planet of TronGeek's revenge.

By: joel garry

joel garry — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:17:55 +0000

I had a roomate in college, he published a dungeon & dragons newsletter - mimeographed. (1976) He had a vanity license plate on his car "THNERD" which he claimed was a funny word pronounced as a single syllable. He was more social than me, at least among the D&D crowd. I ran into him a decade later, he was a successful landscape architect. Yes, designing fantasy worlds can lead a viable occupation.

There was a nerdy guy in my high school, he went on to become an electrical engineer. I was amazed to see his picture in the paper one day. He was unable to find a job after being laid off, so was laying on the ground in front of a building of a large company, playing the tuba, with a please hire me sign.

I at least pretended to be cool, though I was never a social butterfly, and I didn't pick on nerds. Once I was in the workaday IT world, that pretense became much more difficult. Eventually, I came to embrace geekdom.

Happy birthday, Wil Wheaton.

By: uvox

uvox — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:32:09 +0000

I agree the term “nerd” is not good – in any context. Over this side of the pond, the techie insider term I suppose would be “Anorak”. Wait, those three letters in the middle of “anorak” – o-r-a… it's a sign…

… yeah, I know. I need to get out more.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:50:40 +0000

Interesting. I tend to agree that geeks have skills useful in the real world, e.g. technical skills. Also, your point about the parts and whole validates what Chet was saying about nerdy pursuits/hobbies.

So, you can be a geek and a comic book nerd at the same time.

I think you can extend nerd to fitness and sports too. Some people's sports obsessions put them in the nerd category, e.g. football nerd. The football nerd dissects play calls against defensive packages, etc. from the couch. The football geek gets paid to do this.